Hackers "fix" XP BSoD rootkit
An update released by Microsoft this month (MS10-015) broke XP machines that were infected with the TDL3 rootkit (also known as TDSS and Tidserv and many other names - more info here).
Well, a rootkit that causes crashes is bad for business, so the hackers had an update out in the matter of hours.
On last Tuesday Microsoft released a number of Windows updates, some of them critical because they fixed a 17 years old bug. After some users updated their Windows operating systems, they got a scaring and really annoying blue screen of death.
Most of those users were angry with Microsoft, but the problem this time is not related to Microsoft. Indeed a number of the users affected by this BSOD was infected by TDL3/TDSS rootkit.
More exactly, TDL3 rootkit looks incompatible with MS10-015 update. This is the cause of the BSOD. Problem resides in the lazyness of rootkit writers when writing the driver infection routine.
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Good news is that TDL3 authors care about us and they released in a couple hours a new updated version of the rootkit compatible with the Microsoft patch.
It's one big cat and mouse game between the good guys and the bad guys.