A new and more dangerous version of a remote-control virus that targets computers running the Linux operating system may be in the wild, but security experts do not expect the malicious code to spread widely. According to preliminary analyses, the virus appears to be a "smarter" variant of the Remote Shell Trojan (RST), discovered last September, that infects programs written for Linux, an alternative to Microsoft"s Windows.
Managed security provider Qualys obtained a copy of one new variant last month from an "outside source," according to Gerhard Eschelbeck, vice president of engineering. Qualys will release a detailed advisory, along with detection and cleaning tools next week for the new virus, which it has labeled RST.b.