Can an attacker use a tarbomb to override vital parts of my system?
A tarbomb, also sometimes written as tar bomb, is a tarball whose contents appear to explode into the current directory or some other existing directory containing a large number of items when untarred rather than into a new directory created by the tarball specifically for such contents.
For example can a tar contain a file that explodes to '~/.bashrc' and override the file with a custom script that will execute when an interactive shell is opened.
I read the gnutar wont allow relative paths making this attack futile. Is it enough protection? What about other formats like rar, 7z or zip?
Thanks