When an antivirus scanner or user unzips the file, the decompression engine attempts to expand every layer, leading to an exponential increase in disk space usage. 3. Purpose and Impact
A tiny compressed file (often only a few kilobytes or megabytes in size) that expands into a gargantuan amount of data (petabytes, exabytes, or "infinite" space) upon extraction.
The ZIP algorithm can compress repetitive data (like a file filled entirely with zeros) extremely efficiently. A 10 GB file of zeros can be compressed into a few megabytes. Infinite.zip
Systems should be configured to reject archives where the ratio of compressed-to-uncompressed size is suspiciously high.
Modern antivirus software and archiving tools (like 7-Zip) often limit the number of nested levels they will scan or extract to avoid this type of attack. When an antivirus scanner or user unzips the
It is used to overwhelm security software that attempts to scan within archives, preventing it from detecting other, actual malicious files. 4. Mitigation and Defense
The file is built by compressing a set of files that are themselves compressed, repeating this process -levels deep. The ZIP algorithm can compress repetitive data (like
It relies on recursive compression —layers upon layers of nested ZIP files. A single file might contain 100 zip files, each containing 100 more, and so on. 2. How it Works (The Mechanics)