Decompression Bombs

From random discussions I've had with people over the last few months, it seems to me that not too many people really know about a particularly nasty and cunning form of computer attack: the decompression bomb.First, think about compressing data. Most of us have used an application like WinZip or some similar tool to make our files smaller, albeit less accessible temporarily. These programs take advantage of how signal to noise ratios work in most representations of data; that is, the way we try to represent information is almost always ineffecient. There are usually techniques available for removing the parts that aren't so important, and letting important (or common) information take less space.For example, the algorithm behind the ZIP programs is largely based on LZW compression: a technique that collapses common substrings down into single codes. Obviously, I've completely glossed over how it works, but if you want to know the information is out there (any computing scientist ...

20:34:00 January 12, 2006, Thursday (PST) Source: Solitude

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