for as long as cyber criminals have been cooking up malicious software to do
stuff like steal your precious data the security industry has been thinking up
creative names for their little schemes Trojans worms ransomware you get the
idea but one of the most Sinister forms of malware prevalent today is the
dreaded root kit and although to the Layman this sounds like some kind of
dental procedure an actual root kit on your PC can be far more unpleasant but
then what exactly are they and why can they be even more problematic than other
types of computer infections great question like with a lot of the other
threats to your system the name rootkit reveals a lot it's derived from the
concept of root access in the operating
system Unix which allows a user broad permissions to change files and settings
and while the means by which different rootkits access to uh usually off-limits
parts of the computer differ all root kits serve the same general function to
conceal either their own presence or the
presence of another piece of malware so that it can carry out its nefarious
Deeds on your system without you ever knowing and it's because of this
concealing behavior that root kits are often very difficult to remove as many
users in the mid 2000s found out when they realized Sony had shipped a metric
butt ton of music CDs with root kits designed for you guessed it copy
protection these rootkits hid the DRM
software which limited what users could do with their Optical drives and also
caused serious system slowdowns and introduced a ton of security flaws that
other malware creators were able to take advantage of and then when Sony finally
released a removal tool after news of the root kit went viral all it did was
cause even more issues so how do rootkits hide themselves anyway while
some root kits just inject themselves into your programs somewhat like
traditional computer viruses the more dangerous forms run as part of your
operating systems kernel no not the Chicken Guy but the core part of your OS
that allows your programs to communicate with your Hardware through things like
device drivers since drivers usually run
in kernel mode many rootkits disguise
themselves as drivers which is why you should only download drivers from
trusted sources like the manufacturer's website no matter how badly you want to
get your fancy new graphics card working what makes kernel mode rootkit so
Insidious is that they essentially appear to be a part of the OS itself
meaning you can't really trust your antivirus program to detect it or
anything else your system says about itself for that matter and as if that
weren't bad enough other kinds of root kits even go beyond infecting your OS
kernel by doing things like contaminating your hard drive's boot
sector often done to break encryption or
getting into your systems firmware such as your motherboard or GPU BIOS if that
happens not even completely reformatting
your PC will help well lonus that all
sounds pretty darn awful um if I don't
even know I have a root kit how can I get rid of them that admittedly is a
challenge larger organizations have tried strategies like logging suspicious
access requests through a firewall or dumping everything in A System's memory
to look for malicious code but these aren't the kinds of things a home user
can easily do modern motherboards with UEFI biosis have some features to block
rootkits such as secure boot but this solution has been criticized for keeping
a user from doing legitimate things like installing multiple operating systems so
while some simpler root kits can be detected and removed by your favorite
anti- malware program the best counter strategy is to just be super careful
about what you download speaking of
things to be downloaded why don't you download some knowledge to your brain
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better yet little bits is offering new customers 20 bucks off their first kit
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it so thanks for watching guys if you like the video do that thing if you
disliked it do the other thing uh check out our other channels we've got a great
video on Channel Super Fun right now it's like part two of the Nerf battle uh
the fire department shows up so definitely not going to want to miss
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