Antivirus provider Kaspersky uncovers a sophisticated piece of ‘StripedFly’ malware camouflaged as a cryptocurrency miner that’s been targeting PCs for more than five years.

  • sir_reginald@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    110
    arrow-down
    17
    ·
    edit-2
    1 year ago

    this makes use of an old windows specific vulnerability. Linux is only mentioned on the title, not again in the whole article. clickbait.

    edit: downvote me if you want, but the original article didn’t say a thing about Linux.

      • Buffalox@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        49
        arrow-down
        3
        ·
        1 year ago

        That’s from a completely different article.

        And it doesn’t say how this is achieved without already having root privilegies. I’m not sure I believe this can in fact infect a Linux system, except if it’s already heavily compromised, for instance by a user logging in as root as default.

        • LostXOR@kbin.social
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          10
          arrow-down
          1
          ·
          1 year ago

          .bashrc and .profile can be modified without root, as can autostarting .desktop files. I think systemd and anything in /etc require root though.
          Also a lot of users set sudo to not require a password (I am guilty of this) which makes privilege escalation easy.

        • abhibeckert@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          3
          ·
          edit-2
          1 year ago

          It is a different article, but both articles are simply reporting research by Kaspersky, and Kaspersky goes into quite a bit of depth covering the Linux side of the threat, which is very real. PCMag focuses mostly on the windows side, because it’s a windows focused site.

          This isn’t a single exploit, this is a “framework” that can take advantage of multiple exploits and will use which ever one it can find. You don’t need to be “heavily compromised” you just need to be vulnerable to one of the compromises. And you definitely don’t need root either.

          • Buffalox@lemmy.world
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            5
            ·
            edit-2
            1 year ago

            Not possible AFAIK, I don’t use anything Microsoft, but AFAIK SMB1 shares on Linux are through Samba, and you can’t just enable write permissions without root. So as I stated before, the Linux system needs to be already compromised.

        • Salamendacious@lemmy.worldOP
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          5
          arrow-down
          5
          ·
          1 year ago

          I’m not a Linux user (except for Chromebook and Android) so honestly the Linux section wasn’t personally important to me. Another commentor wanted more information on the Linux side so I looked briefly if I could find an article that might be helpful. Linux terminology is all Greek to me so I honestly wouldn’t know. I thought the article was interesting and I thought other people might find it interesting. The Linux part didn’t even enter into my mind.

    • Buffalox@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      21
      arrow-down
      2
      ·
      edit-2
      1 year ago

      It does include this:

      quietly spread across a victim’s network, including to Linux machines.

      But that’s a completely ridiculous lack of detail of any actual vulnerability. Smells like bullshit.
      The quote from OP is from a different article.

      • Salamendacious@lemmy.worldOP
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        12
        arrow-down
        2
        ·
        edit-2
        1 year ago

        I wasn’t intentionally trying to imply that it came from the article. That’s why I posted the naked link. I wasn’t really thinking about the Linux component when I posted the article.

        • Buffalox@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          11
          ·
          1 year ago

          That’s why I posted the naked link.

          Which is perfectly fine and dandy. I think some people just had a knee jerk reaction, based on a misunderstanding of context.

    • hornedfiend@sopuli.xyz
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      17
      ·
      1 year ago

      It does though: “On Linux, the malware assumes the name ‘sd-pam’. It achieves persistence using systemd services, an autostarting .desktop file, or by modifying various profile and startup files, such as  /etc/rc*, profile, bashrc, or inittab files.”

      So technically useless . it can’t do shit.

  • Buffalox@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    40
    arrow-down
    5
    ·
    edit-2
    1 year ago

    According to Kaspersky, StripedFly uses its own custom EternalBlue attack to infiltrate unpatched Windows systems and quietly spread across a victim’s network, including to Linux machines.

    Yeah I call bullshit on that. Absolutely zero description of any vulnerability.

      • girsaysdoom@sh.itjust.works
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        19
        ·
        edit-2
        1 year ago

        From what it’s describing, it sounds like it would only impact Linux computers that allow SMB1 access, such as domain-joined systems with samba access allowed. It sounds like this would target mainly enterprise Linux deployments but home Linux setups should be fine for the most part.

        • Eyron@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          11
          ·
          1 year ago

          They describe an SSH infector, as well as a credentials scanner. To me, that sounds like it started like from exploited/infected Windows computers with SSH access, and then continued from there.

          With how many unencrypted SSH keys there are, how most hosts keep a list of the servers they SSH into, and how they can probably bypass some firewall protections once they’re inside the network: not a bad idea.

          • Salamendacious@lemmy.worldOP
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            6
            ·
            1 year ago

            I think the original article talked about “spreading” to Linux machines so that generally tracks with what you’re saying that it starts on a Windows machine that itself has access to a Linux machine.

          • Salamendacious@lemmy.worldOP
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            5
            ·
            1 year ago

            My job still had Windows 95 machines running just a couple years ago. Could there still be Samba1 running out there or does Linux update differently?

            • lemmyvore@feddit.nl
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              9
              arrow-down
              1
              ·
              1 year ago

              Of course there is. Unfortunately the average Linux self-hoster doesn’t have much of a clue and probably runs vulnerable Samba (even if it’s not S1). Of course it doesn’t help that Samba seems to get a vulnerability about once a week. It’s one of the most targeted pieces of network software you could run.

              • Salamendacious@lemmy.worldOP
                link
                fedilink
                English
                arrow-up
                3
                ·
                1 year ago

                I know that Linux is a host of OSs but generally speaking is it up to the user to keep their software up to date or is there some kind of automatic updating process?

                • lemmyvore@feddit.nl
                  link
                  fedilink
                  English
                  arrow-up
                  3
                  arrow-down
                  1
                  ·
                  1 year ago

                  There are automated updates, especially for security issues, but since Linux users feel they are power users and seldom have to deal with security issues, they often disable updates and do them manually. If and when they remember. And for self-hosted software it’s worst because often they don’t even consider running updates.

            • Toes♀@ani.social
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              4
              ·
              1 year ago

              Yeah windows 2000 assembly robots, too expensive to replace and too critical to not keep alive.

              • Salamendacious@lemmy.worldOP
                link
                fedilink
                English
                arrow-up
                10
                ·
                1 year ago

                Those machines were controlling a conveyor belt system and weren’t online. I was told the software they were running wasn’t available for other OSs. They were locked in a cabinet. That entire conveyor system is now gone so those machines are probably gone too.

      • Buffalox@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        4
        arrow-down
        3
        ·
        edit-2
        1 year ago

        From the part you quoted earlier, it’s absolutely useless, and not worth reading.

    • Socsa@sh.itjust.works
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      7
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      edit-2
      1 year ago

      I too am struggling to find the actual Linux vuln. It sounds like it steals ssh keys, so maybe just poorly configured hosts?

      • Buffalox@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        2
        arrow-down
        2
        ·
        1 year ago

        You should always have a file your home folder named SSH keys and Root password. /s
        That’s not just poor configuration, that’s complete disregard for security.

    • CriticalMiss@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      12
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      1 year ago

      I won’t argue about the legitimacy of crypto simply because I don’t care enough but you have to be fucking stupid to run non-FOSS crypto miners and instead go with something proprietary like this and then be surprised it fucks up your shit.

          • HaggierRapscallier@feddit.nl
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            2
            ·
            1 year ago

            FLOSS & FOSS

            To emphasize that “free software” refers to freedom and not to price, we sometimes write or say “free (libre) software,” adding the French or Spanish word that means free in the sense of freedom. In some contexts, it works to use just “libre software.”

            From https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/floss-and-foss.en.html

            They also say:

            We in the free software movement don’t use either of these terms, because we don’t want to be neutral on the political question. We stand for freedom, and we show it every time—by saying “free” and “libre”—or “free (libre).”