Home Malware Programs Potentially Unwanted Programs (PUPs) Z-Zip

Z-Zip

Posted: October 14, 2015

Threat Metric

Threat Level: 1/10
Infected PCs: 827
First Seen: September 27, 2015
Last Seen: July 11, 2023
OS(es) Affected: Windows

At some point, PC users may come to a moment when they need to compress their files to save some disk space. There are countless software that can help you with this task, but certainly Z-Zip is not one of them. It is a Potentially Unwanted Program (PUP) that may turn out to be inefficient and annoying. This questionable software works very similarly to 7-Zip Packages, which is also a highly unreliable data compression tool. The developer of Z-Zip, a company named ElementSoft, promotes it as an application with an easy-to-use interface that should help you reduce the size of over 16 different file formats. What is more, this firm claims that the operating speed of their product is faster by more than 40% than the speed of competitive programs. The experts cannot confirm that these statements correspond to the actual functionality of Z-Zip. In fact, there are serious reasons to assume these features are there only to promote its installation. The primary reason for the existence of this PUP seems to be the creation of online ads that the user may detect in Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, and Internet Explorer soon after Z-Zip enters. These commercial materials are a handy mean for making profits: whenever you reach a sponsored platform, ElementSoft will receive referral commissions from the owners of the affiliate domains. The ads that you will most likely encounter are pop-ups, pop-unders, blinking animations and screen-wide interstitial ads. The issues that these new marketing elements may create are several. They may irritate you with their intrusiveness or hinder the performance of web clients. The consequences may be even more serious if the ads lead you to compromised sites. To keep your PC safe and reliable, you need to remove this PUP as soon as possible.

Technical Details

Registry Modifications

The following newly produced Registry Values are:

HKEY..\..\..\..{RegistryKeys}SOFTWARE\Classes\Z-Zip.zipSOFTWARE\Microsoft\Tracing\Z-Zip_RASAPI32SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Tracing\Z-Zip_RASMANCSSOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\Tracing\Z-Zip_RASAPI32SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\Tracing\Z-Zip_RASMANCSSOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Z-ZipSOFTWARE\Z-Zip

Additional Information

The following directories were created:
%PROGRAMFILES%\Z-Zip%PROGRAMFILES(x86)%\Z-Zip
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