Linux Botnet With XOR Trojan Launching Daily DDoS Attacks

Threat actors are leveraging a botnet made up of infected Linux machines to launch powerful distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks against as many as 20 targets per day, according to Akamai's Security Intelligence Response Team (SIRT).

The botnet is composed of Linux machines infected with a stealthy trojan identified in 2014 as "XOR DDoS." The threat was observed altering its installation depending on the victim's Linux environment and running a rootkit to avoid detection.