So you thought you were safe from all the internet nasties – worms, Trojans, spyware and so on whilst tapping away on your Linux flavoured computer? Well, you might want to think again.
Reports today have surfaced of a new kind of malware that’s specifically targeted at Linux users, which is being hawked on underground cybercrime forums for the very reasonable price of just $2,000.
Called “Hand of Thief”, the so-called banking Trojan is almost unique among malicious code in that it’s geared to attack computers running the world’s most popular open-source operating systems. Even more interesting is that this particular nasty is about as vicious as they get, being able to run on all major browsers and incorporating everything from nasty form-grabbers, not to mention the ability to block access to the websites of security companies and general updates. The virus is also said to have been built with virtual machine detection that makes it even harder for security researchers to pin it down. Even worse, it apparently works on just about every Linux flavour known to man – with Ubuntu, Fedora, Debian and various desktop environments such as KDE and Gnome all said to be vulnerable, according to the Russian makers.
Hand of Thief was discovered by researchers at the RSA security firm. In a blog post, Limor Kessem says that the virus is being offered for sale on a number of popular cybercrime forums. Currently available for $2,000, it’s expected that this price will increase to around $3,000 once new features have been added to it.
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