A new peer-to-peer botnet named Panchan appeared in the wild around March 2022, targeting Linux servers in the education sector to mine cryptocurrency. . Panchan is empowered with SSH worm functions like dictionary attacks and SSH key abuse to perform rapid lateral movement to available machines in the compromised network. At the same time, it has powerful detection avoidance capabilities, such as using memory-mapped miners and dynamically detecting process monitoring to stop the mining module immediately. . Panchan leverages SSH vulnerabilities to facilitate lateral propagation and covert cryptocurrency mining on compromised Linux servers within the academic realm.. Panchan Botnet, SSH Exploits for Linux, Cryptomining Threats, Peer-to-Peer Malware. . LinuxSecurity.com Team
The University of NSW has been the target of a . Universities are being increasingly targeted by hackers who often want to get access to high-bandwidth university internet connections and use them to conduct further attacks. It comes as the Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, reportedly plans to raise a massive escalation in cyber attacks against government and industry as one of the two key security issues facing the nation in an address on Wednesday. The link for this article located at Sydney Morning Herald is no longer available. . Universities are being increasingly targeted by hackers who often want to get access to high-bandwid. university, target, universities, being, increasingly, targeted, hacke. . LinuxSecurity.com Team
When a hacker broke into the network at George Mason University (VA) earlier this year, IT officials were absolutely powerless to stop him. Within minutes, the hacker compromised the school’s main Windows 2000 server and gained access to information that included names, Social Security numbers, university identification numbers, and even photographs of almost everyone on campus. Next, he poked around for a back door into other GMU servers that store information such as student grades, financial aid, and payroll. . Finally, the hacker tried to crack passwords for other machines—machines in just about every department on campus. Curtis McNay, a system administrator who manages some of the university’s computing systems, saw the whole thing happen. After the break-in, McNay told the Washington Post that he knew from data streaming across his monitor that a break-in was going down. By the time the hack was halted, however, it was too late. Information surely had been copied; privacy most certainly had been breached. And after a week of investigating the scope and nature of the electronic break-in, university officials reluctantly sent an e-mail warning 32,000 students, faculty, and staff members that they were all vulnerable to identity theft or credit card fraud. The link for this article located at Campus Technology is no longer available. . A substantial breach of security at George Mason University has rendered authorities ineffective, uncovering critical vulnerabilities in data protection.. George Mason University, Network Breach, Data Exposure, Identity Theft Risk. . Benjamin D. Thomas
Enterasys Networks has rolled out the biggest wireless network in the education sector but admitted it has yet to perform a thorough security audit. Ninestiles School in Birmingham is using 38 Enterasys Roamabout R2 access points to connect its 1,400 . . . . Enterasys Networks has rolled out the biggest wireless network in the education sector but admitted it has yet to perform a thorough security audit. Ninestiles School in Birmingham is using 38 Enterasys Roamabout R2 access points to connect its 1,400 pupils and 95 teachers. Each of the access points connects to an X-Pedition 8000 multilayer switch router. The network uses the notoriously weak Wired Equivalent Privacy (WEP) protocol to provide encryption. Despite the size of the installation, it took Enterasys and consultancy TCPIP only a week to do the entire integration. However, this did not include checks on the network's integrity. The link for this article located at VNUNet is no longer available. . Enterasys Networks has rolled out the biggest wireless network in the education sector but admitted . enterasys, networks, rolled, biggest, wireless, network, education, sector, admitted. . Anthony Pell
Get the latest Linux and open source security news straight to your inbox.