What Is a Zip Bomb? How to Protect Your Data from Zip Bomb?

What Is a Zip Bomb?

What is a zip bomb? A zip bomb, also named a decompression bomb or decompression bomb, is a malicious archive file that includes a large amount of compressed data. Once you open this file, it will overwhelm your system or a specific program.

Therefore, this kind of attack is often being used to disable antivirus software so that more viruses or malware can filtrate your system. With the help of zip bombs, malware and other malicious software can gain access to your computer to steal and alter the data on the system.

So why do those zip bombs appear on your system? This potential danger can disguise itself and do nothing harmful to your system until you open the file. That’s why this attack is so difficult to detect and prevent.

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Email links with unidentified sources are one of the most common ways people receive zip bombs. Of course, other downloading from untrusted sites can come with zip bombs.

Types of Zip Bombs

According to their positions and attack methods, there are two major types of zip bombs that you may be interested in learning.

Recursive Zip Bombs

This kind of zip bomb is composed of multiple nested archives that are unpacked one after another, causing a seemingly endless string of mostly repetitive or recurring data.

Non-Recursive Zip Bombs

Different from recursive zip bombs, non-recursive zip bombs expand fully after a single round of decompression. This kind of zip bomb is more difficult to be detected by antivirus programs because this attack does not have overlapping recursive files.

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How to Protect Your Computer from a Zip Bomb?

So, how to protect your computer from zip bombs?

First of all, use powerful third-party antivirus software. Most modern antivirus programs can detect whether a file is a zip bomb in order to avoid unpacking it. At least, overlapping files of recursive data can be identified for deletion.

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Besides, before you unwittingly open this decompression bomb file, you need to back up your system to an external hard drive whether this zip bombs exit or not.

Because if you have been haunted by the zip of death attack, factory resetting your computer may be the most effective method to get rid of it. Or, you can look for some related repair tool in the market to scan and remove zip bombs.

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It is complicated to handle the linked results made by zip bombs. To back up your system, you can use this third-party free backup tool – MiniTool ShadowMaker. It allows you to perform NAS backup and remote backup. Most types of disk drives can be your backup destination.

Download and install this program and a 30-day free trial version is available.

MiniTool ShadowMaker TrialClick to Download100%Clean & Safe

Connect your external hard drive and open the program to click Keep Trial. In the Backup tab, your system has been set as the backup source and you don’t need to change. Just choose the external hard drive as your destination and click Back Up Now to execute the backup.

Besides, more backup settings can be configured here.

Bottom Line:

This article has introduced what the zip bomb is and you can learn some methods to protect your data. If you have any other questions, you can leave messages below.