Author Topic: Decompression bomb  (Read 2077 times)

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Mindy

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Decompression bomb
« on: September 25, 2005, 11:46:23 PM »
I'm hoping someone can help me. I did a scan and one of the files said it couldn't be scanned because it was a decompression bomb.  I'm new to this as the company who fixed our computer installed avast!4 as our virus scanner. 

What is a decompression bomb and do I have to do anything to the file?

Thanks,
Mindy

Offline DavidR

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Re: Understanding avast4.ini file
« Reply #1 on: September 26, 2005, 12:20:33 AM »
Welcome to the forums Mindy, this thread is not related to your question so you should really have started a New Topic for questions unrelated to the topic.

But to briefly answer your question, it is a file that appears small but when uncompressed it becomes very large, this is a common tactic by some malware to swamp systems thereby allowing access or crashing it. It doesn't mean this is definitely harmful just airing on the side of caution of not decompressing it in order to scan it.

Also a forum search for decompression bomb should return some information as this topic has been discussed before.
« Last Edit: September 26, 2005, 12:23:24 AM by DavidR »
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