For the next month in a row, Microsoft has tried to eliminate a mutating rootkit that has infertile some Windows consumers from installing safety updates.

According to the Microsoft Malware Prevention Center (MMPC), this month's Malicious Software Removal Tool (MSRT) has washed the Alureon rootkit from over 360,000 Windows PCs because its May 11 discharges.

That symbolizes 18.2% of all MSRT detections for the month, extra than twice the 8.3% the rootkit accounted for in April.

The free MSRT is updated each month as part of Microsoft's monthly Patch Tuesday, and pushed to consumers using the same Windows Update mechanism used to serve up safety fixes.

April's version of MSRT, which was launched on April, too incorporated Alureon snuffle skills. Previous month, MSRT detached the rootkit as of additional than 260,000 Windows systems.

Even though the Alureon rootkit is no malware novice antivirus company Symantec recognized it in 2008 it primary made news last February when Microsoft confirmed that the rootkit reason infected PCs to crash when consumers applied a patch the company issued that month.