How to detect rootkits on windows xp

The commercial version offers a much broader array of products including hardening, reporting, and support for non-Linux operating systems. A skilled administrator will have to interpret the scan results to determine if any action needs to be taken. Keep in mind that a rootkit is malware. The best practices which will protect your system from any type of virus will go a long way to protecting your systems against rootkits as well:. In addition to those general steps, rootkit protection requires a proactive stance.

Install a rootkit detector now, initialize it, and run it at least daily if not more often. Privilege Ring Hertzsprung at English Wikipedia. This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed. Comparitech uses cookies. More info. Menu Close. Antivirus The best free rootkit removal, detection and scanner programs. We are reader supported and may receive a commission when you make purchases using the links on our site.

Jon Watson Linux and internet security expert. What is rootkit malware? Contents [ hide ] What is rootkit malware? Some background on why rootkits are so evil Rootkit types Where do rootkits come from? Latest guides. Latest Antivirus.

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General articles: Answers to frequently asked questions. Answers to frequently asked questions. Latest update: June 10, ID: To protect your devices against threats, install Kaspersky Internet Security. Apply it with the key -silent to disinfect a large number of computers in a network. All these files can be copied to quarantine. This can be applied in order to start the tool centrally across a network.

These include the following malicious applications: Backdoor. Memory-Based Rootkits Memory-based rootkits are malware that has no persistent code and therefore does not survive a reboot. User-mode Rootkits There are many methods by which rootkits attempt to evade detection. When an application performs a directory listing that would otherwise return results that contain entries identifying the files associated with the rootkit, the rootkit intercepts and modifies the output to remove the entries.

The Windows native API serves as the interface between user-mode clients and kernel-mode services and more sophisticated user-mode rootkits intercept file system, Registry, and process enumeration functions of the Native API. This prevents their detection by scanners that compare the results of a Windows API enumeration with that returned by a native API enumeration. Kernel-mode Rootkits Kernel-mode rootkits can be even more powerful since, not only can they intercept the native API in kernel-mode, but they can also directly manipulate kernel-mode data structures.

A common technique for hiding the presence of a malware process is to remove the process from the kernel's list of active processes. Since process management APIs rely on the contents of the list, the malware process will not display in process management tools like Task Manager or Process Explorer. Since persistent rootkits work by changing API results so that a system view using APIs differs from the actual view in storage, RootkitRevealer compares the results of a system scan at the highest level with that at the lowest level.

The highest level is the Windows API and the lowest level is the raw contents of a file system volume or Registry hive a hive file is the Registry's on-disk storage format. Doing so would require intercepting RootkitRevealer's reads of Registry hive data or file system data and changing the contents of the data such that the rootkit's Registry data or files are not present. However, this would require a level of sophistication not seen in rootkits to date.

Changes to the data would require both an intimate knowledge of the NTFS, FAT and Registry hive formats, plus the ability to change data structures such that they hide the rootkit, but do not cause inconsistent or invalid structures or side-effect discrepancies that would be flagged by RootkitRevealer.

Is there a sure-fire way to know of a rootkit's presence In general, not from within a running system. A kernel-mode rootkit can control any aspect of a system's behavior so information returned by any API, including the raw reads of Registry hive and file system data performed by RootkitRevealer, can be compromised.

While comparing an on-line scan of a system and an off-line scan from a secure environment such as a boot into an CD-based operating system installation is more reliable, rootkits can target such tools to evade detection by even them. RootkitRevealer requires that the account from which its run has assigned to it the Backup files and directories, Load drivers and Perform volume maintenance tasks on Windows XP and higher privileges.

The Administrators group is assigned these privileges by default. In order to minimize false positives run RootkitRevealer on an idle system. For best results exit all applications and keep the system otherwise idle during the RootkitRevealer scanning process.

If you have questions or problems please visit the Sysinternals RootkitRevealer Forum. To scan a system launch it on the system and press the Scan button. RootkitRevealer scans the system reporting its actions in a status area at the bottom of its window and noting discrepancies in the output list.

The options you can configure:. If you specify the -c option it does not report progress and discrepancies are printed in CSV format for easy import into a database. You can perform scans of remote systems by executing it with the Sysinternals PsExec utility using a command-line like the following:. This is a screenshot of RootkitRevealer detecting the presence of the popular HackerDefender rootkit.