Winrar 14-Year-Old Exploit Puts Crypto Wallet at Risk


According to a user on Bitcoin Reddit, there is a Winrar exploit spreading that allows hackers to steal your cryptocurrencies if they are stored on the infected computers. 

The user writes:

“Here is how it works. You open the wrong rar file with an unpatched version of winrar and a payload is dropped in to your windows startup folder. Which means on reboot you will load up an exe. And nobody ever updates their winrar. […]  So there are probably at least a 100 million computers with an unpatched version of winrar on it.”

You can fix it by patching Winrar to the latest version from the official source. Upgrading immediately to the new 5.70 version is highly recommended. The user goes on to add that storing your cryptocurrencies on any terminal connected to the internet is not the most secure method. This incident highlights a consistent problem with crypto security: we are only as secure as the environments we operate in.

Satoshi Nakamoto's vision of a decentralized currency is one where you control your own funds. A line of text was included with the Genesis block, symbolizing Bitcoin to be an alternative to the incumbent banking system. 

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To be a part of that decentralized vision, you would need to be able to store your own cryptocurrencies securely. The most recommended and cost-effective way at the moment is to get a hardware wallet (for day-to-day transactions) paired with Stronghodl for storing the BIP39 recovery seed. For more pragmatic hodlers, storing your hex private key in Stronghodl (although much less secure) beats carrying around a piece of paper. 

Featured image credit to Shutterstock

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