Definition of ‘overkill’ – using 130 MB executable to hide 24 kB malware, (Fri, Aug 14th)
One of our readers, Lukas, shared an unusual malicious executable with us earlier this week â one that was 130 MB in size. Making executables extremely large is not an uncommon technique among malware authors[1], as it allows them to easily avoid detection by most AV solutions, since the size of files which AVs will check is usually fairly low (tens of megabytes at most). In order to increase the size of their creations, malware authors commonly embed images in the executables or include large chunks of âempty spaceâ (i.e. null bytes) in them.