1831 Zip Bomb

The basic oversimplified explanation of zipping/compressing a file, is that the more repetitive the data is, the smaller the compressed file will end up. Thus, compressing a file makes it faster and cheaper to upload and download as the new version will be slightly smaller.

Zip bombs takes this idea to the extreme. You basically create a massive file with extremely high compression efficiency. There are multiple methods to achieve this result. The goal is to create a file that once unzipped, will dump a massive amount of files onto the victims device, potentially even crashing the device.

A file as small as a few kilobytes can rapidly grow into a few petabytes. If you were to hide such a file together with other files, it really isn't that hard to get someone to attempt to extract it.

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