Crowdstrike's malware-as-a-service is now affecting Linux. Red Hat, Rocky and Debian stable are affected. According to distrowatch.com, most of us here running linux as a desktop are using debian and debian stable based distros like Mint, Ubuntu, MX. Stop updating, 2 wks+
(www.theregister.com)
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Someone who bills himself as a 'computer guru' and who reconditions laptops and sells them, recently told me that Linux was the way to go, as it was (in his words) impervious to hacking and malware. Hmmm... maybe he's full of it too.
Anything can be hacked, especially if you purposely install software/ malware on your machine that operates as a kernel level driver which is what crowdstrike requires to function properly.
If I install a secure version of linux on my machine and proceed to add to it a program running at kernel level 0 which bypasses all that security, then I have opened up the entire OS to a security risk.
If I install at user level 1 software that opens up security, I'm also making the OS be at risk, but not to the same extent, as the kernel should be somewhat protected unless a bad operator takes advantage of my security hole in software level 1 and finds a way to elevate the security level to level 0 (ie exploits a known bug or a zero-day). If the privilege is hacked /elevated to kernel level 0, then nothing is secure on that OS because the user has taken actions that exposed the system and a bad actor has taken advantage and gained control.
No OS is impervious to security issues, when users or administrators make decisions to add software like Crowdstrike, the actual security of the system becomes the lowest common denominator of either the OS security or the installed software's security. Any security hole in either package generates the same risk of a security breach.
In more layman's terms (I've been running Linux for years and still couldn't really explain the word "kernel" for my life). What makes Linux seem "invulnerable" is really the fact that very few scammers and hackers will waste time on Linux when only a tiny percentage of the market uses it. The most gullible and easy marks are using Windows so that's where most of the hackers go. Simple as that. It does seem to be a lot more inherently secure than windows but if it had the same size market share there would be more problems to follow.
And I think that's a really good thing, but doesn't give me the kind of brain that does well with code, lol.