Rekoobe a new malware targeting Linux users

Experts at Russian anti-virus firm Dr.Web discovered Rekoobe, a new malware that is targeting Linux systems.

Rekoobe is a new malware that is targeting Linux systems, the discovery was made by experts at Russian anti-virus firm Dr.Web.

Dr.Web discovered the Rekoobe Trojan in October, then its experts analyzed the threat in the following two months.

The Rekoobe Trojan was initially developed to infect only Linux SPARC architectures, later it has been upgraded to target Linux PCs running on intel chips, on both 32 bit and 54-bit architectures.

The experts explained that the Rekoobe Trojan is very simple by it is difficult to detect. The malware encryption to protect the configuration file and the data exchanged with the C&C server.

Linux.Rekoobe.1 uses an encrypted configuration file. Once the file is read, the Trojan periodically refers to the C&C server to receive commands. Under specific circumstances, the connection to the server is established via a proxy server.” states a blog post published by Dr.Web. “The malware extracts the authorization data from its configuration file. All the sent and received information is split into separate blocks. Every block is encrypted and contains its own signature.”

The analysis of the Rebooke revealed that it could be used to deliver malicious payloads on the infected systems in order to obtain the full compromise of the target.

“Nevertheless,Linux.Rekoobe.1 can execute only three commands such as: to download or upload files, to send the received commands to the Linux interpreter, and to transmit the output to the remote server—thus, cybercriminals are able to interact with the compromised devise remotely.” 

Unfortunately, the authors of Rekoobe have already ported the Trojan on other OS, including Android, Mac OS X and Windows.

Despite many users consider Linux systems immune from malware, other threats have been recently discovered, such as the Linux.Encoder.1 ransomware.

Pierluigi Paganini

(Security Affairs – Linux Trojan , Rekoobe)

Pierluigi Paganini

Pierluigi Paganini is member of the ENISA (European Union Agency for Network and Information Security) Threat Landscape Stakeholder Group and Cyber G7 Group, he is also a Security Evangelist, Security Analyst and Freelance Writer. Editor-in-Chief at "Cyber Defense Magazine", Pierluigi is a cyber security expert with over 20 years experience in the field, he is Certified Ethical Hacker at EC Council in London. The passion for writing and a strong belief that security is founded on sharing and awareness led Pierluigi to find the security blog "Security Affairs" recently named a Top National Security Resource for US. Pierluigi is a member of the "The Hacker News" team and he is a writer for some major publications in the field such as Cyber War Zone, ICTTF, Infosec Island, Infosec Institute, The Hacker News Magazine and for many other Security magazines. Author of the Books "The Deep Dark Web" and “Digital Virtual Currency and Bitcoin”.

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