What is a zip bomb?

A zip bomb is a type of malicious file that is designed to be extremely compressed, but expands to an exceptionally large size when unzipped. The purpose of a zip bomb is to overwhelm and crash the system of whoever tries to unzip it, which can lead to a denial of service (DoS) attack.

Zip bombs are typically created by leveraging the way compression algorithms work. By repeatedly compressing and nesting folders within folders, the file size can be drastically reduced while still containing a massive amount of data. When the file is unzipped, the system will try to allocate resources to decompress the file, leading to a potentially catastrophic overload.

Due to their destructive nature, zip bombs are considered a form of malware and are often used by hackers for malicious purposes. It is important to be cautious when downloading and unzipping files from unknown sources to avoid falling victim to a zip bomb attack.