We're excited to tell you that we have improved the scanning for rootkits. Beginning with the first updates in march we have added new anti rootkit plugins for Spybot - Search & Destroy. Apart from that we have also developed a new tool - the RootAlyzer

Rootkits are a technology that is more and more often used by malware to hide themselves on system level, making themselves invisible to standard tools. Our new plugins help Spybot-S&D to detect this malware, and our RootAlyzer shows you anything that uses certain rootkit technologies, even if it's not in Spybot-S&Ds detection database.

You can apply the new plugins for the rootkit search by just updating your Spybot-S&D as usual.

The RootAlyzer is a single tool which goes through the file system, the registry and process related lists. When you start RootAlyzer, it performs a very quick scan of a few important places, taking about a second on modern machines. To check the full system, you have the possibility of choosing a Deep Scan.

Currently, the RootAlyzer is a work in progress (with a new project tools category in our forum to track bugs and feature requests), but it's already helping to easily locate most of the current malware rootkits. It is compatible with Windows NT/2000/XP/2k3 and Vista. If you like to check out the new RootAlyzer you will find it in our forum.