The content of this post is solely the responsibility of the author. LevelBlue does not adopt or endorse any of the views, positions, or information provided by the author in this article. Memory forensics is a critical aspect of digital forensics, allowing investigators to analyze the volatile memory of a system to uncover evidence of malicious activity, detect hidden malware, and reconstruct system events.

Linux recently released Ubuntu 24.04, both Desktop and Server. They bring a lot of new features and enhancements but still require proper protection against failure. First, that includes a proper configuration and then a backup and recovery strategy. Regardless of where Ubuntu 24.04 is installed, Hyper-V, VMware, Proxmox, or bare metal, you must protect it against failure.

Manual deployment of Docker containers on multiple servers can be highly time-consuming, monopolizing the schedule of any system administrator charged with the task. In the modern IT industry, the popularity of clouds, microservices and containers continues to grow, and for this reason, solutions such as Kubernetes were developed.

The recent discovery of a backdoor in XZ Utils (CVE-2024-3094), a data compression utility used by a wide array of various open-source, Linux-based computer applications, underscores the importance of open-source software security. While it is often not consumer-facing, open-source software is a critical component of computing and internet functions, such as secure communications between machines.

Before we start this blog post, let’s acknowledge that the only way to secure your environment from any vulnerability is to update the vulnerable hardware or software with patches that the author or the project community releases. Every other form of mitigation is only a way to provide an extended time for critical applications that cannot be updated immediately.

On March 29, 2024, a security researcher disclosed the discovery of malicious code in the most recent versions of XZ Utils data compression tools and libraries. The code contained a backdoor, which a remote threat actor can leverage to break sshd authentication (the service for SSH access) and gain unauthorized access to the system, potentially leading to Remote Code Execution (RCE).

Seccomp, short for Secure Computing Mode, is a noteworthy tool offered by the Linux kernel. It is a powerful mechanism to restrict or log the system calls that a process makes. Operating within the kernel, seccomp allows administrators and developers to define fine-grained policies for system call execution, enhancing the overall security posture of applications and the underlying system.

A look at the recently discovered backdoor hiding in the open source XZ Utils compression service.