Trojanized SSH Daemon In the Wild, Sending Passwords To Iceland

An anonymous reader writes "It is no secret that SSH binaries can be backdoored. It is nonetheless interesting to see analysis of real cases where a trojanized version of the daemon are found in the wild. In this case, the binary not only lets the attacker log onto the server if he has a hardcoded password, the attacker is also granted access if he/she has the right SSH key. The backdoor also logs all username and passwords to exfiltrate them to a server hosted in Iceland."

Comments

Re:Iceland? How hard could it be?

[WWJohnBrowningDo]

Just because the server is in Iceland doesn't mean the perpetrator is.

In all likelihood the server is just another compromised machine.

Re:Tip

[19thNervousBreakdown]

You can never clean up a system. MD5s help, but you know what one of the first things I'd do when rooting a system is? After making sure my rootkit didn't show up in directory listings, I'd patch md5, shasum, perl, and ruby to return the exact MD5 I wanted for every file I defined a magic string for.

You gonna catch me on some systems? Sure. You gonna catch me on an extremely common distro like Debian without installing out-of-tree software? Probably not.

Re:Tip

[DarwinSurvivor]

Rule #1 of investigating a compromised system is you don't use the tools on the compromised system.