22 replies to this topic

[Detection]

Just found this little file on one of my storage drives, and remember having a bit of fun with it years ago

The file is a tiny 78kB, extract it using 7zip to find the extracted file is now 21MB, now extract that file and you`ll see that the extracted file is now 2.8GB

How many times can you extract Googolplex before you or your machine gives up ?

Apparently there is a file hidden at the very end of all of the extractions but I have never managed to get that far, from what I remember it is a text file containing the entire numerical value of a Googolplex



Download (Extract each file with 7zip)

http://localhostr.co...G/googolplex.gz

[yxz]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zip_bomb

[Haggis]

wonder if i can persuade someone at work to open this lmao

[Detection]

yxz, on 26 November 2012 - 17:17, said:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zip_bomb

Why post this? Its not a malicious file at all, it does nothing to your AV, there is no executable file at all

And it doesn't try to kill your system with a huge decompression, each extraction gets bigger and you can choose to cancel the extraction at any point

[Haggis]

Read the wiki it will show why he did it

Most Anti Virus should not allow you to do this as it "should" pick it up as a zip bomb because of the way it exponentially increases in size

[Detection]

Haggis, on 26 November 2012 - 17:26, said:

Read the wiki it will show why he did it

Most Anti Virus should not allow you to do this as it "should" pick it up as a zip bomb because of the way it exponentially increases in size

I did read it, Its not a zip bomb

You don't suddenly get 100 Petabytes trying to decompress, each time you extract the file it gets bigger and offers no harm to the machine at all, it doesn't try to crash your system whatsoever

[LogicalApex]

Detection, on 26 November 2012 - 17:30, said:

I did read it, Its not a zip bomb

You don't suddenly get 100 Petabytes trying to decompress, each time you extract the file it gets bigger and offers no harm to the machine at all, it doesn't try to crash your system whatsoever

Yes, if you manually extract it the file doesn't expand until you initiate the next nested level, but the the same wouldn't be true for an AV program. For the AV it would initiate the next step automatically in order to ensure the contents of the file are safe. As a result, it would continue going down a level until it exploded.

[Lord Method Man]

Assume a text file with 1 byte per character, the numerical value of a Googolplex would be (1e100) + 1 bytes which is ten duotrigintillion bytes or 9.095e87 terabyes. There isn't enough digital storage on earth to hold this value.

[yxz]

"VirusTotal is a website that provides free checking of files for viruses. It uses up to 44 different antivirus products and scan engines"-wikipedia
https://www.virustot...5333d/analysis/
File name: googolplex.gz
Detection ratio: 0 / 32


Jotti

[Detection]

LogicalApex, on 26 November 2012 - 17:46, said:

Yes, if you manually extract it the file doesn't expand until you initiate the next nested level, but the the same wouldn't be true for an AV program. For the AV it would initiate the next step automatically in order to ensure the contents of the file are safe. As a result, it would continue going down a level until it exploded.

There are no file extensions on any of the nested levels, probably to prevent that happening

[Haggis]

You dont understand whats being said

AV will auto scan the next level will see its also a zip and scan the next level, will see its a zip and scan the next level will see its a zip and scan the next level

it will continue to do this thus is scanning a bigger and bigger file each time it does this

[n_K]

This is a zip bomb.
Small file expanding to very large file due to abuse of compression protocol = zip bomb and this fits the description perfectly.

[Detection]

Haggis, on 26 November 2012 - 19:47, said:

You dont understand whats being said

AV will auto scan the next level will see its also a zip and scan the next level, will see its a zip and scan the next level will see its a zip and scan the next level

it will continue to do this thus is scanning a bigger and bigger file each time it does this

Funny, every time I ever extracted this, on many machines, with many other people also having a go, not once with different AVs did it cause any problems

Don't like it, don't download it, I wouldn't post any file that would cause problems

[Glassed Silver]

Detection, on 26 November 2012 - 19:57, said:

Funny, every time I ever extracted this, on many machines, with many other people also having a go, not once with different AVs did it cause any problems

Don't like it, don't download it, I wouldn't post any file that would cause problems

Then you guys had AV software that's actually worth a cent.

A good AV scanner should always stop after a certain time to not trick itself into zip bombs.


Apparently this isn't standard by now? Lord in heaven...

Glassed Silver:mac

[xfx]

I just tried expanding the first level (which produced several .zip files) and Windows (SearchFilterHost.exe) started using all my 8GB of RAM.
I had to terminate the Search Indexer process and then delete the .zip files via the command line.

Pretty scary stuff!