This is truly a work of clever technical intelligence , You have a 42 KB zip file that expands to 45 PB ( Peta bytes 1012 bytes) . here is what the web site hosting this file says ,
The file contains 16 zipped files, which again contains 16 zipped files, which again contains 16 zipped files, which again contains 16 zipped, which again contains 16 zipped files, which contain 1 file, with the size of 4.3GB.
Now , how on earth does that can happen, well the answer is a characteristic property of zip compression , data redundancy , actually this file has a 4.2 GB file consisting of all zeroes , this means high redundancy and so zip is able to compress it that small .
now , go ahead and unzip it !!
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Navneet Kumar
July 28, 2008
Wow !! that’s amazing .. actually i have studied about this in my Data Compression class ..
LAEinc. Creations
July 28, 2008
Ohh my, thats FRIGGEN AWESOME! lol Thanks!
Do not download this.
July 28, 2008
Do not download.
It contains a trojan.
Tts2113
July 28, 2008
There was a small virus like program at my old high school and it was called getting “chickened” there was an infinite loop to write a folder “chicken” with a txt file that said chicken in it. it did this until your home folder was filled so id assume compressing crazy amounts of files in a small zip file is possible
Sarah
July 28, 2008
Yes, it is a trojan, of sorts. It’s a ‘archivebomb’ trojan. The only dangerous thing about it would be if you tried to unzip it in its entirety, because it’s so big.
Emon
July 28, 2008
It’s not a trojan, it’s a zip bomb. They’re meant to disable AV programs by requiring an immense amount of resources to extract (and thus, scan). Attempting to extract 45 PB would render an antivirus process useless. Since most modern AV software checks for this, it will flag it as a trojan (or other type of malware).
Bill
July 28, 2008
It’s not a trojan. Some virus softwares call it “Archbomb”, aka archive bomb.. because it’s doing exact what it says it’s doing. A 42kb file that expands to petabytes.. That’s normal behavior. Will it fill up your hard drive? yes.. will it tank your virus software in some cases if it tries to scan embedded archives.. yes. Do most virus scans catch it now? yes.. is it malicious or harmful? no.
Vineet
July 28, 2008
Yet another Zip Bomb… http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zip_bomb
“One example of a Zip bomb was the file “42.zip” which was 42 kilobytes of compressed data, containing five layers of nested zip files for a total of 4.5 petabytes of uncompressed data.”
Kia Kroas
July 28, 2008
I downloaded it, it looks legit to me…but then again, maybe I’ve already been infected and not know it. So I hope the trojan’s made for Windows only. I’m in Linux =]
It can be done, but a dataset with that type of redundancy doesn’t happen often. In fact, if you zip two different zip files with different content, sometimes it’ll be larger than the two combined.
Peter
July 28, 2008
McAfee Site Advisor also pegs this as malware; proceed with caution.
Your a fake admin
July 28, 2008
Sorry, your anti-virus sucks.
Neat, now time to go win some bets.
admin
July 28, 2008
Well , i figured it out , it’s called a zip bomb , It is not a Trojan , but as it will take ages to unzip and will occupy all your HD space , so that is why some people used it for DOS( Denial of service attacks ) and this technique got a bad name as it was used by Hackers to deface and dstroy important systems .
Your antivirus will warn you , as it thinks of it as a trojan .. as it willl try to unzip the file to scan it , and if your AV is not good it will go on scanning and scanning … so take your chances
admin
July 28, 2008
@Tts2113 – Your name sounds crazy , anyways you are correct , it is possible to compress in this manner, hackers have been using this technique to paralyze systems .
shitfuckyounamerequired
August 3, 2008
NOW HOW ON EARTH DOES THAT CAN HAPPEN
HEY
August 3, 2008
WAT
Donald S.
August 3, 2008
I found this very interesting, follow my website link to learn more on such topics. It is actually interesting to study.
Pushpendra Pal
August 9, 2008
I have downloaded it, but not going to unzip it.
Alex
August 15, 2008
Your blog is interesting!
Keep up the good work!
Olaf
August 25, 2008
Good post. Your messages are really interesting. To have a good site you should not only to add smth, but do it interesting. You managed with it – thanks.
niherasebekei
September 3, 2008
Amazing site.
Thanks, webmaster.
werewolf
September 5, 2008
Cool blog
Thanks, webmaster.
Gen
September 24, 2008
How do you get rid of a zip bomb?
Vivek
September 24, 2008
@Gen Their is nothing called getting rid of a Zip Bomb , What it actually does is puts your computer in a infinite loop of processing and eating up all your storage space as it uncompresses . So if ever you unzip such a zip bomb then best way is to terminate the process .. ctrl+alt+del .. and kill process in Windows and on Linux see the pid of your unzip program using ps -All and then kill
anshul
November 5, 2008
i was just checking ur complete blog today..its really wonderful…u hav really worked hard on it…appreciative work… really gr8 man…keep going…bbye
Jesse Butt
April 1, 2009
As a Newbie, I am always searching online for articles that can help me. Thank you Btta5200
singularity
April 2, 2009
I think the compression utility uses some sort of data redundancy, being the data all the same, can be compressed in only 42Kb.
Oh, anyway if anyone has a better technical explanation would be appreciated,
Nirmal
November 4, 2009
Anyone tried unzipping it?
I am tempted to, but lazy about installing the OS and all the software again.
Schedule
October 30, 2010
Maybe you could edit the blog title Do not unzip this – it is a huge 42 KB file !! | TechStroke to something more catching for your subject you create. I enjoyed the post still.