Bring Your Own Filesystem (BYOF) attacks

Updated on 2022-12-06: BYOF attacks

Researchers with cloud security firm Sysdig say they’re seeing attacks carried out by a new threat actor that deploys an open-source tool on infected servers to simplify cross-platform compatibility issues. Named PRoot, the tool deploys a universal filesystem that works across multiple Linux versions. Sysdig says the attacker is installing the tool on compromised systems in order to make their malware compatible with the underlying OS architecture. Sysdig called this novel technique Bring-Your-Own-Filesystem, since it allows the attacker to optimize their malware for PRoot, and then deploy across a wide variety of Linux architectures. While the threat actor appears to be focused on deploying a banal crypto-miner, Sysdig says the technique could be attractive for many other threat actors targeting Linux environments. Read more: Discovered new BYOF technique to cryptomining with PRoot

Overview

Hackers were found abusing the open-source Linux PRoot utility in Bring Your Own Filesystem (BYOF) attacks to offer a constant repository for malicious tools compatible with Linux distributions. Read more: Hackers hijack Linux devices using PRoot isolated filesystems