this post was submitted on 08 Oct 2023
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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).
Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.
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Keeping an eye out for viruses? 😂🤣
Guess you missed the recent exploit with RAR archives where malicious actors can execute code without you even knowing, conveniently not long after Windows integrated RAR support.
Keep an eye out for what? Any RAR from this year forward can carry a hidden embedded virus.
Do you mean the winrar exploit? I don't know of or can find any other exploit related to rar files. If this is what you mean, it only affects winrar which is only on windows and most people use 7zip anyways.
RAR is an archive format. Whether people use RAR or not today is besides the point, it's an archive format. Many people (including myself) still have RAR archives from 20 years ago.
You think I'm just gonna ditch 2 decades of archives because of a security flaw recently discovered? I literally can't, unless I just said fuckit, lemme burn my whole existence down and start over. Cuz someone on the net says they like 7zip better...
Now don't take that the wrong way, I get it. 7zip most likely is more secure. But I can't just jump ship and burn all my previous archives in a bonfire, nor am I about to try converting terabytes of archives from RAR to 7zip.
Also, RAR is totally a thing on Linux, as well as Wine..
Hey, I'd like to help here with some clarification: the vulnerability affected winrar, not the RAR archive format. In fact, it happened when opening zip files, not rar files.
7zip is not only capable of extracting 7z archives, but also zip and rar. Thus using 7zip to open a malicious archive would prevent you from being a victim of said attack, which is what the previous author meant.
So you wouldn't need to change the archive format of your existing files, as this was only about not using winrar to open possibly malicious archives.
https://arstechnica.com/security/2023/08/winrar-0-day-that-uses-poisoned-jpg-and-txt-files-under-exploit-since-april/
https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2023-38831