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What is a root kit? A root kit describes mostly malicious software with one main characteristic: the process tries to hide itself from the user by manipulating file, registry, and other important access queries which makes rootkits especially hard to detect.
Detection methods include using an alternative and trusted operating system, behavioral-based methods, signature scanning, difference scanning, and memory dump analysis. Removal can be complicated or practically impossible, especially in cases where the rootkit resides in the kernel; reinstallation of the operating system may be the only available solution to the problem.
There are at least five types of rootkit, ranging from those at the lowest level in firmware (with the highest privileges), through to the least privileged user-based variants