why rename hijackthis.exe?

[ft3ssgeek]

I've noticed as I've been reading through this forum, that people are often advised to rename hijackthis.exe (I think Gerbil always says to rename it imabunny.exe?)
I was just curious why you advise people to do this? Are viruses/trojans/spyware/malware that are known to attack it? Do antivirus programs flag it?
Anyway, just curious...Thanks!

[gerbil]

Yes, they do. Vundo is one obvious one that shuts its processes, removes its keys, when it sees hijackthis start. But sometimes we can tell if Vundo is active by other traces and so ask for the cleaning tool to be run without confirming the files and keys are there - that is just to save time. If we only mildly suspect the proper way would be to ask for a new scan with a changed filename for hijackthis.
Imabunny? well, someone once mentioned that they'd been silly and dl'd a pest - it went into my text from then.

[ft3ssgeek]

Ok, thanks! Even though I don't have any problems right now, would you recommend I go ahead and get a jumpstart on anything I might get and just change the filename now?

[gerbil]

Not really; if you have no problems you don't need specialised detection/cleaning tools on your sys. Plus they get updated very frequently to counter new threats, further some worry your
AV. Just stay clean behind a good firewall with a resident AV and you should be okay. Spywareblaster is very useful for blocking known bad sites. It's free.. have a look if you do not already have it..

[ft3ssgeek]

Thanks Gerbil,
I use AVG, Ad-Aware, and ZoneAlarm on my system and always make sure they are up to date. Have never tried Spywareblaster though, but will check it out.
I'm always on the lookout for cool little utilities and things and I really loved HJT when I checked it out...Another cool little utility I like is called Killbox...allows you delete bad processes when you reboot your computer before the processes have a chance to start up...www.killbox.net is the url...
Anyway, thanks for the info!