Software for Secure Computing: Trend Micro’s RUBotted
Posted by: Ken Harthun
I stumbled across this nifty free tool when running an online scan at Trend Micro’s HouseCall site. Botnets are a big problem, accounting for most of the spam on the Internet, not to mention their use in stealing financial information and launching denial-of-service (DoS) attacks. RUBotted (Beta) “…monitors your computer for suspicious activities and regularly checks with an online service to identify behavior associated with Bots. Upon discovering a potential infection, RUBotted prompts you to scan and clean your computer.” Note that this tool doesn’t clean anything–you still have to use antivirus software. Alternatively, you can take advantage of one of the many online malware scanners.
The tool runs on Windows 2000, Windows XP Home and Professional, Windows 2003 Server, and Windows Vista (32-bit only), providing the latest service packs are installed. There’s one caveat, however: Trend says, “RUBotted cannot protect computers running Panda Internet Security 2008.”
I hope that this effort by Trend starts a trend (pun intended) of vendors providing similar secure computing software, perhaps incorporating bot removal tools to boot. We’ll see.


