The fracas stems from a long-standing practice in Symantec's Norton SystemWorks suite to cloak a special directory. The SystemWorks feature -- which harks back to SystemWorks' predecessor, Norton ...

The revelation 5 years ago that Sony BMG was planting a secret rootkit onto its music customers’ Windows PCs in the name of anti-piracy is seen now as one of the all-time significant events in IT ...

Antivirus firms Trend Micro and Sophos have developed new tools to discover rootkit infections but both are attacking the problem from a slightly different angle. Rootkits are powerful programs that ...

Security researchers have developed a new type of malicious rootkit software that hides itself in an obscure part of a computer’s microprocessor, hidden from current antivirus products. Called a ...

Microsoft security researchers are warning about a new generation of powerful system monitoring programs, or “rootkits,” that are almost impossible to detect using current security products and that ...

Rootkits are a particularly hazardous threat. Unlike typical viruses, they are engineered to be invisible to the user. Such malicious apps often give attackers complete control of the gadget. For ...

When combined with Web threats, the new rootkit is proving to be both a destructive and prolific combination, security experts say. The rootkit models a similar virus from several years ago but with ...

A lot of malicious software originates in the former Eastern Bloc and other once-communist nations. Theories of why that is vary: Perhaps unemployed workers in those countries are highly educated in ...

Listen to the Computerworld TechCast: Rootkits. If an illegal hacker wants to do something to your system, such as plant a virus, a Trojan horse program or spyware, he has to gain access to the system ...

Further investigation of the infamous rootkit software shipped on Sony CDs has found ties to the iPod. Was this a secret deal with Apple or a desperate attempt to ride the iPod's ...

Over the past month, a new type of malicious software has emerged, using a decades-old technique to hide itself from anti-virus software. The malware, called Trojan.Mebroot by Symantec, installs ...

The Sophos rootkit tool is actually fairly useful, but it's really the last thing to use for consumer cleanup after malwarebytes and a good AV scan.