Find video files cached by the flash plugin in browsers

Explanation

Recent versions of the flash plugin hide the temporary file by marking it deleted. Practically the video stream is downloaded to a "deleted file". However, even when a file is deleted, if the file is opened by a process then you can find its file descriptor and consequently the file contents.

This simple script prints out the file descriptors of opened Flash videos:

file /proc/*/fd/* 2>/dev/null | grep Flash | cut -f1 -d:

And, you probably want to create a regular file from the file descriptor, for example:

cp $(file /proc/*/fd/* 2>/dev/null | grep Flash | cut -f1 -d: | head -n 1) video.avi

Otherwise the file descriptor is not very convenient (remember, it's a deleted file!)

The method should work regardless of your browser.