Zip bomb

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A zip bomb is a type of malicious computer file that is designed to disrupt the action of antivirus software. These files usually take the form of innocent looking archive files that, when unpacked in order to be scanned, require enormous amounts of time, disk space, or memory.

When antivirus software started to automaticaly check email message attachments, crackers started to zip viruses into archives to avoid detection. Then, antivirus software started to unzip and check email attachments. That gave crackers an idea to create zip bombs. A cracker would create e.g. a text file with the letter X repeating many million times. That would produce a small archive but gigantic disk and memory usage when unzipped, somewhat like a DoS attack started from the inside of the computer, blowing it away. Thus, a zip bomb.

Today, there are antivirus programs that can detect a zip bomb and avoid it.

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