[Alas Babylon!]

My only concern about the Microsoft link is the fact that it’s so old. November of 2011. So I did a search in the Malware Protection site for “Java Rootkit” and got the following, sorted by date:

http://www.microsoft.com/security/portal/Threat/Encyclopedia/Search.aspx?query=java%20rootkit&showall=False&CBF=False&sortby=date&sortdir=desc

Looks bad. Every day another new one.

Still, as I said, we have several major apps we support that uses Java, and getting rid of them would be a sure PITA and a possible show stopper.

As a stopgap, ALWAYS ensure you antivirus/anti-spyware software is running always, and updated everyday!!!!!

[LouieFisk]

"Still, as I said, we have several major apps we support that
uses Java, and getting rid of them would be a sure
PITA and a possible show stopper."

Yeah, it's as I said, it depends on how much you depend on
it/frequency of use. But rootkits can be mighty nasty.
I consider a severe infection as making a machine comprised, time to format
and reload the OS.
But if a person does uninstall Java he should be sure
to get rid of the old versions, too. Java
keeps them installed for some reason.