Linux Trojan Avoids Detection for Almost a Year

Posted 06/14/2010 at 4:42am | by Paul Lilly

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The tech media has gone into full "told you so" mode after it was discovered that hackers managed to plant a Trojan in the popular Unreal IRC server, proving that Linux users need to worry about malware too.

"This is very embarrassing... We found that the Unreal3.2.8.1.tar.gz file on our mirrors has been replaced quite a while ago with a version with a backdoor (Trojan) in it," an announcement on the Unreal IRC forum states. "This backdoor allows a person to execute ANY command with the privileges of the user running the ircd. The backdoor can be executed regardless of any user restrictions (so even if you have passworded server or hub that doesn't allow any users in)."

While a single outbreak doesn't constitute an insecure OS platform by any stretch of the imagination, perhaps the media has a point. The announcement goes on to state that the "replacement of the.tar.gz occurred in November 2009 (at least on some mirrors," which means it took nearly a year for it to be noticed. What most of the write-ups are insinuating -- and we'll just come out and say it -- is that perhaps this was left unnoticed in the Linux community because of an arrogance that suggests the open source OS is impenetrable. Obviously that isn't the case, but despite reports you may read elsewhere, the opposite isn't true either -- Linux users needn't worry that the sky is falling because of one high profile outbreak.

Original Image Credit: Mono, the Trojan (softwarelive.org)