As reported by the Trend Micro, a cybersecurity company based in Japan, a new type of malware has been detected which is targeting Linux users.
With evergrowing demand for crypto mining, hackers are finding the new and more sophisticated way to mine the cryptocurrency in an illegal way. Now this malicious malware is stealing CPU power by implementing the rootkit component. Interestingly, the cyber company claims this software is capable of self-updating and comprising the system.
Indeed, the noticeable factor here is that the malware has properties of hiding and self-upgrading itself. This pose as a great challenge for antivirus to detect this activity.
However, the further analysis revealed that rootkit fails to hide the increased CPU usage and the presence of a running crypto-mining malware. Also, it has improved by updates, which can completely repurpose the existing code or tools by editing a few “lines of code”.
Mode of attack
As mentioned earlier, this malware is specifically targeting Linux based PC’s and gets injected into the system through third-party or compromised plugins. Once installed, the plugin reportedly gets admin rights, with malware able to be run with privileges granted to an application.
Looking at the statistics of different OS users, the estimated market share of Linux on personal computers amounted to around 1.8 percent in 2016. The share of Microsoft Windows systems in 2016 was around 89.7, while Mac OS served around 8.5 percent of users.
This is not the first instance when Trend Micro warned about such vulnerability. Back in September, another case of Linux-targeting crypto malware that used the same entry point was reported.
Also recently we saw that the entire Candian University network had to be shutdown due to cryptojacking attack. Not to forget the incident, wherein a group of South-Korean hackers allegedly made a cryptojacking attack that infected more than 6,000 computers with malicious crypto-mining malware.
With the rampant malicious activities like these, it becomes quintessential to educate every user and safeguard themselves from such vulnerabilities.
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