WinRAR path traversal flaw still exploited by numerous hackers

Multiple threat actors, both state-sponsored and financially motivated, are exploiting the CVE-2025-8088 high-severity vulnerability in WinRAR for initial access and to deliver various malicious payloads.

The security issue is a path traversal flaw that leverages Alternate Data Streams (ADS) to write malicious files to arbitrary locations. Attackers have exploited this in the past to plant malware in the Windows Startup folder, for persistence across reboots.