The New Rootkit Technology (Shallow Thoughts)

The New Rootkit Technology

Anyone who's been following the Sony CD rootkit story -- the one where Sony audio CDs come infected with a program which, when the CD is played on Windows PCs, installs a rootkit which is virtually impossible to uninstall and which makes the PC susceptible to all sorts of third-party attacks -- won't want to miss Trend Micro's information page regarding Sony's rootkits.

Highlight:

This tool works by applying a relatively new technology called rootkit technology. Rootkits are used to hide system information, such as running processes, files, or registry entries.

As a standalone application, it is non-malicious. However, certain malware applications use it [ ... ]

Good thing Trend Micro is there to give us the lowdown on this new (and non-malicious) rootkit technology!

In a vaguely related note: a speaker at my Toastmasters club today planned a Powerpoint presentation. (This is unusual in Toastmasters, but does happen occasionally.) He diligently showed up early to set up his computer and the projector so he'd be ready before the meeting started. As we were about to begin the meeting, with the projector showing his first slide, suddenly a dialog popped up on top of the slide, informing him that his system auto-update was finished, and he needed to reboot. It offered two buttons: [Reboot now] [Reboot later]. The later button was greyed out.

Isn't it nice when your system helpfully gives you automatic updates?

He fiddled for a while but finally gave up and rebooted. I couldn't help noticing that the first screen that appeared upon reboot was a Trend Micro screen.

Tags: tech
[ 21:17 Jan 12, 2006    More tech | permalink to this entry | ]