Decompression Bomb

Hello,

My avast scan shows that there is a decompression bomb in my computer - should I be worried about this?
I have tried deleting the file (hoping that it would be safe to do so), but it seems impossible to press the apply button for this action.

Any advice please? I am not very familiar with computers, and I am a bit concerned, as my disk space seems to have filled up quite a bit in a short time. Any help would be much appreciated! Thank you.

The name really is the most dangerous thing about this and I wish they would change it or simply not report it, a real PITA.

These highly compressed files are generally ‘archive’ files which are inert, don’t present an immediate risk until they are unpacked. If you happen to select ‘All packers’ in your on-demand scans then you are more likely to come across this type of thing. Personally it is a waste of time scanning ‘all packers’ and that is why it isn’t enabled by default.

This used to be a tactic long ago to swamp the system, but with modern systems not the issue it was.

Thank you very much for explaining this.

So my understanding is that this is no problem at all, and it doesn’t take up disk space unless I choose to ‘unpack’ it? So I shouldn’t be worried that I can’t delete it?

Thank you very much for your help, it puts my mind to rest!

You’re welcome.

It isn’t that you shouldn’t worry that you can’t delete it, but that you shouldn’t delete it as that notice isn’t an indication that it is either infected or suspect, just that it can’t or won’t be scanned.

What you should not from my last post is the scanning of archives:

generally 'archive' files which are inert, don't present an immediate risk until they are unpacked.

By default avast doesn’t scan archive files (for the above reason), only the boot-time scan scans archives by default, so outside of the boot-time scan leave the avast defaults on not scanning archives.

Thank you for your help!

No problem, glad I could help.