"Turla Linux Malware" - Researchers discover espionage virus for Linux

Researchers from the Russian anti-virus firm Kaspersky Lab have discovered a spy virus for Linux that may go unnoticed for years, although for the latter is no proof yet. It is a variant of the Turla malware, also known as Snake or Urburos which all other known specimens have been developed only for Windows.

The researchers knew that there are Linux versions of Turla existed but had never yet found in the "wild" so far. Turla according to Kaspersky Lab is one of the most sophisticated espionage campaigns ever discovered . Among others, the Belgian Ministry of Foreign Affairs would have become the victim of the campaign. The now discovered Turla variant supports Linux so that there can be infected with more systems attacked organizations.

"We suspect that this part years was active in an organization attacked, but have no concrete evidence to prove it," said Costin Raiu of Kaspersky Lab. Through the malware an attacker can communicate with infected systems and execute arbitrary code. Thereby Turla do not need elevated privileges. Also, the malware can not be found via netstat, a tool that system administrators use to get an overview of open network connections.

"It uses techniques that do not require root access, so it can move freely on the system of a victim. Even if it's a regular limited user launches can continue to intercept the incoming packets and execute commands on the system," says Raiu . He notes that the Linux malware especially in other public source code is based, in which the attackers a number of things have been added. How the malware spreads exactly is not reported.

NSA spying on Chinese networking giant Huawei

The NSA has a widespread espionage attack against China conducted in which both the Chinese government and Chinese companies were targeted. Reports that the German newspaper Der Spiegel on the basis of documents received from the whistleblower Edward Snowden.

Among the attacked companies are banks and telecommunication companies. However, the NSA focused in particular on the Chinese networking giant Huawei, the second largest network provider in the world and a competitor of the U.S. Cisco. In 2009, the U.S. Secret Service began an operation that internal "Shot Giant" was mentioned. A special NSA unit managed to break into the corporate network from Huawei and copied a list of 1,400 customers, as well as internal documents on training were engineers on the use of Huawei products.

Source

From a secret NSA presentation shows that the NSA also managed to gain access to the internal e-mail archive and the secret source of Huawei products. The network where the U.S. Secret Service had broken up generated as many e-mail and data that the NSA did not know what to do with it. The reason for the break-in at the company let the NSA in the documents know that many of the targets via Huawei products communicate. "We want to make sure that we can attack these products," said an official in one of the secret documents.

In a statement, says a spokesperson from the network giant that if the reports are correct it is very ironic, since the United States Huawei always have accused the Chinese government would help in espionage. More details about the espionage attack by the NSA will Der Spiegel published tomorrow.