Last month the developers behind WinRAR finally issued a patch that fixed a serious security flaw in the app. The catch was that this was a bug that had been around for 19 years, meaning that the flaw had many years to be exploited. Now according to a report from McAfee (via Engadget), it looks like those fears have indeed come true.
The report is claiming that opportunistic hackers are taking advantage of the flaw which they are using to distribute malware. The good news is that if you’ve already patched the software to the latest version, you should be safe, but for those who are unaware of the patch or have yet to update their software, then you are at risk, especially if you were to download and extract WinRAR files from suspicious websites or sources.
According to McAfee, there are quite a number of exploits out there at the moment. “In the first week since the vulnerability was disclosed, McAfee has identified over 100 unique exploits and counting, with most of the initial targets residing in the United States at the time of writing.” Like we said, this only affects users who have yet to update their version of WinRAR, so if you haven’t done that yet, head on over to their website to get your hands on the latest version.