A majority of Linux distributions are sold by companies, individuals and many non-commercial entities for free on the Internet. And now, it has been officially announced that the notorious Syrian Electronic Army or SEA will launch its private Linux distribution. This will be known as SEANux.
The pro-Assad hacking group famous for hacking is now in the business of developing operating systems. Let’s see what is SEANux and how it works.
What is Linux Distribution?
It is a coordinated collection of software comprising of a modified version of the Kernel along with hundreds of free or open source utilities, programming languages, installers and application programs. Fedora/Red Hat, Ununtu, Mint Linux, SuSe, Kali Linux and Debian are some very popular Linux distributions.
SEA is the same group of hackers that last year made headlines for launching advanced phishing attacks. These attacks were directed towards western media outlets and media organizations were their targets.
Reportedly, this group shares alliance with Syrian president Bashar al-Assad and it had targeted the social media accounts of various high-profile media outlets such as The Washington Post, Forbes, the Guardian. CNN, The New York Times, the AP and the Financial Times purposely. Even Facebook, eBay, Microsoft, PayPal and Obama have become victims of Phishing attacks from SEA.
No further information about SEANux OS has been provided by SEA. Going by their past record it will be difficult to trust an operating system released by hacker group like SEA.
The slogan for SEANux states: Power Up. Your Performance. This kind of a statement clearly pave the way for queries like what type of performance is SEA referring to? Is it powering up the system’s performance or our hacking skills or social engineering tactics? That is because a majority of their targets include social media websites. However, at the moment we cannot comment any further at least not before it is released.
Generally talking, in Infosec community, we usually deal with three types of OS distributions:
- 1. Linux OS for Penetration Testing and Hacking It comes with a collection of network monitoring and penetration testing tools that are used for testing software privacy and security. Examples are Kali Linux or backtrack.
- 2. Forensic OS this type of an OS contains pre-installed digital forensic tools that are used for testing and security purposes.
- 3. Anonymous OS It keeps user track clear just like Tails OS. Tails offer users anonymity and security. Reportedly, the global surveillance whistleblower Edward Snowden used it during discussions with journalists because it has a variety of tools for data protection and offers strong encryption.
We are assuming that SEANux might be a combo of Tails and Kali Linux and the probability of pre-installed privacy and hacking tools cannot be overlooked. However, the integrity level of this new OS is doubtful until Infosec community gives it a clean chit after its release.
It shouldn’t come as a surprise if this new operating system from SEA facilitates a few backdoors and hides within it some privacy concerning malware. It has happened before when in 2012 Anonymous, a group of activists, released Anonymous-OS which after thorough scrutiny turned out to be a backdoor operating system.
READ MORE: Anonymous Hackers released �Anonymous-OS 0.1 their own Operating System
Thus, we suggest that you install this operating system on a virtual machine only to keep your credentials and important data on a safer side.
