Rootkits and Bootkits

13THE RISE OF MBR RANSOMWARE

So far, the examples of malware described in this book all belong to a particular class: computer trojans with rootkit or bootkit functionality whose intention is to persist on victims’ systems long enough to perform various malicious activities—committing browser click fraud, sending spam, opening a backdoor, or creating an HTTP proxy, to name just a few. These trojans use bootkit persistence methods to persevere on infected computers and rootkit functionality to remain undetected.

In this chapter, we’ll take a look at ransomware, a family of malware with a very different modus operandi. As the name suggests, the ...