this post was submitted on 29 Oct 2023
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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.

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[–] [email protected] 93 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (3 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 35 points 1 year ago (1 children)

https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/stripedfly-malware-framework-infects-1-million-windows-linux-hosts/

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.

[–] [email protected] 46 points 1 year ago (4 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 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.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 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.

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

Maybe if root is shared via SMB1 and is rw

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

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.

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[–] [email protected] 19 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 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.

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[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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.

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

It can pwn poorly configured dev systems.

[–] [email protected] 88 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Malware disguised as malware? Interesting

[–] [email protected] 22 points 1 year ago

It's always the one you least suspect, like disguising yourself as an impersonation of yourself.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 1 year ago (1 children)

It's just malware all the way down

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago (1 children)

A disc of malware resting on top of 4 malware elephants, riding a giant malware turtle

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

Morris balanced on Michelangelo standing on the shoulders of ILOVEYOU holding stuxnet giving HeartBleed

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago

It's like inception

[–] [email protected] 35 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (3 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 year ago (3 children)

This is a different article but you should find at least some more information on how the malware works with Linux here:

https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/stripedfly-malware-framework-infects-1-million-windows-linux-hosts/

I'm not a Linux user so I honestly don't know if that article is incredibly helpful or not.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (3 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 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.

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

I don't know why op did not want to share the original report, but it is linked in the article: https://securelist.com/stripedfly-perennially-flying-under-the-radar/110903/

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

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

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Why would the article not share the name of the miner in question?

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