this post was submitted on 11 Dec 2023
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Stealthy Linux rootkit found in the wild after going undetected for 2 years::Krasue infects telecom firms in Thailand using techniques for staying under the radar.

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[–] [email protected] 90 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

Zero useful info: what is the attack vector / vulnerability exploited? Without that info, this is useless

[–] [email protected] 60 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)
[–] [email protected] 29 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The only thing I know runs that kernel version is my Wii because it needs an old kernel for ppc32 support

[–] [email protected] 41 points 1 year ago

Be careful, one day you'll boot it up only to find some hacker have set new and impossible to beat highscores.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Now that is helpful information - current distros being on 6.x and whatnot... Thanks!

[–] [email protected] 30 points 1 year ago (1 children)

From the article:

The researchers have so far been unable to determine precisely how Krasue gets installed.

So no one knows yet. But I feel that the existence of malware in the wild is newsworthy, even if we don't know how it got there. Regardless, you and I probably don't have to worry about it unless you're a Thai telecom.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

And unless we run a 3.x kernel as another commentor pointed out...

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Hpw to combat stuff like this?

[–] [email protected] 25 points 1 year ago (1 children)

SELinux, grsecurity, containers, keep your system updated and don't run random untrustworthy code.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 year ago (2 children)

random untrustworthy code.

Honestly, is there much code in the world which doesn't meet this description? How do you propose we decide what is trustworthy? Every time I update my packages I'm getting possibly millions of new lines of code that I can't possibly personally vet

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Keyword "Random". The code for the packages that shipped for your os and for your user installed utilities are generally 'trusted' code since you sought out the install. It's not bulletproof, but it's a good start vs running any package that happens to land in your downloads folder.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Well, it's not always so cut and dried. For example, do I need to research the maker of an app that looks useful? I don't think most people on lemmy are the types to literally not care at all where software comes from, so I'm just trying to understand better how we can properly draw that line

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

Those packages are vetted by multiple maintainers from different places, they'd all have to be in on it.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago

This is the best summary I could come up with:


Stealthy and multifunctional Linux malware that has been infecting telecommunications companies went largely unnoticed for two years until being documented for the first time by researchers on Thursday.

Researchers from security firm Group-IB have named the remote access trojan “Krasue,” after a nocturnal spirit depicted in Southeast Asian folklore “floating in mid-air, with no torso, just her intestines hanging from below her chin.” The researchers chose the name because evidence to date shows it almost exclusively targets victims in Thailand and “poses a severe risk to critical systems and sensitive data given that it is able to grant attackers remote access to the targeted network.

It then proceeds to hook the syscall, network-related functions, and file listing operations, thereby obscuring its activities and evading detection.

Rootkits are a type of malware that hides directories, files, processes, and other evidence of its presence to the operating system it’s installed on.

By hooking legitimate Linux processes, the malware is able to suspend them at select points and interject functions that conceal its presence.

Intercepting the kill() syscall also allows the trojan to survive Linux commands attempting to abort the program and shut it down.


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