Sunday, October 30, 2005

RootKits & Sony Music

Quick note - Sony has agreed to stop making these CD's (not that they will stop forever or even pull the ones already out there from the market). Microsoft has stated that they will include something in their December 2005 update to their Anti-Spyware software to remove this rootkit if it has been found.

In the meantime, return those CD's to your retailer if you've just bought them. Don't give them to anyone else and be careful. The response from Sony in this case was pretty awful, even going so far as to say that most people don't know what a rootkit is so they shouldn't be concerned. The same could have been said of computer virii for some time. You may not have known what a computer virus was, but if you were infected, you cared quite a bit.

RootKits & Sony Music

While I don't really buy a whole lot of music from Sony, this article raised quite a few concerns about what Sony is doing to "protect" their content with DRM. As most of the comments agree, this is going way too far. The writer includes all of the steps he went through to remove the malware installed by inserting this CD into his computer. Another great argument against using Autorun on your machine. If you're using it now, disable it. Also, take a good luck at the CD's you buy and where you get them from.

http://www.sysinternals.com/blog/2005/10/sony-rootkits-and-digital-rights.html

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