


On a more positive note, a buggy kernel rootkit is easier to detect since it leaves behind a trail of clues and breadcrumbs for an antivirus or anti-rootkit. If the rootkit has numerous bugs and glitches, then this heavily impacts a computer’s performance. Kernel rootkits are advanced and complex pieces of malware and require advanced technical knowledge to properly create one. What this means is that the rootkit can effectively add new code to the OS, or even delete and replace OS code.

This type of rootkit is designed to function at the level of the operating system itself. In this section, we’ll go through kernel rootkits, hardware & software rootkits, Hyper-V, and more. Of course, there are cases when malicious actors would manually exploit vulnerabilities before dropping a rootkit on the victim’s machine. Most are designed to automatically identify and exploit backdoors or, if none is present, rubber-stamp the installation process of legacy or deprecated software. Despite their overtly clandestine behavior, rootkits are only intended to bypass user authentication mechanisms before the arrival of a malicious payload (i.e., they often work in tandem with trojans or other types of viruses).Īs rootkits come in advance of various infectors, they do possess some degree of autonomy. Rootkits are malicious computer programs designed to infiltrate a machine for the purpose of obtaining administrator or system-level privileges. In this article, we will discuss the functionality of a rootkit, go through classifications, detection methodologies, and, of course, rootkit prevention.
