anAfrican
12-22-2005, 02:12 PM
Not really a "new" threat: a "rootkit" is a set of tools that allow access to a computer using "root" privileges. "Root" is the account on all Unix boxen that has total control over a computer. Anyone that has "root access" can change anything anywhere on that computer.
Recently, Sony has been using a "digital rights management" (DRM) technique that installs what is essentially a rootkit on any windows-based PC that plays some of their CDs. Needless to say, the outcry over this has been quite loud.
This morning, while reading a post (http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/12/22/0138239&tid=172&tid=95) over at Slashdot (http://slashdot.org/), about another threat to instant messaging clients, I thought it might be good to bring rootkits to your attention thinking that "forewarned is fore armed".
In the above linked story, there is a link to an article entittled Santa IM worm hits AOL, MSN and Yahoo (http://news.zdnet.com/2102-1009_22-6002790.html?tag=printthis) published on ZDNet.
This article links to another article at the same site entitled What makes a rootkit? (http://news.zdnet.com/2102-1009_22-5961568.html?tag=printthis) Quoting from this article: Some protective software providers are catching up. Finland's F-Secure offers a test version of its F-Secure: BlackLight rootkit elimination Technology (http://www.f-secure.com/blacklight/), and Sysinternals, one of the first to reveal the threat behind Sony's copy protection software, has a free "RootkitRevealer (http://www.sysinternals.com/Utilities/RootkitRevealer.html)." F-Secure's site has more information about rootkits and the Sysinternals site has a rootkit resource list at the bottom of the page.
Recently, Sony has been using a "digital rights management" (DRM) technique that installs what is essentially a rootkit on any windows-based PC that plays some of their CDs. Needless to say, the outcry over this has been quite loud.
This morning, while reading a post (http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/12/22/0138239&tid=172&tid=95) over at Slashdot (http://slashdot.org/), about another threat to instant messaging clients, I thought it might be good to bring rootkits to your attention thinking that "forewarned is fore armed".
In the above linked story, there is a link to an article entittled Santa IM worm hits AOL, MSN and Yahoo (http://news.zdnet.com/2102-1009_22-6002790.html?tag=printthis) published on ZDNet.
This article links to another article at the same site entitled What makes a rootkit? (http://news.zdnet.com/2102-1009_22-5961568.html?tag=printthis) Quoting from this article: Some protective software providers are catching up. Finland's F-Secure offers a test version of its F-Secure: BlackLight rootkit elimination Technology (http://www.f-secure.com/blacklight/), and Sysinternals, one of the first to reveal the threat behind Sony's copy protection software, has a free "RootkitRevealer (http://www.sysinternals.com/Utilities/RootkitRevealer.html)." F-Secure's site has more information about rootkits and the Sysinternals site has a rootkit resource list at the bottom of the page.