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A comment on Sophisticated OS X Backdoor Discovered. Parent comment

Re:Sophisticated OS X Backdoor Discovered by caf on Thursday September 08, 2016 @07:34PM (#12458416)
Right. a "rootkit" was a kit of tools you deploy once you have obtained root (on someone else's server).
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Re:Sophisticated OS X Backdoor Discovered by cmdrfred on Thursday September 08, 2016 @08:27PM (#12458755)
I always thought of them as a way to gain root. As in privilege escalation.
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Re:Sophisticated OS X Backdoor Discovered by detaro on Thursday September 08, 2016 @08:33PM (#12458788)
A rootkit might come with tools for that, but the actual rootkit generally requires you having root (or some other privileged role) to deploy it. E.g. a Linux rootkit commonly is a kernel module, which you can only load if you have already obtained root privileges.
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