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Nasty code-execution bug in WinRAR threatened millions of users for 14 years

Nasty code-execution bug in WinRAR threatened millions of users for 14 years

February 20, 2019

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WinRAR, a Windows file compression program with 500 million users worldwide, recently fixed a 14-year-old vulnerability that made it possible for attackers to execute malicious code when targets opened a booby-trapped file.

The vulnerability was the result of an absolute path traversal flaw that resided in UNACEV2.DLL, a third-party code library that hasn’t been updated since 2005. The traversal made it possible for archive files to extract to a folder of the archive creator’s choosing, rather than the folder chosen by the person using the program. Because the third-party library doesn’t make use of exploit mitigations such as address space layout randomization, there was little preventing exploits.

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