Will Windows viruses infect RAR or ZIP files?

Question

I heard from some techie person that .rar and .zip files never get infected by viruses.

Is this true? If yes, then why such behavior?

Solution 1

What they probably meant to say was that if a virus is in an archive, it cannot do any damage. This is because it is not running, and can't run, until it is extracted. This security benefit goes away if a user unzips it.

It is no more safe in reality though, than any other file on your computer that you are not clicking on.

EDIT: If it was automatically safe, that would be the best anti-virus program in the world.

Solution 2

Typical viruses usually append themselves to executable files, so that they themselves get loaded into memory. They will then spread to other executable file to increase their chance of getting loaded and spread.

Archives (zip, rar, etc) dont get infected as they arent executed. However, archives are an extremely common way to spread infected executables.

There may be viruses that specifically target archives, such as zip and rar. I dont think your "techie person" can say that so matter of factly. More than likely, he doesnt know what he is talking about, or just said that to give you an answer.

Comments

[Moab]

Do you mean Before or After the zip/rar archive is created?

[Ramhound]

I could write code to add a file to any .zip file I wanted without user intervention. This answer lacks a great deal of technical knowlege, is subjective, and doesn't address the author's question.