Malware under Linux is still on the rise with 35% increase

Malware infections on Linux are increasing at an ever-increasing rate. An increase of around 35 percent was recorded here last year. It is becoming more and more interesting for criminals to take control of devices running on the free operating system. By far the most attacks are by no means aimed at servers or even PCs that are operated with Linux. The focus is clearly on so-called IoT devices, i.e. the numerous electronic systems with network connections that carry out special tasks. This ranges from heating thermostats and televisions to systems for plant control in industry. Although these targets usually only offer very limited abilities, the attacks are still worthwhile.

Because usually the perpetrators have an easy time here, because such systems only rarely receive updates and once found weak points can be used for a long time. In addition, infections are not detected as quickly either – as long as the devices in question are doing what is expected of them, they are virtually ignored. These are good prerequisites for building large botnets from them, which are then capable of great performance due to the mass. They are then used to launch large DDoS attacks, send spam or even sharpen cryptocurrencies.

Old acquaintance

The top three classes of malware targeting Linux systems remain XorDDoS, Mirai and Mozi, according to a report by the magazine bleeding computer. These are botnet Trojans that have been known for a long time. These three alone are responsible for 22 percent of all Linux infections. Mozi infections alone have increased tenfold in the last year. The security community is also not assuming that things will get any better this year. The first data available for this year also shows that a trend is continuing in which malware programmers are increasingly targeting multiple platforms. Once the malicious code is running on several platforms in parallel, a botnet infrastructure can cope much better with countermeasures such as patches.