►In what’s set to be 2005’s hottest story yet Sony have been found to install illegal Trojan horse-based digital restrictions management (DRM) technology that installs itself as a rootkit on Windows PCs.
Users who purchase certain Sony Music CDs from online stores like Amazon are subject to this rootkit being installed on their machines. According to Sysinternals’ Mark Russinovich the kit installs itself in hidden directories and attempts to mask its existence as “Essential System Tools”.
So what exactly is Sony playing at? Installing rootkit software that’s not identified in its EULA and rendering machines useless if users try to remove the software! This is taking the RIAA effort a little too far. ◄
Sony, Rootkits and Digital Rights Management Gone Too Far](http://www.sysinternals.com/Blog/)** (Link to Mark’s blog on SysInternals.)
World of Warcraft hackers using Sony BMG rootkit
Published: 2005-11-03
Want to cheat in your online game and not get caught? Just buy a Sony BMG copy protected CD.
World of Warcraft hackers have confirmed that the hiding capabilities of Sony BMG’s content protection software can make tools made for cheating in the online world impossible to detect. The software–deemed a “rootkit” by many security experts–is shipped with tens of thousands of the record company’s music titles.
Blizzard Entertainment, the maker of World of Warcraft, has created a controversial program that detects cheaters by scanning the processes that are running at the time the game is played. Called the Warden, the anti-cheating program cannot detect any files that are hidden with Sony BMG’s content protection, which only requires that the hacker add the prefix “$sys$” to file names.
Despite making a patch available on Wednesday to consumers to amend its copy protection software’s behavior, Sony BMG and First 4 Internet, the maker of the content protection technology, have both disputed claims that their system could harm the security of a Windows system. Yet, other software makers that rely on the integrity of the operating system are finding that hidden code makes security impossible.
To punish Sony the courts should make their total media assets available for download without any hidden trojans for 1 month on the net. That will teach them.
Sony’s controversial anti-piracy CD software has been labelled as spyware by Microsoft.
The software giant said the XCP copy protection system counted as malicious software under the rules it uses to define what Windows should be protected against.
It is planning to include detection and removal tools for XCP in its weekly update to its anti-spyware software. The news came as Sony BMG suspended production of CDs that use XCP.
You know what's ironic and retarded at the same time... sony is choosing to punish the people who still even bother buying their CDs instead of illegal downloads. As a result even more people, people who currently buy CDs, will turn to illegal methods. What a bunch of a$$holes...
