install malware on devices using outdated versions of the application. The application in question is WinRAR, a file compression tool that has become essential on Windows PCs due to its compression effectiveness and utility.
As stated in a message from the WinRAR development team, all WinRAR users are recommended to update to version 7.13, which resolves a “traversal vulnerability” potentially allowing the app, along with Windows and Unix versions of RAR, UnRAR, and portable UnRAR, to be deceived into utilizing a path “defined in a specially crafted archive, rather than the user-specified path.” In essence, it could permit malicious actors to initiate a path that causes your computer to download and extract malware instead of the intended compressed file you wish to unpack.