You Say Rootkit, I Say Tomato

Symantec is denying the assertion made earlier in the week that its Norton SystemWorks product installs a rootkit. Although the company acknowledged its existence, it denies it’s a rootkit, calling it instead a “hidden folder”. F-Secure, whose software picked up the rootkit hidden folder, says that the difference between what Symantec is doing and the Sony BMG rootkit is “ideological”, and isn’t anywhere as malicious since it can be turned off or uninstalled by the user. Symantec now says it’s working with some trade bodies to try to develop a definition of rootkit, and that the changing nature of malware makes hiding files no longer a viable option. All this talk still clouds the fact that the hidden folder could be used to cloak malicious files on someone’s PC — the exact sort of thing security software is supposed to prevent.

I personally have no real issue with ‘rootkits’ by companies that protect us from virii. It’s another thing to have those rootkits give crackers and trojan writers an advantage. I hope to see they can fix these ‘holes’ to make sure that infiltration is impossible. Either way, I recommend McAfee or F-Secure if you want a solid Virus Scanner. Source: TechDirt.