HijackThis is a popular free windows program that generates a complete report of registry and file settings that can aide in detection and removal of spyware. It displays all the objects that might be malicious alongside legitimate settings and files without making any distinction between the two. Therefore, it is imperative you use it with great care, or preferably with the help from an anti-spyware community.

Merijn, HijackThis’ author, announced Monday through a post on his web site that he has sold HijackThis to Trend Micro:

As some of you might have seen several IT news websites are offering Trend Micro HijackThis 2.00 beta. An official statement will be posted on their website soon, but since this is a public beta of theirs I figured it’d be best if I answered the question I’m going to get asked a lot, right now.
This is not fake, I sold HijackThis to TrendMicro. Their product incorporates all changes, updates and fixes that I was planning on adding in the v1.99.2 release. I made sure of that and I hope no one will be disappointed with it.
While TrendMicro does not officially support HijackThis yet, I expect they will once it goes final.

I sold HijackThis because I had been sitting on an unfinished update for over a year and I still could not make enough time to finish it. My uni classes are taking up a lot of time and I want to set my goals a bit wider than just the antispyware business (though I still love it). Sitting on an unfinished product until it becomes obsolete is not useful, so I decided to transfer the responsibility to TrendMicro (who have also taken care of my CWShredder) so they can give it proper attention and support. Where the will take HijackThis, I do not know - but I am sure they will respect its goals and what it stands for.

Several members of anti-spyware groups expressed concern with the sale as TrendMicro has purchased other anti-spyware programs in the past and allowed them to languish. “Trend will only kill it off like they did cwsshredder,” said therock247uk of 247Fixes.com.

Trend Micro states on their site that they do not officially support HiJackThis. I hope this isn’t an ominous sign of Trend Micro’s future plans for it.

[Trend Micro Hijack This]

[tags]hijackthis, hijack this, trend micro, Merijn[/tags]