decompression bomb??

General Topics
1

When I run a scan I get 4 of these warnings but nothing ever comes of them… Nothing is moved to virus chest.

File C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Shoebox\PI_CAL.SBS\149628 Error 42110 {The file is a decompression bomb.}
File C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Shoebox\PI_CAL.SBS Error 42110 {The file is a decompression bomb.}
File C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Shoebox\PI_ct2.SBS\115399 Error 42110 {The file is a decompression bomb.}
File C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Shoebox\PI_ct2.SBS Error 42110 {The file is a decompression bomb.}

So my question is what is a “decompression bomb”? and what do I do from here if anything…

thanks in advance,
Scott

2

Scott, just search the board for “decompression bomb” and you’ll get it…

Decompression bomb is a file that may be rather small, but decompresses to an enormous amount of data (when processed as a packed archive). Such file are not malicious per se, but they may block an antivirus program when it tries to scan them.
This kind of files is rather hard to detect (and avoid) precisely - so, it is possible that there are some false alarms. It’s not a big problem in this case, however - the “decompression bomb” announcement actually means something like “The file has a very high, maybe even suspicious, compression ratio and the AV is not going to scan the archive content”.

I’d suggest to ignore these files.
But you can change values into avast4.ini file to configure how avast should work with these files.
Click ‘Settings’ in my signature for more info :wink:

3

Hey thanks I can rest easier now!! :slight_smile: