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Comment by wilsonnb3 | Hacker News Reader

People really need to find a better word than 'rootkit' to describe software that users willingly and intentionally give root access.

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I think it's fair to say that a lot of users have no idea they're doing so, hence why changes like the one in TFA are necessary to encourage transparency around these practices

I've ran the installer for Vallorent. I don't remember it telling me it was going to go run code in ring 0. And I would likely have ended the install there if they listed any of the downsides.

For most gamers you'd have to invoke Cloud Strike, to explain whats happening. They play games not study CS.

I agree, we need something that emphasizes that it executes undesired functions. "Trojan horse" would fit better but it's associated with computer virii now. I think I would call it something like "Traitor software".. it generally does the functions you installed it for and pretends to be normal software but then when you aren't looking it betrays you later.

It's quite literally kit running as root...

It's quite literally not. Root is technically a user with extra rights (including modifying the kernel, but there is still an API the root user has to go through). This is running as part of the kernel. It's not running in userland "as root".

A rootkit is something that gives other users the power of root.

That's taking it too far. By that logic, rootkits can't exist for Windows because the super user is called "Administrator", not "root".

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