Neat program exposes deeply hidden malware/spyware processes running in background

[astro]

This program is in available free in beta mode till March. It will expose the most deeply hidden spyware and malware processes that most antivirus and antispy apps can’t see or touch. Although it will expose the processes do not make any name changes or delertions to these hidden programs unless you are absolutely sure they are malware or spyware processes.

In addition to the malware the amount of bizarre crap (some quite old) being stealth loaded at boot was surprising.

Warning this is beta software. It worked prefectly for me, but be aware there are no guarantees being made re safety or functionality.

Try F-Secure BlackLight Beta

[fishbicycle]

I must be doing something right. My computer is clean. Still, cool program. I’m sure a lot of people will find it very useful.

[crowmanyclouds]

It only searches for rootkits.

[astro]

@crowmanyclouds

It only searches for rootkits.

It’s my understanding that a large portion of the deeply hidden type spyware/malware execution processes invisible to normal “anti” programs come from rootkit syle installs.

Rootkits for Windows work in a different way and are typically used to hide malicious software from for example an antivirus scanner. Rootkits are typically not malicious by themselves but are used for malicious purposes by viruses, worms, backdoors and spyware. A virus combined with a rootkit produces what was known as full stealth viruses in the MS-DOS environment.

How dangerous is a rootkit?

The rootkit itself does typically not cause deliberate damage. Its purpose is to hide software. But rootkits are used to hide malicious code. A virus, worm, backdoor or spyware program could remain active and undetected in a system for a long time if it uses a rootkit.

The malware may remain undetected even if the computer is protected with state-of-the-art antivirus. And the antivirus can’t remove something that it can’t see. The threat from modern malware combined with rootkits is very similar to full stealth viruses that caused a lot of headache during the MS-DOS era. All this makes rootkits a significant threat.

[BlackKnight]

If you want to check your computer for rootkits, you could also use RootkitRevealer.

It was written by Bryce Cogswell and Mark Russinovich. You may know Mr. Russinovich as the guy who got the word out about the Sony rootkit, after he found it on his own computer, using the above utility.

(There are other very nifty free utilities at the Sysinternals website. My favorite is probably ProcessExplorer, which is like the Windows Taskbar, only much, much better.)