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04 July 2011

Rootkit particularly more dangerous than many other threats

BUCHAREST, Romania – July 5th, 2011. BitDefender, an award-winning provider of innovative Internet security solutions has released a free removal tool for TDL4, a rootkit-based e-threat that uses custom techniques to stay absolutely hidden after it has successfully infected your system.

The TDL4 e-threat is a crimeware tool that has been around since 2008, having been steadily developed over this time. It is also one of the few threats of its type able to infect both 32- and 64-bit versions of Windows, which makes it particularly more dangerous.

Once it has successfully infected the computer, TDL4 compromises the operating system’s security and integrity, which may prevent some antivirus solutions from detecting and eliminating the threat. Compromised computers are added to the TDL4 botnet and used for various illegal purposes such as advertising fraud, among others.

Given these developments, BitDefender has added detection, removal and disinfection to its antimalware solutions, so customers have been protected against this e-threat since its discovery.

Catalin Cosoi, head of BitDefender Threats Lab, observed:

“We have been monitoring this threat since it first emerged. Whilst it has no direct damaging potential itself, the danger lies in how it is used by other pieces of malware to hide themselves and gain access to computer privileges.

“Especially as this threat has the potential to prevent detection and removal by some antivirus solutions, downloading our free removal tool is the sensible way for users to ensure their computer is not infected.”

Computer users who are not protected by a BitDefender security solution can download the free removal tool for either 32-bit or 64-bit versions of Windows from Malware City:

http://www.malwarecity.com/blog/free-removal-tool-for-tdl4-available-now-1106.html

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