New ‘Plague’ PAM Backdoor Exposes Critical Linux Systems to Silent Credential Theft

Monday, August 4, 2025 10:51 AM | The Hacker News
Cybersecurity researchers have flagged a previously undocumented Linux backdoor dubbed Plague that has managed to evade detection for a year. "The implant is built as a malicious PAM (Pluggable Authentication Module), enabling attackers to silently bypass system authentication and gain persistent SSH access," Nextron Systems researcher Pierre-Henri Pezier said. Pluggable Authentication Modules