Sony DRM Installs Rootkit

I was just showing that to someone here --nasty, isn't it?

And only likely to get nastier, eh? :OS

IMO, Sony has opened itself to a huge liability issue. Grab a bag of popcorn and wait for the class action movie on this one.

Let Lawyer Army Battle Royale commence! ;O)

tip: keep an old system for a ripper.

Slashdot had been buzzing about this.

"A couple of days ago we posted a story about Sony DRM installing a rootkit. Since then we have seen many more stories on the subject that I thought were worth sharing. manno gave us a link to the inquirer and salemnic sent us a page from the washington post. smallfries gave us one from PC Pro. It's nice to see this story not getting lost in the cracks since the implications are gigantic."
http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/11/02/1421250&tid=233&tid=17

And while some of my money regrettably still ends up in the hands of the clueless jerky recording industry folks due to my online music subscriptions, at least I'm not supporting *covert* DRM crap :)

Loving it :O) Ordinary Joe on the street will understand that. Good call Slashdotters.

I was reading about this on F-Secure's blog. Nice to know Sony make software that AntiVirus programmes find..... heh.

It's ok to install software without the person knowing, and in doing that, opening them up to a greater risk of virus infections, buy copying CD's, nooooooo, you can't do that!

Infected implies the right invective, but DRM? I could mention that to half the people I know (the non tech-savvy half) and they wouldn't know what I meant until I explained it stopped them playing CDs. Its just another meaningless acronym.

Actually scratch that, it makes DRM sound like the new SARS. Awesome.

The only bit they need to remember is the "infected" bit, plus that what infected them was a sony published CD.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/11/03/sony_rootkit_drm/

If only MS had this turnaround.

Ah, and F-Secure are now reporting that Sony have updated the DRM software, no longer trying to hide, and the update removes the old version as well.

Still a pain, and still difficult to remove, but a bit of an improvement....
F-Secure were in discussions with Sony about it anyway, and I'm sure the /. effect prompted them to do something about it.

The BBC picks up on it, thus adding a bit of mainstream pressure.

it's hitting the fan now

However, Sony's decision to offer a 'patch' that fails to remove the DRM code suggests it isn't too concerned by the howls of outrage heard this week from sophisticated PC users.

Witless managers are never too concerned until they are made part of the exodus during a bankruptcy. Even then, they are too clueless to recognise their contribution to the failure.

Let Lawyer Army Battle Royale commence!

Bigtime! It appears that Sony has messed with Texas.

http://www.kwtx.com/news/headlines/1996172.html

Sony sez:

Translation:
Please God, just let this go away without it ripping the company a new one.

Please form an orderly queue. A post from the UK Guardian newspaper technology blog entitled 'Sony lawsuits, boycotts' contains the following:

I don't think Sony has quite woken up to how bad the "rootkit" episode could get. The Electronic Frontier Foundation "along with two leading national class action law firms, today filed a lawsuit against Sony BMG, demanding that the company repair the damage ...