ArabComments
Monday, April 17, 2006
  What is a Rootkit?

The term rootkit is used to describe the mechanisms and techniques whereby malware, including viruses, spyware, and trojans, attempt to hide their presence from spyware blockers, antivirus, and system management utilities. There are several rootkit classifications depending on whether the malware survives reboot and whether it executes in user mode or kernel mode.

Persistent Rootkits
A persistent rootkit is one associated with malware that activates each time the system boots. Because such malware contain code that must be executed automatically each system start or when a user logs in, they must store code in a persistent store, such as the Registry or file system, and configure a method by which the code executes without user intervention.

Memory-Based Rootkits
Memory-based rootkits are malware that has no persistent code and therefore does not survive a reboot.

User-mode Rootkits
There are many methods by which rootkits attempt to evade detection. For example, a user-mode rootkit might intercept all calls to the Windows FindFirstFile/FindNextFile APIs, which are used by file system exploration utilities, including Explorer and the command prompt to enumerate the contents of file system directories. When an application performs a directory listing that would otherwise return results that contain entries identifying the files associated with the rootkit, the rootkit intercepts and modifies the output to remove the entries.

The Windows native API serves as the interface between user-mode clients and kernel-mode services and more sophisticated user-mode rootkits intercept file system, Registry, and process enumeration functions of the Native API. This prevents their detection by scanners that compare the results of a Windows API enumeration with that returned by a native API enumeration.

Kernel-mode Rootkits
Kernel-mode rootkits can be even more powerful since, not only can they intercept the native API in kernel-mode, but they can also directly manipulate kernel-mode data structures. A common technique for hiding the presence of a malware process is to remove the process from the kernel's list of active processes. Since process management APIs rely on the contents of the list, the malware process will not display in process management tools like Task Manager or Process Explorer.

You can find more information on rootkits, including rootkit libraries and source code, at www.rootkit.com.
 
Comments: Post a Comment



<< Home
سلام ... Salam ... Here are "ArabComments" on trends and events related to our lives, individually as well as collectively as Arabs living in and out of our Arab Home Lands. We speak on love, religion, and politics of "neo-colonialism". We discuss a diversity of issues, ranging from InfoTech and InfoSec, to everyday price of bread, and everyday price of freedom. You are welcome to add your comments, just as long as they are not propaganda,i.e. SPAM, … Peace … سلام

ARCHIVES
Archives
December 2005 / January 2006 / February 2006 / March 2006 / April 2006 / May 2006 / June 2006 / July 2006 / September 2006 / October 2006 / November 2006 / January 2007 / February 2007 / June 2007 / July 2007 / September 2007 / May 2008 /


TechTags !

، ، ، ، ، ، ، ، ، ، ، ، ، ، ، ، ، ، ، ، ، ، ، ، ، ، ، ، ، ، ، ، ، ، ، ، ، ، ، ،،،

Powered by Blogger