How to Check for Rootkits on Dedicated Server

In this post, you will be taught How to Check for Rootkits on Dedicated Server. Among the various malware that attacks individual systems and infrastructures, Rootkits are the most dangerous. Because in most cases they are hard to identify. If they manage to reach the core of the operating system or the middleware of infrastructure components such as CPU or BIOS, they may remain on the system forever.

What is Rootkits?

Rootkit virus is the most dangerous type of malware. Rootkits, like other types of malware, are computer programs that have high hiding power and are able to hide in files, registry settings, or processes and steal user information. In general, Rootkits are used for the purpose of remote access, control of computer systems or computer networks, and information extraction. The most obvious sign of the presence of a Rootkit in a system is a slowing down of the system speed, which indicates that a malicious agent is working in the background.

How do Rootkits work?

The working mechanism of most Rootkits is complex. Rootkits function in such a way that they create and execute processes on the victim’s operating system (Windows, Linux, and rarely Mac) that software such as Task Manager cannot see. Next, in operating systems such as Windows, they create keys in the Windows registry that act as a bridge and allow the Rootkit to connect to the Internet. Communication channels are created so that network tools such as Netstat cannot see them.

Then, Rootkits pave the way for malware to enter the operating system by creating back doors on the victim’s system. Malware that is introduced into victims’ operating systems by Rootkits is divided into two groups:

1) The first group covers malware easily detected by security software. This malware enters the victim’s operating system with the aim of creating breaches or gaps in the main memory and is used to prepare the ground for the entry of the main malware.

2) The second group is malware that is not detected by security software and enters systems with the purpose of eavesdropping and collecting user information. Rootkits are mainly created with an assembly programming language and in more specific examples with C language, so they have the smallest size, their execution speed is high and they are easily hidden from the sight of anti-rootkit software. Due to the fact that Rootkits are designed with the aim of infecting the kernel of the operating system, their power, and performance are almost unlimited.

How to Install Rkhunter on Dedicated Server

In the previous section, you learned about Rootkits and how it works. In this section, we want to teach you Checking for Rootkits on Dedicated Server. To do this, just follow the steps below. We suggest that you buy USA Dedicated Server from the NeuronVM website in the first step. Then, to be able to install the Rootkit software, you need to use SSH on your server. After entering the dedicated server environment, you must follow the installation steps as follows.

To determine the installation location of Rkhunter, it is necessary to run the following command:

cd installation-directory/

Now you can install Rkhunter by running the following command:

wget http://sourceforge.net/projects/rkhunter/files/rkhunter/1.3.6/rkhunter-1.3.6.tar.gz/download

After downloading the file, it is necessary to decompress it using the following command:

tar zxvf rkhunter-1.3.6.tar.gz

Go to the Rkhunter directory by running the following command:

cd rkhunter-1.3.2/

Finally, you can install Rkhunter with the help of the following command:

sh installer.sh --layout default --install

Checking for Rootkits on Dedicated Server

In the previous section, you learned how to install Rkhunter. After Rkhunter is successfully installed, you can view the command guide by running the following command:

rkhunter --help

You can see an example command below:

rkhunter -c

The important thing to note is that chkrootkit is a tool to check for Rootkit symptoms. So you need to install it. To do this, you can follow the steps below.

In the first step, you must refer to the chkrootkit installation directory by running the following command:

cd installation directory

Then you need to download chkrootkit by running the following command:

wget ftp://ftp.pangeia.com.br/pub/seg/pac/chkrootkit.tar.gz

Extract chkrootkit with the help of the following command:

tar zxvf chkrootkit.tar.gz

Go to the chkrootkit directory by running the following command:

cd chkrootkit.tar.gz

Finally, run the following command:

make sense

You can use the following command to run chkrootkit:

./chkrootkit

For example, you can see a lot of data by running the following command:

./chkrootkit -x |more

Conclusion

In this post, after introducing the Rootkit, we taught you How to Check for Rootkits on Dedicated Server. The best way to identify and remove Rootkit is to continuously manually monitor irregular computer activities and monitor when files are stored on storage media at different time intervals. In order to protect themselves from Rootkits, users and especially organizations should install software patches, keep the operating system up-to-date and avoid downloading suspicious files.