Don't Buy Sony Music CDs -- Installs rootkits

An operating system should NEVER allow ANYTHING of this nature (stealth, hidden processes) to install to begin with. Just another example of the @$$inine nature of M$'s approach to things.

From an OS design perspective, it is actually simple to disallow any such activity. In fact, the only reason such a loophole would exist would be for the OS manufacturer to be able to hide some of their own stuff from the user, which is also offensive. This "philosophy" dates back to the classic arguments about M$ having hidden methods of talking to the OS that they don't reveal to other licensed partners, so that M$ can maintain a competitive advantage in application development. It just took this long for it to become really obvious to the rest of us just how insidious this approach can be.

It just really chaps me!

Well I don't think MS are entirely at fault here, after all rootkits were first implemented on Unix systems, that are supposedly so secure. But as I said earlier, Vista will have this protection built in, so MS are getting there.

This is another interesting article - the response from First 4 Internet, and showing just what crap programmers they are:

http://www.sysinternals.com/blog/200...-internet.html

Just signed usil's petition. I hope everyone here will do the same. No more Sony for me!

www.techworld.com : the UK's infrastructure & network knowledge centre

Sony faces police investigation into DRM code

XCP furore continues.

Robert McMillan, IDG News Service
08 November 2005

Sony may be investigated by Italian police over its controversial copy protection software.

An Italian digital rights organization has taken the first step toward possible criminal charges over the XCP software which, it was recently discovered, cloaks itself on users' computers and communicates with Sony servers over the Internet.

The group, calling itself the ALCEI-EFI (Association for Freedom in Electronic Interactive Communications - Electronic Frontiers Italy), filed a complaint about Sony's software with the head of Italy's cyber-crime investigation unit, Colonel Umberto Rapetto of the Guardia di Finanza.

The complaint alleges that XCP violates a number of Italy's computer security laws by causing damage to users' systems and by acting in the same way as malicious software, according to Andrea Monti, chair of the ALCEI-EFI. "What Sony did qualifies as a criminal offense under Italian law," he said.

Should police determine that a crime has been committed, prosecutors will be required to begin criminal proceedings against Sony, Monti said.

XCP is used on about 20 of the company's music titles and prohibits Windows users from making more than three copies of any XCP-protected CD. It has been widely criticized since it was revealed the software uses many of the same techniques as spyware and computer viruses to disguise its existence. XCP's developer, a UK company called First 4 Internet said the techniques were necessary in order to prevent illegal copiers from circumventing the digital rights management (DRM) software, but critics say First 4 has gone too far and that the product may be a security risk.

And confirming its new status, Computer Associates yesterday reclassified Sony's software as spyware and will begin searching for and removing XCP with its anti-spyware software.

Even a software patch released by Sony last week to decloak the hidden digital rights management software counts as spyware.

Linda

;) :rolleyes: :cool:

Quote:

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Originally Posted by LindaHewitt

And confirming its new status, Computer Associates yesterday reclassified Sony's software as spyware and will begin searching for and removing XCP with its anti-spyware software.

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That is awesome! Would be great if the other Anti-Spyware vendors do the same. It would give a certain degree more legitimacy to the fight against Sony. Good move by CA.

I wish someone with more influence than myself would stage a well-organized and well-publicized boycott of all Sony products and services. If we could manage to get tens, or hundreds, of thousands of people to stop buying Sony products and services (from movies to music to tv's to games to... you get the idea), stop going to Sony-run theaters, stop buying tickets to Sony movies, etc., that would send a clear message to Sony and to other companies that you know have been considering this type of crap, but are waiting to see if the opportunity costs outweigh whatever benefits they perceive this as bringing them.

The alternative is that some of us complain (sorry, I'll keep it edited out and avoid it in the future) and moan in forums and some articles get written, like the ones on IDG and CNET; but nothing hurts their bottom line enough to dissuade them and their competitors from continuing onwards in this direction of "doing business."

aedh

Here is the Computer Associates announcement:

http://blogs.zdnet.com/Spyware/index.php?p=698

I performed a Google search on "Sony rootkit" and I got 3,550,000 links. There is a firestorm of protest. Here are the latest news articles on this issue.

http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/1109/p14s01-stct.html

http://news.zdnet.co.uk/0,39020330,39235702,00.htm

http://www.networkworld.com/community/?q=node/3426

Cheers,

Linda

;) :rolleyes: :cool:

This is outrageous!
Sony's Second 'Rootkit' DRM Patch Doesn't Hush Critics

Quote:

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"Most people don't know what a rootkit is, so why should they care about it," Thomas Hesse, president of Sony BMG's global digital business, said in an interview with National Public Radio on Friday.

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:mad:

The only thing Sony understands is the bottom line and when the buying public boycotts all Sony products..... they will re-assess their actions and methods. Why buy anything from a company that disses their customers..:mad:
....and with the power of the internet a world wide boycott should be attainable.
my 2 cents.

Except I'd go further than that. It happens to have been Sony/BMG that got caught with their pants down on this occasion, but all the big labels are at it. From what I've seen so far, every single DRM scheme that's been tried so far is bad in some way or another. And who wants a load of dubiously written software installed just so you can play a CD anyway? What happens if you have a collection of 100 CD's and you need 100 different players installed? I think if it won't play in your media player of choice then it isn't worth having, and I'm all in favour of boycotting all DRM infected discs (they shouldn't be called CD's, they don't conform to the Red Book standard).

Agreed SuperSparks.
By the way, for those that bought a Sony CD, if you press shift after putting the CD in (which cancels the autorun feature of the CD-ROM), you can play the CD on any media player you like.

Lawsuits proceed against Sony / "anti-piracy" software

http://blogs.washingtonpost.com/secu...ny_lawsui.html

More info:

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

Copyright laws provide for "fair use"

http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml

Cheers,

Linda

This just gets better and better:

Now the Legalese Rootkit: Sony-BMG's EULA

November 09, 2005
If you thought XCP "rootkit" copy-protection on Sony-BMG CDs was bad, perhaps you'd better read the 3,000 word (!) end-user license agreement (aka "EULA") that comes with all these CDs.

First, a baseline. When you buy a regular CD, you own it. You do not "license" it. You own it outright. You're allowed to do anything with it you like, so long as you don't violate one of the exclusive rights reserved to the copyright owner. So you can play the CD at your next dinner party (copyright owners get no rights over private performances), you can loan it to a friend (thanks to the "first sale" doctrine), or make a copy for use on your iPod (thanks to "fair use"). Every use that falls outside the limited exclusive rights of the copyright owner belongs to you, the owner of the CD.

Now compare that baseline with the world according to the Sony-BMG EULA, which applies to any digital copies you make of the music on the CD:

1. If your house gets burgled, you have to delete all your music from your laptop when you get home. That's because the EULA says that your rights to any copies terminate as soon as you no longer possess the original CD.
   
2. You can't keep your music on any computers at work. The EULA only gives you the right to put copies on a "personal home computer system owned by you..."
   <rest snipped>

Read the rest of this article at http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/archives/004145.php

Here's even more good news...

http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,14773443

It didn't take the bad guys long to exploit the rootkit :mad:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/11...ny_drm_trojan/

http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=27608