{"id":243798,"date":"2026-09-09T01:16:14","date_gmt":"2026-09-09T06:16:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/09\/hackers-breach-f5-big-ip-apm-devices-to-deploy-linux-rootkit"},"modified":"2026-09-09T01:16:14","modified_gmt":"2026-09-09T06:16:14","slug":"hackers-breach-f5-big-ip-apm-devices-to-deploy-linux-rootkit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/09\/hackers-breach-f5-big-ip-apm-devices-to-deploy-linux-rootkit","title":{"rendered":"Hackers breach F5 BIG-IP APM devices to deploy Linux rootkit"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/hackers-breach-f5-big-ip-apm-devices-to-deploy-linux-rootkit2.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>A Linux rootkit targeting devices in F5 BIG-IP APM environments can intercept PHP file loading and inject a fileless web shell directly into memory, avoiding the need to write malicious code to disk.<\/p>\n<p>The malware shows signs of being a second-stage payload that was likely deployed after exploiting CVE-2025\u201353521, a critical remote code execution (RCE) flaw that <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bleepingcomputer.com\/news\/security\/hackers-now-exploit-critical-f5-big-ip-flaw-in-attacks-patch-now\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">F5 Networks reclassified<\/a> from a DoS problem in March.<\/p>\n<p>Sophos researchers analyzed a sample and noted that, while it enables \u201con-demand server-side code execution\u201d typically associated with webshells, it achieves this through \u201cdeeper Linux-and Apache-specific tradecraft.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A Linux rootkit targeting devices in F5 BIG-IP APM environments can intercept PHP file loading and inject a fileless web shell directly into memory, avoiding the need to write malicious code to disk. The malware shows signs of being a second-stage payload that was likely deployed after exploiting CVE-2025\u201353521, a critical remote code execution (RCE) [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":427,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-243798","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cybercrime-malcode"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/243798","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/427"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=243798"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/243798\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=243798"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=243798"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=243798"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}