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Viruses & Task Viewers
(lemmy.world)
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this post was submitted on 28 May 2024
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Depends on the malware.
With total access, nothing would prevent the malicious code from modifying the task viewer itself to make it ignore the resources it is using.
Accounting for every way malware might be discovered is difficult, but with enough system access, it's all possible.
It also depends on the viewer. I remember using
prctl()in C to chamge a process name and top showed my change but htop didn't. I'm sure a competent malware writer would be able to trick it thoughiirc, postgresql renames itself in htop to show its current status and which database it's operating on
True. There are various legitimate tools that are only really one step away from malware, so it's not too hard to imagine going that one step further.
Thinking specifically of the fact that a new process is allowed to change its apparent name, as well as creating secondary process pools, but there are bound to be other, deeper ways.