From: Rez <rividh DOT minusthispart AT earthlink DOT net>
Newsgroups: comp.os.msdos.djgpp
Subject: Re: Why the executables r so big ????
Date: Wed, 15 Sep 1999 14:26:21 -0700
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To: djgpp AT delorie DOT com
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Damian Yerrick wrote:
> 
> DOSArena is slightly over a megabyte unstripped and
> uncompressed. UPX, the Ultimate Packer for Executables,
> strips and compresses your binaries in one step. It can also
> make your Windows 9x programs a lot smaller.

One thing that bothers me about this and DJP or whatever the old
compressor was called, is that so far the standard virus scanners don't
have support for uncompressing them for proper inspection (and it's
annoying to have to uncompress them myself for scanning). An old and
fairly standard way of hiding malicious code was to PKLite the
executable and mung the PKLite signature; now the scanners can cope with
this, but used to be they didn't. No real reason why it couldn't be done
with some other compressor as well. 

~REZ~
(who forbids the work box to kiss files of unknown provenance -- you
never know who else they've kissed :)