Valencia, España – According to a research carried by a team from the Cyber Security Group at the Polytechnic University of Valencia, people can access Linuxo system just by pressing the backspace key 28 times in a row even when security measures to access the system are activated, Engadget announced.
The group describes themselves as a small security research group with a solid background. They say they do research to solve real problems with real solutions.
It seems that the bug from the system occurs in Grub2, which is a bootloader that starts the system in most Linux computers. After hitting the backspace key 28 times, users are directed to the grub rescue shell which lets them access the data of the computer, install malware, steal it or destroy it.
“The successful exploitation of the vulnerability has been possible because we made a very deep analysis of all components involved in this bug,” wrote the Cyber Security Group in the announcement of the bug.
In a report to Motherboard, researchers said that the bug could be used by spies to install malware on a target’s computer to steal files. People could even install malware that can be attached to the system forever.
Ubuntu, Red Hat, and Debian, which are systems that operate with Linux, have already released fixes in order to prevent the error.
Malware
As Kaspersky defines it, malicious software (malware) refers to any computer program that is designed to do things that are harmful to a computer’s legitimate user.
The security brand published a study that concluded that one in five Android-device users may be at risk of a malware attack. The company said that the only thing that would stop cyber-criminals would be the adoption of security solutions and the development of law-enforcement actions.
There are some infamous cases of malware attacks that have affected millions of people such as the one carried by the hacker Albert Gonzalez in 2007, when more than 160 million credit and debit card numbers were stolen. The hacker was sentenced to 20 years in prison.
Another impressing thing about malware and cybercrime is that it costs billions of dollars to the United States. According to the Wall Street Journal, $100 billion a year was the cost of cyber espionage and cybercrime just in 2013.
A study made by the Center for Strategic and International Studies based on Washington D.C., said that cyber crimes are in the same rank of drug traffic when relating them to the harm they cause to the worldwide economy.
Source: Engadget