[Tomay]

Quote:

(Oh, they'll probably design options to scan only for newer virus, but... watch, that's when the 'old classics' will start reappearing as well to counter for it. Sound crazy? Hey, it's not... there are folks out there that archive virus' believe it or not...)

In my case a plain email database (not compressed) takes ages and a large amount of hdd space to scan. I don't think just scanning for newer viruses vould speed up things alot, cos decompression is what takes up most of the time and cpu.

My friend used to collect viruses back in the old days of 15xx, but there are sites and ftp servers that host zip files of viruses .

And even if there were no such sites I have accidentally burned a few viruses onto a cd-rom myself.

[tylau]

Try to scan some .cab files, the time taken will grow improportionately; there must be some glitches on scanning such files.

Let alone some archives inside archives

[tylau]

In fact, I have got some tryout on such an issue, I created some blank data files and make them into an archive, f you are interested you can check it our here: http://home.pacific.net.hk/~nv330/10GB.zip MD5: A83B4DEE998735A1F9A5767D328610CF

BUT, be warned that it could cause your system to scan for some 15minutes for virus on downloading, this is just an illustration and I certainly not responsible for any lost incurred on your side should you give it a try, NOR I would be held for any onward misuse of such a loophole!. This is just to demostrate how easy it could create gigantic files into tiny size archive and potentially bring any system down to its knees.

BE WARNED.