Zip of Death

"Zip-of-death" describes a subterfuge designed to bring down a network by overwhelming the antivirus software and network traffic checking security applications.

Using special techniques, a hacker can compress a file down to as little as 500KB, that when decompressed, could reach 15GB or more in size. Another version of the exploitation involves compressing such a large number of files, that when decompressed, can crash the system.

IWSVA allows you to set limits on the size, as well as the number of files it will extract from a compressed archive. Whenever the limit is reached, IWSVA stops decompressing, deletes all extracted files, and takes the specified action (block, pass, or quarantine) for compressed file handling. For example, if the action is "quarantine," IWSVA quarantines the "uncleanable" files.