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What is a rootkit?
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Quote:It’s not a virus. It’s not a worm and it’s not a trojan. Nor is it spyware and – despite what imagery the name might evoke – it’s definitely not a piece of agricultural machinery. So then, what exactly is a rootkit?

While being closely associated with malware, rootkits are not inherently malicious. However, their ability to manipulate a computer’s operating system and provide remote users with administrator access has – unsurprisingly – made them popular tools among cybercriminals.

Read on to learn more about what rootkits are, find out how they work and what you can do to protect your system against this long-standing cyber threat.

The definition of a rootkit
The term ‘rootkit’ originally comes from the Unix world, where the word ‘root’ is used to describe a user with the highest possible level of access privileges, similar to an ‘Administrator’ in Windows. The word ‘kit’ refers to the software that grants root-level access to the machine. Put the two together and you get ‘rootkit’, a program that gives someone – with legitimate or malicious intentions – privileged access to a computer.

Because it is able to make changes at the most fundamental level, a rootkit is able to conceal itself, execute files, make changes to a system and track its use without the original owner even being aware of its presence.

Historically, rootkits were confined to the world of Unix and Linux, but eventually made their way over to the Windows operating system, starting with NTRootkit, a tool targeting Windows NT that was first spotted back in 1999. Since then, rootkits have rapidly grown in popularity on Windows and today are a common, stubborn blight on the digital world.

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