Ah, the joys of Linux—a realm where even the bugs are sophisticated enough to hide under the radar for a full year. Meet ‘Plague’, the cyber world’s newest lurker, quietly sliding past your digital defenses while your antivirus software pretends it’s on a much-needed coffee break.

This pesky little pest, disguised as a PAM (Pluggable Authentication Module), is the unwanted houseguest of your system. While you were busy debating the merits of open-source heroes, Plague snuck past your virtual doorman and changed all the locks. And no, this isn’t the sort of persistent access you can fix by jiggling the handle.

Experts say it took a year for Plague to be discovered, possibly because it had been taking the scenic route through your critical systems. Thanks to its SSH stealth mode, it’s like the ninja of cyber backdoors—except this ninja didn’t ask if you wanted fries with your order of compromised credentials.