CrowdStrike has observed that malware targeting Linux-based systems increased by 35% in 2021. XorDDoS, Mirai and Mozi were the most common malware families.
PwnKit: Local Privilege Escalation Vulnerability Discovered in polkit’s pkexec (CVE-2021-4034)
The Qualys Research Team has discovered a memory corruption vulnerability in polkit's pkexec, a SUID-root program that is installed by default on every major…
Nobody would even suspect the mining malware was merely a mask, masquerading behind an intricate modular framework that supports both Linux and Windows. The amount of effort that went into creating the framework is truly remarkable, and its disclosure was quite astonishing.
[CVE-2023-42752] integer overflow in Linux kernel leading to exploitable memory access
I recently found an integer overflow in the Linux kernel, which leads to the kernel allocating skb_shared_info in the userspace, which is exploitable in systems without SMAP protection since skb_shared_info contains references to function pointers.
Reptile is an open-source kernel module rootkit that targets Linux systems and is publicly available on GitHub. [1] Rootkits are malware that possess the capability to conceal themselves or other malware. They primarily target files, processes, and network communications for their concealment. Reptile’s concealment capabilities include not only its own kernel module but also files, directories, file contents, processes, and network traffic. Unlike other rootkit malware that typically only provide concealment capabilities, Reptile goes a step further by offering a reverse...
Almost 40% of Ubuntu users vulnerable to new privilege elevation flaws
Two Linux vulnerabilities introduced recently into the Ubuntu kernel create the potential for unprivileged local users to gain elevated privileges on a massive number of devices.
AVrecon malware infects 70,000 Linux routers to build botnet
Since at least May 2021, stealthy Linux malware called AVrecon was used to infect over 70,000 Linux-based small office/home office (SOHO) routers and add them to a botnet designed to steal bandwidth and provide a hidden residential proxy service.
The ASEC analysis team recently discovered that a Linux malware developed with Shc has been installing a CoinMiner. It is presumed that after successful authentication through a dictionary attack on inadequately managed Linux SSH servers, various malware were installed on the target system. Among those installed were the Shc downloader, XMRig CoinMiner installed through the former, and DDoS IRC Bot, developed with Perl.
Linux Threat Hunting: 'Syslogk' a kernel rootkit found under development in the wild
Introduction Rootkits are dangerous pieces of malware. Once in place, they are usually really hard to detect. Their code is typically more challenging to write than other malware, so developers resort to code reuse from open source projects. As rootkits are very interesting to analyze, we are always looking out for these kinds of samples […]
Malicious PyPI package opens backdoors on Windows, Linux, and Macs
Yet another malicious Python package has been spotted in the PyPI registry performing supply chain attacks to drop Cobalt Strike beacons and backdoors on Windows, Linux, and macOS systems.
The Dirty Pipe Vulnerability — The Dirty Pipe Vulnerability documentation
This is the story of CVE-2022-0847, a vulnerability in the Linux kernel since 5.8 which allows overwriting data in arbitrary read-only files. This leads to privilege escalation because unprivileged processes can inject code into root processes. It is similar to CVE-2016-5195 “Dirty Cow” but is easier to exploit. The vulnerability was fixed in Linux 5.16.11, 5.15.25 and 5.10.102.
CrowdStrike has observed that malware targeting Linux-based systems increased by 35% in 2021. XorDDoS, Mirai and Mozi were the most common malware families.
PwnKit: Local Privilege Escalation Vulnerability Discovered in polkit’s pkexec (CVE-2021-4034)
The Qualys Research Team has discovered a memory corruption vulnerability in polkit's pkexec, a SUID-root program that is installed by default on every major…
GobRAT malware written in Go language targeting Linux routers
JPCERT/CC has confirmed attacks that infected routers in Japan with malware around February 2023. This blog article explains the details of the attack confirmed by JPCERT/CC and GobRAT malware, which was used in the attack. ### Attack flow up to...
oss-sec: [CVE-2023-32233] Linux kernel use-after-free in Netfilter nf_tables when processing batch requests can be abused to perform arbitrary reads and writes in kernel memory
An issue has been discovered in the Linux kernel that can be abused by unprivileged local users to escalate privileges. The issue is about Netfilter nf_tables accepting some invalid updates to its configuration.
RTM Locker Ransomware as a Service (RaaS) Now on Linux - Uptycs
Uptycs threat research team discovered a new ransomware Linux binary attributed to the RTM group Locker, a known Ransomware-as-a-Service (RaaS) provider.
Here's an article from a French anarchist describing how his (encrypted) laptop was seized after he was arrested, and material from the encrypted partition has since been entered as evidence against him. His encryption password was supposedly greater than 20 characters and included a mixture of cases, numbers, and punctuation, so in the absence of any sort of opsec failures this implies that even relatively complex passwords can now be brute forced, and we should be transitioning to even more secure passphrases. Or does it? Let's go into what LUKS is doing in the first place. The actual data is typically encrypted with AES, an extremely popular and well-tested encryption algorithm. AES has no known major weaknesses and is not considered to be practically brute-forceable - at least, assuming you have a random key. Unfortunately it's not really practical to ask a user to type in 128 bits of binary every time they want to unlock their drive, so another approach has to be taken.
The ASEC analysis team recently discovered that a Linux malware developed with Shc has been installing a CoinMiner. It is presumed that after successful authentication through a dictionary attack on inadequately managed Linux SSH servers, various malware were installed on the target system. Among those installed were the Shc downloader, XMRig CoinMiner installed through the former, and DDoS IRC Bot, developed with Perl.
Compromised PyTorch-nightly dependency chain between December 25th and December 30th, 2022.
If you installed PyTorch-nightly on Linux via pip between December 25, 2022 and December 30, 2022, please uninstall it and torchtriton immediately, and use the latest nightly binaries (newer than Dec 30th 2022). $ pip3 uninstall -y torch torchvision torchaudio torchtriton $ pip3 cache purge PyTorch-nightly Linux packages installed via pip during that time installed a dependency, torchtriton, which was compromised on the Python Package Index (PyPI) code repository and ran a malicious binary. This is what is known as a supply chain attack and directly affects dependencies for packages that are hosted on public package indices.
Black Lotus Labs, the threat intelligence arm of Lumen Technologies, recently uncovered a multifunctional Go-based malware developed for Windows and Linux
AT&T Alien Labs has discovered a new malware targeting endpoints and IoT devices that are running Linux operating systems. Shikitega is delivered in a multistage infection chain where each module responds to a part of the payload and downloads and executes the next one. An attacker can gain full control of the system, in addition to the cryptocurrency miner that will be executed and set to persist.
Netfilter is a framework in the Linux kernel for implementing various networking-related tasks with user-defined handlers. Netfilter provides various functions for packet filtering, network address translation and port translation, and packet logging. Netfilter represents a set of hooks that allow other kernel modules to register callback functions in the kernel’s networking stack.
Vulnerability in Linux containers – investigation and mitigation
Operating system access controls, that constrain which programs can open which files, have existed for almost as long as computers themselves. Access controls are still widely used and are more flexible and efficient when compared to cryptographically protecting files. Despite the long history, ther
In our previous article Yet another bug into Netfilter, I presented a vulnerability found within the netfilter subsystem of the Linux kernel. During my investigation, I found a weird comparison that does not fully protect a copy within a buffer. It led to a heap buffer overflow that was exploited to obtain root privileges on Ubuntu 22.04.
The US military wants to understand the most important software on Earth
Open-source code runs on every computer on the planet—and keeps America’s critical infrastructure going. DARPA is worried about how well it can be trusted
Linux Threat Hunting: 'Syslogk' a kernel rootkit found under development in the wild
Introduction Rootkits are dangerous pieces of malware. Once in place, they are usually really hard to detect. Their code is typically more challenging to write than other malware, so developers resort to code reuse from open source projects. As rootkits are very interesting to analyze, we are always looking out for these kinds of samples […]