Sophos Anti-Rootkit updated – download it for free

Graham Cluley
@gcluley

Sophos Anti-Rootkit is, judging by our download stats, one of our most popular free tools – helping computer users scan, detect and removes any rootkit that is hidden on their computer using advanced rootkit detection technology.

I’m delighted to say that we have now updated our free rootkit detection and removal tool to support 64-bit versions of Windows and the upcoming Windows 7.

Most of the Windows XP rootkits that we analyse in SophosLabs won’t work on Windows 7. This is especially true of the more advanced rootkits that usually do some very build/version-specific DKOM (Direct Kernel Object Manipulation).

There are some proof-of-concept rootkits around that have been specially written to work on x64 Windows 7, disabling or otherwise circumventing the secure driver loading system. Some of these were revealed at the recent BlackHat conference, for example. However, we have yet to see any of these…

Read more in my article on the Naked Security website.

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Graham Cluley is a veteran of the anti-virus industry having worked for a number of security companies since the early 1990s when he wrote the first ever version of Dr Solomon's Anti-Virus Toolkit for Windows. Now an independent security analyst, he regularly makes media appearances and is an international public speaker on the topic of computer security, hackers, and online privacy. Follow him on Twitter at @gcluley, on Mastodon at @[email protected], or drop him an email.