Adverse effects of zip bombs?

Question

I have read about zip bombs on Wikipedia, read this question. I tried experimenting to make a zip bomb, but when I unzip the final file, since the unzip is not recursive, it does not do anything to the system. Am I missing out on some detail?

Also, how will the zip bomb cause the system to crash ? It is understood the program might crash but the OS crashing?

The articles have created a bit of confusion, so would be great if someone could explain the details.

Thanks.

Answer 1

Firstly, shouldn't this be on SuperUser? It's not really about programming...

Anyways, AFAIK Zip-Bombs are mainly used to mess-up anti-virus software. Since the program will try to unzip everything to make sure that there's no malware/viruses anywhere inside. They will spend forever on that one archive, maybe even crashing, allowing other viruses in.

Here I'm speculating, but I also think that there are some zip-bombs that will decompress everything, messing up the whole computer as opposed to one program. However, I'm only guessing.

Source for the first answer:

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zip_bomb
• Knowledge accumulated by browsing countless other websites