Once installed, a rootkit has the ability to alter virtually every aspect of the operating system and to also completely hide its existence from most antivirus programs. While there are examples of beneficial, or at least benign, rootkits, they are generally considered to be malicious. The name stuck regardless of operating system and today even Windows rootkits bear that name despite having no such root user on the system. The most privileged user on these systems is named root, ergo a rootkit is an application that provides root access to the system. Rootkits are so named because the first rootkits targeted Unix-like operating systems. Rootkits typically install themselves into Ring Zero and thus inherit the highest level of access possible. Conceptually, these different levels of control are illustrated in the protection ring model with the all-powerful kernel inhabiting Ring Zero and mere human applications in the outer rings. On the other hand, applications that us humans directly interact with, such as word processors and web browsers, need relatively little control to do their job.

The operating system heart, the kernel, needs to have absolute control over every piece of hardware and software in the computer in order to do its job. Different classes of programs need different permissions in order to do their job. In the run of a day you probably use many different programs on your computer. Some background on why rootkits are so evil

5 free rootkit removal, detection and scanner programs.Some background on why rootkits are so evil.

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