If you love to do computer diagnostics for possible malware and spyware infection, you will definitely know the HijackThis tool.

HijackThis (or HJT as we fondly call it) is a free tool that scans the computer to find software settings changed by malicious files (read malware, spyware and other potentially unwanted programs). HijackThis also have a good reporting tool that enables the community of experts to analyze and provide fix to the problem.

As per Trend Micro press release last Feb. 17, 2012, HijackThis is now an open source application and the Hijackthis source code is available via sourceforge.net.

Quoting the press release:

Trend Micro has offered HijackThis as a free tool since acquiring the antispyware freeware tool from its Netherlands-based creator, Merijn Bellekom in 2007. By then, it had already been downloaded more than 10 million times and was often used to submit logs to online discussion and help forums, such as Castlecops.com, Majorgeeks.com and Spywareinfo.com, to elicit comments that could help in cleaning infected desktops.

 

The press release also quoted the original HijackThis creator, Merijn Bellekom saying “This means that other people can build on a solid base to create or improve their own anti-malware tools”.

In my opinion this is really good news for the security community as a lot of online help forums (not just Castlecops, Majorgeeks and Spywareinfo community) uses the tool heavily. A win-win for Trend Micro and the infosec community if you will ask me 🙂

For more details on Hijackthis going Open Source kindly visit the Trend Micro press release.

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