Rootkit May Be Culprit in Recent Windows Crashes
Summary: A systems administrator at a Texas technology services firm reported that at least three customers suffered blue screens of death after installing Tuesday's Windows security patches, and closer inspection found each machine had been previously infected with a rootkit. Scans of the affected atapi.sys storage driver pointed to a rootkit known as TDSS or Pakes, detected by Microsoft Security Essentials as Win32/Alureon.A, which Microsoft's own report says was removed nearly 2 million times from Windows systems in the first half of 2009.
Key Takeaway: Alureon was already among Microsoft's top 10 detected threats, with roughly 2 million removals in six months, so machines crashing on a patch may be revealing an infection that was present and hidden before the update ever arrived.
Read the original at Krebs on Security ↗
- Topics
- Vulnerabilities & Patching
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