Infinite.zip

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.

Do not extract unknown or unexpectedly small zip files from untrusted sources. zip and recursive zip bombs ? 42.zip (2004) - Hacker News

The file is built by compressing a set of files that are themselves compressed, repeating this process -levels deep. Infinite.zip

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 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

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 most infamous example, 42.zip , is a 42-kilobyte file that, when fully extracted, expands to 4.5 petabytes ( is a 42-kilobyte file that

Systems should be configured to reject archives where the ratio of compressed-to-uncompressed size is suspiciously high.