Is Sony really doing this?

[dirtwarrior]

n 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".

What's more fun is that attempting to remove the rootkit with common tools that perform a RKR scan will render a Windows XP machine useslesss. "Users that stumble across the cloaked files with a RKR scan will cripple their computer if they attempt the obvious step of deleting the cloaked files," Mark wrote in an online blog entry yesterday.

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.

Source: http://neowin.net/

Source: Mark's Blog at Sysinternals

[xper]

Sony, Rootkits and Digital Rights Management Gone Too Far

Posted on Frontpage few days ago.

[Wicket20519]

Genius! Now MORE people will legally/illegally download music!

[DigeratiPrime]

Update Nov 7 2005:

http://games.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=0...221209&from=rss

Mark from Sysinternals has digged a little deeper into the Sony DRM and discovered it Phones Home with an ID for the CD being listened to. XCP Support claims that "The player has a standard rotating banner that connects the user to additional content (e.g. provides a link to the artist web site). The player simply looks online to see if another banner is available for rotation. The communication is one-way in that a banner is simply retrieved from the server if available. No information is ever fed back or collected about the consumer or their activities."

Also on this topic, Matt Nikki in the comments section discovered that the DRM can be bypassed simply by renaming your favourite ripping program with "$sys$" at the start of the filename and ripping the CD using this file, which is now undetectable even by the Sony DRM. You can use the Sony rootkit itself to bypass their own DRM!"

Also an Italian lawyer has filed suit against Sony on behalf of the Italian equivalent of the EFF.

HAHAHAHA, you reap what you sow! B)

Edited November 7, 2005 by DigeratiPrime

[suryad]

What has come over Sony? ****...when Sony was under that Japanese dude who was the CEO you could see Sony releasing some really cool products. **** what the heck is going on? Stupid stupid stupid but as DigeratiPRime said you reap what you sow and I think Sony should pay for this.

[dirtwarrior]

Boycott Sony and all its products

[jaclaz]

If you are interested, full story is on Mark Russinovich (Sysinternals) blog:

http://www.sysinternals.com/blog/2005/10/s...tal-rights.html

Sony found it necessary to provide a tool to reveal the rootkit:

http://cp.sonybmg.com/xcp/english/updates.html

However to alleviate any concerns that users may have about the program posing potential security vulnerabilities, this update has been released to enable users to remove this component from their computers.

jaclaz

[mjc]

Sony has also been known to limit the sound quality of mp3 files in their portable music players in order to promote their ATRAC3 file format, as well as using their proprietary and expensive to license Memory Stick and UMD Technologies.

Edited November 8, 2005 by mjc

[kurt476]

**** sony i think they should be punested for that.

[ColdFusion200]

off the frontpage:

Italian Police Asked to Investigate Sony DRM Code

[SiMoNsAyS]

list of cds using this rootkit:

* Trey Anastasio, Shine (Columbia)

* Celine Dion, On ne Change Pas (Epic)

* Neil Diamond, 12 Songs (Columbia)

* Our Lady Peace, Healthy in Paranoid Times (Columbia)

* Chris Botti, To Love Again (Columbia)

* Van Zant, Get Right with the Man (Columbia)

* Switchfoot, Nothing is Sound (Columbia)

* The Coral, The Invisible Invasion (Columbia)

* Acceptance, Phantoms (Columbia)

* Susie Suh, Susie Suh (Epic)

* Amerie, Touch (Columbia)

* Life of Agony, Broken Valley (Epic)

* Horace Silver Quintet, Silver’s Blue (Epic Legacy)

* Gerry Mulligan, Jeru (Columbia Legacy)

* Dexter Gordon, Manhattan Symphonie (Columbia Legacy)

* The Bad Plus, Suspicious Activity (Columbia)

* The Dead 60s, The Dead 60s (Epic)

* Dion, The Essential Dion (Columbia Legacy)

* Natasha Bedingfield, Unwritten (Epic)

* Ricky Martin, Life (Columbia).

take care

[ironfist241]

Bear in mind that the record division is separate from the PC hardware division, im not about to chuck my vaio off a balcony

[Zxian]

Bear in mind that the record division is separate from the PC hardware division, im not about to chuck my vaio off a balcony

Yes and no. They're still the same company, and the record company definately has the internal influence to install the anti-piracy software on new computers.

It's the big-brother approach that everyone hates...

[Scubar]

everyone who owns one of those cds should sue sony for as much as possible.

[jaclaz]

everyone who owns one of those cds should sue sony for as much as possible.

Someone already did:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/4424254.stm

Sony sued over copy-protected CDs

Sony BMG is facing three lawsuits over its controversial anti-piracy software.

Worse,

http://www.cnn.com/2005/TECH/internet/11/1...reut/index.html

New virus uses Sony BMG software

Thursday, November 10, 2005; Posted: 5:20 p.m. EST (22:20 GMT)

AMSTERDAM, Netherlands (Reuters) -- A computer security firm said Thursday it had discovered the first virus that uses music publisher Sony BMG's controversial CD copy-protection software to hide on PCs and wreak havoc.

List of CD's with this "feature":

http://slashdot.org/~xtracto/journal/121088

http://slashdot.org/~xtracto/journal/121697

Finally, it seems like the cure is worse than the illness:

http://www.sysinternals.com/blog/2005/11/m...decloaking.html

http://www.sysinternals.com/Blog/

jaclaz

Edited November 11, 2005 by jaclaz