See, rootkits embed themselves into the operating system in such a way that allows many legitimate and important function calls and data to be passed through their oversight. The biggest issue with rootkits, beyond their intended operations, is how to get rid of them. As the years progressed, it became apparent to cyber-criminals that the employment of rootkits was the way to go, and therefore, we have rootkit malware like ZeroAccess and Rustock. Rootkits have been around for about 20 years and were originally developed for non-malicious purposes and not even for the Windows operating system. This means that rootkits can completely control the operating system as well as hide any presence of its existence. Thanks! What is a Rootkit?Ī rootkit is a special type of malware that embeds itself deep into the operating system at a level that allows it to manipulate the information the operating system sends back to the user as well as applications.

Finally, Malwarebytes bears no responsibility for issues that may arise during use of this tool, however all reasonable efforts will be made by Malwarebytes to assist in recovery should the need arise. Please be sure to backup any valued data you have before you proceed to use this tool, just as a precaution. If you do decide to use this tool in its current state, you are agreeing to the terms of our license agreement, included with the software as “License.rtf”. In saying that, there might be a chance that using this software could damage your system and you should use it AT YOUR OWN RISK. However, it is currently in a BETA status, meaning that we are still testing it out and making sure that it works across all operating systems and with all users, it also means that we cannot guarantee that the software will perform error free. Malwarebytes Anti-Rootkit, as you will find out in this blog post, is a very useful and powerful tool. To answer the call in the fight against rootkits, Malwarebytes has taken up arms and introduced a new soldier in the cyber-war.

Many antivirus solutions have a hard time even detecting rootkit activity, let alone removing it.

Did you know the term ‘malware’ refers to more than just viruses and worms? Did you know that there are types of malware that infect your system at so deep a level that the operating system doesn’t even realize they are there? Did you know that some malware could make the files, services and running processes associated with its operations invisible? This kind of malware is known as a rootkit and it is a serious problem in today’s computer security world.

Malwarebytes scan for rootkits