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The Linux backdoor attempt of 2003 (2013)
11–20 of 105 posts
Re: The Linux backdoor attempt of 2003 (2013)
#12While I'm here, does anyone know of a good trustworthy RAT for Windows machines that I can control from my Linux box? I have some relatives for whom I provide technical support. I'd love to just put an EXE on their desktop that would launch a VNC session and connect back to me (since they have the typical NAT + firewall of home users), but I don't want to install a virus on their machines.
Re: The Linux backdoor attempt of 2003 (2013)
#13Earlier quoted context omitted.
Wait was the guy you know the hacker or someone who discovered the hack by accident? If the latter, how do you know anything about the hacker's identity or motive?
That confused me, too. They appear to know the person who accidentally discovered the issue, not the hacker.
Developer tries to tell a story...
Sounds like OP interviewed the person who uploaded the code, whose system was previously inflitrated (it can still be the NSA). So why say "If the guy who did it wants to come forward, that is his decision. But he did provide me the full story", it doesn't sound like OP interviewed the "guy who did it"...
Re: The Linux backdoor attempt of 2003 (2013)
#14I have the full story on that incident. It is actually really funny. If the guy who did it wants to come forward, that is his decision. [edit: I won't name names.] He did provided me the full story. He told me with the understanding that the story would go public, so I will dig it up and post it. I also interviewed the sysadmins who were running the box at the time. 1. it was not an NSA operation, it was done by a ha…
To be clear: you're telling us the full story of the discovery, not the full story of the exploit? You and your source don't know who the attacker was, right?
Re: The Linux backdoor attempt of 2003 (2013)
#15While I'm here, does anyone know of a good trustworthy RAT for Windows machines that I can control from my Linux box? I have some relatives for whom I provide technical support. I'd love to just put an EXE on their desktop that would launch a VNC session and connect back to me (since they have the typical NAT + firewall of home users), but I don't want to install a virus on their machines.
Not sure what your decision procedure is for "a virus" versus "trustworthy RAT", but there are plenty of open source options out there, in case that helps,
https://medevel.com/18-os-rat-list/
Re: The Linux backdoor attempt of 2003 (2013)
#16Wasn't this done by Ac1dB1tch3z? See http://phrack.org/issues/64/15.html for the CVS exploit from the same time.
Re: The Linux backdoor attempt of 2003 (2013)
#17Earlier quoted context omitted.
That confused me, too. They appear to know the person who accidentally discovered the issue, not the hacker.
Developer tries to tell a story... Sounds like OP interviewed the person who uploaded the code, whose system was previously inflitrated (it can still be the NSA). So why say "If the guy who did it wants to come forward, that is his decision. But he did provide me the full story", it doesn't sound like OP interviewed the "guy who did it"...
I read that the other way. "If the guy who did it wants to come forward, that is his decision. But he [still talking about the guy who did it] did provide me the full story."
That is, the perpetrator gave him the full story, but he won't name names, because it's the perpetrator's choice whether or not to reveal his identity.
Re: The Linux backdoor attempt of 2003 (2013)
#18Another bit of cleverness not mentioned in the article is that assignment expressions always evaluate to the rvalue. So the expression `current->uid = 0` has the effect of making sure that entire conditional never actually runs (or at least, the return never runs), which means the overall behavior of wait4 doesn't change in an observable way. Very clever if you're trying to pass all of the existing tests
Ohh, that is clever - unless someone writes a test for these two new lines, and finds that they never return -EINVAL.
Re: The Linux backdoor attempt of 2003 (2013)
#19This is a single example of an unsuccessful attempt to backdoor Linux. There were successful attempts too https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/nsa-linked-bv...
Am I missing something? That seems to link to a Linux backdoor, not a backdoor in Linux.
Yeah. This doesn't appear to be the same sort of thing (malicious code being integrated into the kernel itself). This is just a backdoor that leverages an exploit.
Re: The Linux backdoor attempt of 2003 (2013)
#20Earlier quoted context omitted.
Developer tries to tell a story... Sounds like OP interviewed the person who uploaded the code, whose system was previously inflitrated (it can still be the NSA). So why say "If the guy who did it wants to come forward, that is his decision. But he did provide me the full story", it doesn't sound like OP interviewed the "guy who did it"...
I read that the other way. "If the guy who did it wants to come forward, that is his decision. But he [still talking about the guy who did it] did provide me the full story." That is, the perpetrator gave him the full story, but he won't name names, because it's the perpetrator's choice whether or not to reveal his identity.
OK, makes sense.. so the interviewed hacker mentioned that he got the code in by infiltrating the computer of "some developer"...