Who Got Hacked This Week? December 14 Edition

21 New Linux Malware Families Discovered

Over the past decade, the number of malware families targeting Linux has grown, but the total number of threats is still orders of magnitude under the malware numbers reported attacking Windows systems.

This smaller number of threats has resulted in cyber-security firms paying much less attention to the Linux malware ecosystem than they normally do to its Windows counterpart.

So it is to no surprise that some Linux malware families have only now been discovered after operating unseen for more than four years.

In a report published yesterday by cyber-security firm ESET, the company details 21 “new” Linux malware families. All operate in the same manner, as trojanized versions of the OpenSSH client.