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WinRAR flaw lets hackers run programs when you open RAR archives
(www.bleepingcomputer.com)
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
7zip is FOSS, GPL license. Even if the author stops others can step in. Even if nobody does and it stops being actively developed you'll still be able to extract your archives for the foreseeable future. You can still unpack ARC files from the 80s.
Yep, I run a number of Linux distros. Debian to Arch. They all handle 7z with no fuss.