Threat to Windows and Linux cannot be really put in the same basket

Twice in the space of three months, researchers from BlackBerry have put out studies pushing claims about malware and ransomware that is alleged to attack Linux, giving the impression that this operating system is also under as much threat as Windows.

But both studies contained little to justify these conclusions; the second, issued in the first week of June, contained the word Linux thrice, in two sentences. One of these was the line: “Tycoon is a multi-platform Java ransomware targeting Windows and Linux that has been observed in-the-wild since at least December 2019.”

And the other was: “The malicious JRE build contains both Windows and Linux versions of this script, suggesting that the threat actors are also targeting Linux servers.”

The rest of the study, that runs to about 1500 words (not counting text in illustrations and tables), was solely about the Windows version of what the researchers claimed was a new form of ransomware known as Tycoon.

Continue reading “Threat to Windows and Linux cannot be really put in the same basket”