Connect with us

Hi, what are you looking for?

SecurityWeekSecurityWeek

Cybercrime

Cross Platform ‘Java-bot’ Launches DDoS Attacks from Windows, Mac and Linux Machines

Researchers from Kaspersky Lab have uncovered a new malware that has the ability to infect systems running Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux, with the goal of launching DDoS attacks.

Researchers from Kaspersky Lab have uncovered a new malware that has the ability to infect systems running Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux, with the goal of launching DDoS attacks.

According to Kaspersky Lab, the malware is written entirely in Java and does require that Java is installed on the host system in order to run. Once the malware successfully infects a system, however, it can launch DDoS attacks using both HTTP and UDP floods.

Cross Platform Malwre Targets Macs, Linux, Windows

Identified by Kaspersky Lab as HEUR:Backdoor.Java.Agent.a, the malware exploits CVE-2013-2465, a critical Java vulnerability with a CVSS base score of 10.0 that was patched by Oracle in June.

Interestingly, the bot is controlled using the Internet Relay Chat (IRC) protocol and uses the PircBot open framework to facilitate communication through IRC. Additionally, Kaspersky researchers found that the malware uses the “Zelix Klassmaster obfuscator” to prevent it from being reverse engineered by researchers and competing cybercrimnals.

“Zelix generates a different key for each class – which means that in order to decrypt all the strings in the application, you have to analyze all the classes in order to find the decryption keys,” Anton Ivanov, a Kaspersky Lab Expert, explained in a blog post.

The malware sample was provided to Kaspersky Lab by Zoltan Balazs, CTO at MRG Effitas, an independent IT security research organization.

Additional details on the cross-platform malware are available on Kaspersky Lab’s Securelist

Related: Multi-Platform Java Exploit Targets Macs, Linux, Windows

Advertisement. Scroll to continue reading.
Written By

For more than 15 years, Mike Lennon has been closely monitoring the threat landscape and analyzing trends in the National Security and enterprise cybersecurity space. In his role at SecurityWeek, he oversees the editorial direction of the publication and is the Director of several leading security industry conferences around the world.

Click to comment

Trending

Daily Briefing Newsletter

Subscribe to the SecurityWeek Email Briefing to stay informed on the latest threats, trends, and technology, along with insightful columns from industry experts.

Join the session as we discuss the challenges and best practices for cybersecurity leaders managing cloud identities.

Register

SecurityWeek’s Ransomware Resilience and Recovery Summit helps businesses to plan, prepare, and recover from a ransomware incident.

Register

Expert Insights

Related Content

Cybercrime

The changing nature of what we still generally call ransomware will continue through 2023, driven by three primary conditions.

Cybercrime

A recently disclosed vBulletin vulnerability, which had a zero-day status for roughly two days last week, was exploited in a hacker attack targeting the...

Cybercrime

As it evolves, web3 will contain and increase all the security issues of web2 – and perhaps add a few more.

Cybercrime

Luxury retailer Neiman Marcus Group informed some customers last week that their online accounts had been breached by hackers.

Cybercrime

Zendesk is informing customers about a data breach that started with an SMS phishing campaign targeting the company’s employees.

Cybercrime

Patch Tuesday: Microsoft calls attention to a series of zero-day remote code execution attacks hitting its Office productivity suite.

Artificial Intelligence

The release of OpenAI’s ChatGPT in late 2022 has demonstrated the potential of AI for both good and bad.

Cybercrime

Satellite TV giant Dish Network confirmed that a recent outage was the result of a cyberattack and admitted that data was stolen.