The latest release of Hitman Pro will remove the infamous Trojan Popureb without the need to reinstall the operating system.
Hengelo, June 30, 2011 - SurfRight, a developer of tools that give users more control over their PC security, today announced that Hitman Pro 3.5.9 build 126 will remove the infamous Trojan "Popureb" without the need to reinstall the operating system as previously advised by Microsoft.
Malware like Popureb overwrites the hard drive's Master Boot Record (MBR), the first sector – sector 0 – where code is stored to bootstrap the operating system after the computer's BIOS completed its start-up checks. The rootkit hides the MBR by hooking the DriverStartIo of the harddisk driver atapi.sys, making it effectively invisible to both the operating system and most security software.
"The Cloud Assisted Miniport Hook Bypass technology that was added to Hitman Pro in an earlier release this month is designed to detect these sophisticated rootkits", according to Mark Loman, CEO of SurfRight. "Our Cloud Assisted Miniport Hook Bypass is capable of detecting and removing the Popureb bootkit."
Hitman Pro version 3.5.9 build 126 contains a new Tool Action: Replace with Standard MBR. This new Tool Action offers users a means to overwrite a non-standard MBR and return it to a clean state when malicious code is detected. It is only available to users when scanning a system with Hitman Pro in Early Warning Scoring (EWS) mode. Users do not need to use the Windows Recovery Console to return the MBR to a clean state.