On July 26, McAfee will begin offering a new application called Rootkit Detective, designed to detect and remove dangerous rootkit attacks. The software will also help end users ward off the threats, as well as funnel new intelligence into the company's ongoing research operations. The freeware program promises the ability to find and remove rootkits -- self-cloaking malware attacks that install themselves as kernel modules or drivers and are most often used to hide other types of threats such as keyword-logging programs -- and send data about the attacks that are discovered back to McAfee.

Cybercrooks use rootkits to hide other nefarious programs on compromised PCs. Last year the number of rootkits hit 3,284 and has already more than doubled in the first half this year to 7,325. Since the initial trial release of Rootkit Detective in January, the application has been downloaded over 110,000 times. "Rootkit Detective offers the most comprehensive rootkit detection capabilities available today," said Ahmed Sallam, lead research architect at McAfee®. "We have achieved extremely high levels of accuracy, using various techniques to find anything that hides itself on a computer."

McAfee Rootkit Detective 1.0 is a program designed and developed by McAfee Avert Labs to proactively detect and clean rootkits that are running on the system. McAfee Rootkit Detective should only be used by knowledgeable individuals at the direction of, and with the support of, a representative from McAfee Avert Labs or McAfee Technical Support. Improper usage of this tool could result in damage to your applications or operating system.