WinRAR zero-day exploited since April to hack trading accounts

1 yr. ago

22 comments

No idea why folks still use stuff like this when there are open source alternatives like 7zip and Nana Zip.
- I use WinRAR (as a switch from 7-Zip) because it works well enough, is fast and stable and has good compression. For me, switching to another Windows archiver would have no merit.
  
  Is security not a merit?
  
  Is WinRAR really faster, more stable, and has better compression than 7-Zip? I haven't used WinRAR in probably over a decade at this point.
In a report released today, researchers from Group-IB said they discovered the WinRAR zero-day being used to target cryptocurrency and stock trading forums, where the hackers pretended to be other enthusiasts sharing their trading strategies.

These forum posts contained links to specially crafted WinRAR ZIP or RAR archives that pretended to include the shared trading strategy, consisting of PDFs, text files, and images.

I see an "invest in bitcoin" and I immediately think caveat emptor.
Thank heavens for Linux and 7zip.
- Gee, I wonder whether it's possible to have zero-day exploits on Linux and 7-Zip.
  
  It is, but Linux has such a low desktop usage share that it wouldn't really be considered as a target for hackers. I believe that hackers really only target Linux servers, not desktops.
  
  Barely anyone uses Linux, and among those who do, distros vary wildly enough between each other to the point of breaking viruses that it's just not worth the effort to make viruses for them compared to Windows or Mac

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