Am 09.05.22 um 00:48 schrieb Tomasz Ciolek:
> 5. have we eliminated other causes of file mismatch - bad/incomplete
> updates, corrupted HDD, bad RAM, user error ?
If exactly such files have been changed where there is reason to
manipulate them for a rootkit then one shall assume unequivocally that
there is a rootkit installed. With bad RAM you get a system crash and
with a physically bad hard disk you get filesystem errors on fsck, none
of which you get with a rootkit where only certain files have been
manipulated intentionally. A broken update could theoretically result in
a singleton file of half the size. Usually running programs keep to use
the old version of the file under Linux while newly issued open
operations on the same file name will use the file as replaced by an
update. A file of half the size would however result in an unusable
program, none of which you would usually observe with a rootkit.
Elmar