In their first article on the XZ backdoor, Kaspersky researchers analyzed its code from initial infection to the function hooking it performs. As they mentioned then, its initial goal was to successfully hook one of the functions related to RSA key manipulation.
In this article, the research team will focus on the backdoor’s behaviour inside OpenSSH, specifically OpenSSH portable version 9.7p1 – the most recent version at this time. To better understand what’s going on, they recommend you to read Baeldung’s article about SSH authentication methods and JFrog’s article about privilege separation in SSH.
Read more…
Source: Kaspersky
Related:
- Lampion Is Back With ClickFix Lures
May 6, 2025
Unit 42 researchers recently uncovered a highly focused malicious campaign targeting dozens of Portuguese organizations, particularly in the government, finance and transportation sectors. This campaign was orchestrated by the threat actors behind Lampion malware, an infostealer that focuses on sensitive banking information. This malware family has been active since at least 2019. During our investigation, we ...
- Gremlin Stealer: New Stealer on Sale in Underground Forum
April 29, 2025
Unit 42 researchers have identified new information-stealing malware written in C#, called Gremlin Stealer. This stealer’s authors have actively advertised it on a Telegram group since mid-March 2025. This information-stealing malware exfiltrates data from its victims and uploads this information to its web server for publication. It can capture data from browsers, the clipboard and the ...
- Outlaw cybergang attacking targets worldwide
April 29, 2025
In a recent incident response case in Brazil, we dealt with a relatively simple, yet very effective threat focused on Linux environments. Outlaw (also known as “Dota”) is a Perl-based crypto mining botnet that typically takes advantage of weak or default SSH credentials for its operations. Previous research described Outlaw samples obtained from honeypots. In this ...
- Triada strikes back
April 25, 2025
Older versions of Android contained various vulnerabilities that allowed gaining root access to the device. Many malicious programs exploited these to elevate their system privileges and gain persistence. The notorious Triada Trojan also used this attack vector. With time, the vulnerabilities were patched, and restrictions were added to the firmware. Specifically, system partitions in recent ...
- Lumma Stealer – Tracking distribution channels
April 21, 2025
The evolution of Malware-as-a-Service (MaaS) has significantly lowered the barriers to entry for cybercriminals, with information stealers becoming one of the most commercially successful categories in this underground economy. Among these threats, Lumma Stealer has emerged as a particularly sophisticated player since its introduction in 2022 by the threat actor known as Lumma. Initially marketed as ...
- New Rust Botnet “RustoBot” is Routed via Routers
April 21, 2025
FortiGuard Labs recently discovered a new botnet propagating through TOTOLINK devices. Unlike previous malware targeting these devices, this variant is written in Rust—a programming language introduced by Mozilla in 2010. Due to its Rust-based implementation, we’ve named the malware “RustoBot.” In January and February of 2025, FortiGuard Labs observed a significant increase in alerts related to ...

