Besides the obvious that a large portion of viruses and malware are written for Microsoft products because of the volume of machine available for them now Linux is in the crosshair.
A new report indicates that attackers are increasingly targeting Linux machines as the operating system becomes increasingly popular among enterprise users. If you didn’t know a very large portion of servers hosting websites and applications are running Linux and there is a good chance that your company’s website is running on one. Why? Well Linux is open source and mandated by the creators to be free.
Security firm Trend Micro said that there’s been a 75 percent increase in ransomware attacks against Linux systems in the first half of 2022 compared to the same stretch last year.
The report also said the firm’s seen more than 1,900 instances of Linux-based malware being used against its customers in the first half of 2022.
These attacks are mainly coming from the operators of the REvil and DarkSide ransomware-as-a-service groups, along with a recently released Linux version of the LockBit ransomware.
Cloud computing company VMware released a different report earlier this year warning against a rise in cryptocurrency mining attacks against Linux systems, such as XMRig, to hijack CPU power on Linux machines to mine Monero and other virtual currencies.
If your company does not have someone dedicated to monitor, upgrade and patch your web servers you would never know that you are inadvertently spreading and infecting your own customers or passing it along to other servers.
We have seen many instances of web servers hosting malware and evidence of hacks and intrusions on some of the biggest hosting platforms.
Although it might seem virtually impossible to make a server that is open to the public web rock solid if you make it difficult enough by using the resources available to you by the hosting platforms you do end up encouraging them to look somewhere else that is more easily venerable to their attacks.