
Ask HN: What was the most prominent linux-attacking worm or virus, if any? - flyGuyOnTheSly
I am curious, given the recent spate of events.
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bediger4000
For most prominent, I'm going to nominate the "slapper" worm:
[http://securityresponse.symantec.com/avcenter/security/Conte...](http://securityresponse.symantec.com/avcenter/security/Content/2002.09.13.html)

For the most interesting, look for "cheese" worm:
[https://www.cnet.com/news/cheese-worm-a-linux-fixer-
upper/](https://www.cnet.com/news/cheese-worm-a-linux-fixer-upper/)

There are a largish number of worms that have affected Linux machines, it's
not clear how much traction any of them got. The "slapper" worm had a slightly
different offset for the writeable memory for each distro's version of Apache
(1.3.x at the time). Even when distros had the same version of Apache source,
they all compiled it differently, so the exploit had to be customized. This
illustrates one way for a population of vulnerable computers to resist
infection: have a fractured software version base.

