lambsys
Hunt this family in your stack
Mallory pivots from this family to the IOCs, detections, and named campaigns that touch your stack, and pages you when something new lands.
Vulnerabilities exploited
1 CVE Mallory has correlated with this family across public research and vendor advisories. Each row links to the full Mallory page for that vulnerability.
Subsequently, it downloads the binary on the machine using curl or wget, launches it as a detached process, and spreads itself to every SSH-reachable host the victim can authenticate to.
Techniques & procedures
26 distinct techniques documented for this family, organized by ATT&CK tactic.
Initial Access
1 technique
Initial Access
Execution
4 techniques
Execution
Lambsys does not run its attack logic as Go functions... Instead, it forks a cascade of short-lived sh -c subprocesses, each executing one shell command
Persistence
5 techniques
Persistence
spreads itself to every SSH-reachable host the victim can authenticate to
Privilege Escalation
4 techniques
Privilege Escalation
Stealth
8 techniques
Stealth
The /tmp/.X11-unix / directory is a particularly notable hiding spot because it legitimately exists on any Linux system running X11, and files named 01, 11, 22 blend into the socket namespace.
A companion cleanup pass deletes rival wallet and key material: rm -rf /tmp/addre*, rm -rf /tmp/walle*, and rm -rf /tmp/keys.
spreads itself to every SSH-reachable host the victim can authenticate to
lambsys does not run its attack logic as Go functions. Instead, it forks a cascade of short-lived sh -c subprocesses, each executing one shell command
The 2024 sample is largely similar to the 2026 build... sandbox-stalling sleeps (T1497)
Defense Impairment
3 techniques
Defense Impairment
removes the immutable attribute from files like "~/.ssh/," "~/.ssh/authorized_keys," "/etc/crontab," and "/etc/ld.so.preload," "/tmp/," "/var/tmp/," and "/var/spool/cron" in order to make its modifications, and then reapplies the immutable attribute
Credential Access
2 techniques
Credential Access
chattr -iae ~/.ssh/ and chattr -iae ~/.ssh/authorized_keys remove immutable and append-only attributes from the SSH directory and authorized_keys file, clearing the way for the lateral movement stage (isp.sh) to plant its key.
The chattr sweep also targets SSH configuration: chattr -iae ~ /.ssh / and chattr -iae ~ /.ssh/authorized_keys remove immutable and append-only attributes from the SSH directory and authorized_keys file, clearing the way for the lateral movement stage (isp.sh) to plant its key.
Discovery
3 techniques
Discovery
The script begins by verifying if the miner is already running... The dropper calls pgrep -f "lambsys"... lambsys fires pgrep -x lambsys.elf repeatedly throughout its own execution.
Lateral Movement
2 techniques
Lateral Movement
Command and Control
2 techniques
Command and Control
Impact
1 technique
Impact
Other
2 techniques
Other
The binary, an ELF executable written in Go, is also engineered to disable AppArmor, Ubuntu's Uncomplicated Firewall, iptables, SELinux, the kernel NMI watchdog, and Alibaba Cloud's Aliyun agent.
ufw disable takes out Ubuntu’s Uncomplicated Firewall, and iptables -F flushes all filter-table rules... AppArmor... is stopped... SELinux... gets the same treatment... service aliyun.service stop and systemctl disable aliyun.service stop and disable Alibaba Cloud’s host-based security monitoring agent.
IOCs tracked for this family
3 indicators attributed across vendor reports, sandbox runs, and researcher write-ups. Full values are available in Mallory.
IPs, domains, and DNS infrastructure linked to this family.
File hashes (MD5, SHA-1, SHA-256) from samples and reports.
Recent activity
2 sources tracked across advisories, community write-ups, and news. New activity surfaces here as Mallory finds it.
A Go-based ELF cryptomining malware used after exploitation of Langflow CVE-2026-33017. It kills competing miners, deletes rival wallet/key material, disables security controls, establishes cron persistence, removes logs, propagates via reused SSH keys, and downloads/deploys a bespoke XMRig miner.
A Linux-focused Monero cryptomining malware family delivered by the isp.sh dropper. It establishes persistence under /var/tmp/.xlamb, spreads via SSH key reuse using known_hosts and SSH agent data, kills competing miners, disables security controls including firewalls, AppArmor, SELinux, and Aliyun security tooling, and launches its miner while maintaining C2 communications.
The version that knows your environment.
Match every observed IP, domain, and hash against your live telemetry.
Named campaigns wielding this family, with evidence pinned to each claim.
CVEs this family uses for access and lateral movement.
YARA, Sigma, Snort, and vendor rules, auto-deployed to your SIEM.
Every documented technique, ranked by evidence weight.
Reddit, Mastodon, and CTI community discussion around this family.