A big selling point of Linux-based operating systems are that they are generally immune to viruses, trojans and malware. However, this is a falsehood — no OS is 100 percent safe when it comes to these things. According to security company RSA, a team of Russian cyber-criminals have developed a trojan, named “Hand of Thief”, which targets Linux.<\/p>\n
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The security company explains that the trojan is “designed to steal information from machines running the Linux OS. This malware is currently offered for sale in closed cybercrime communities for $2,000 USD (\u20ac1,500 EUR) with free updates. The current functionality includes form grabbers and backdoor capabilities, however, it’s expected that the Trojan will have a new suite of web injections and graduate to become full-blown banking malware in the very near future. At that point, the price is expected to rise to $3,000 USD (\u20ac2,250 EUR), plus a hefty $550 per major version release”.<\/p>\n
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“The Trojan’s developer claims it has been tested on 15 different Linux desktop distributions, including Ubuntu, Fedora and Debian.<\/p>\n
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While this trojan does seem nasty and scary, it is unlikely to spread easily given Linux users’ propensity towards common-sense about installing software.<\/p>\n
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