What is CAB? CAB, short name for Cabinet, is used as the file extension for Windows Cabinet files. .CAB files are binary files that can be opened by Windows Cabinet software. See the sample .CAB file included below.

File Extension: .CAB

MIME Type: application/vnd.ms-cab-compressed

File Content: Windows Cabinet

.CAB files are Windows Cabinet files saved as binary files. Here are the first 128 bytes of a sample .CAB file, au.cab, dumped in HEX values:

4d 53 43 46 00 00 00 00 3e a9 08 00 00 00 00 00 MSCF............
44 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 03 01 01 00 06 00 04 00 D...............
00 00 00 00 14 00 00 00 00 00 10 00 3e a9 08 00 ................
70 15 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 d7 00 00 00 p...............
26 00 01 00 90 bf 03 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 31 40 ..............1.
03 59 20 00 61 75 63 68 65 63 6b 00 88 8b 03 00 .Y..aucheck.....
90 bf 03 00 00 00 31 40 01 59 20 00 6a 61 75 72 ......1..Y..jaur
65 67 00 88 b7 07 00 18 4b 07 00 00 00 31 40 fd eg......K....1..

.CAB files are also archive files that can be opened by 7-Zip. Here is the list of contents in the sample .CAB file, au.cab:

       245,648 aucheck
       232,328 jaureg
       505,736 jucheck
       252,296 jusched
         1,411 task.xml
         1,416 task64.xml

.CAB Windows Cabinet file sample: Click sample.cab to download.

.CAB Windows Cabinet files can be created and modified by these software:

• 7-Zip - Opens and extracts .CAB Windows Cabinet files.
• WinRAR - Opens and extracts .CAB Windows Cabinet files.