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Rootkit Creators Turn Professional

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the where-the-money-is dept.

pete richards writes "Signalling a trend towards increased 'outsourcing' of some elements of malware creation, worm authors are increasingly turning to commercially available rootkits to help their creations slip past virus detection engines. Those root kits in the mean time are becoming more professional. Antivirus vendor F-Secure reported last week that it had detected a first rootkit designed to bypass detection by most of the modern rootkit detection engines."

4 of 117 comments (clear)

  1. Waiting for Vista by yfkar · · Score: -1, Troll
    Let's hope that Vista has better security when it hits the mainstream, it would mean hard times for virus creators.

    Or we could all just switch to Linux, BSD and OSX, which is not going to happen.

    1. Re:Waiting for Vista by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll

      Windows doesn't have "root," it has "Administrator."

      Most XP-home-editions have Leroy Dumbnigger or Sally Stinkycunt as administrators, which is part of the problem.

  2. Re:Commercially available? Whatever.... by dorkygeek · · Score: -1, Troll

    Psssst, look here.

    --
    Windows is like decaf - it tastes like the real thing, but it won't get you through the day.
  3. Re:Easy prey? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll

    MOD PARENT DOWN. It's not talking about rootkits. Rootkits are *tools for keeping access after having broken into a computer, including hiding said access from the real computer owner*. VNC is not a rootkit. SSH bugs are not rootkits. Etc.

    I can see legitimate uses - beyond research - for exploits (updates, regaining lost access, evaluating real threat leves.) The only legitimate use I can see for a rootkit is during research of how to detect rootkits. This (and liberty) may be enough for it to be relevant to keep development free, of course - yet it's significantly different from exploits.

    Eivind.