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Rootkit gangs fight for control of infected PCs |
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Source: The Register UK - Posted by Anthony Pell
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A turf war is developing between rootkit-touting cybercrooks over control of infected PCs. Rootkits are strains of malware designed to hide below the level of anti-virus scanners and programmed to carry out functions such as click fraud.
The Russian developer of one of the more potent strains of rootkit, TDL, is supplementing his income by selling the source code for the malware to other cybercrooks via underground forums.
But one of the groups who bought the code has done its own tinkering to develop a related strain of rootkit, called ZeroAccess. As well as adding click fraud modules the second group has begun bundling functionality that uninstalls the TDL rootkit from infected machines, effectively double crossing the original TDL3 author, according to an analysis by web security firm Webroot.
"The original author of the TDL3 rootkit made two versions of TDL3. He kept the second version of the rootkit code for himself and sold the first version to the guys behind ZeroAccess," Jacques Erasmus of Webroot told El Reg.
Read this full article at The Register UK
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