with original at http://www.doxpara.com.nyud.net:8090/planetsony_usa.JPG
and for Europe which was not supposed to have any is at 
Posted on 11/15/2005 4:09:12 PM PST by Amerigomag
Not only is Sony no longer selling the RootKit CDs, .... according to a USAToday article, "Sony is to pull their controversial rootkit CDs from store shelves". A nice gesture, but a little late.
.... "Sony's DRM rootkit has been found by Dan Kaminsky to have infected at least half a million networks". .... Dan has even put together some pretty pictures of the breadth of the infection.... "With so many people infected, it's unfortunate that from the Washington Post comes the news that "serious security flaws have been found in the software that Sony is distributing to users who want to remove the Sony rootkit". .... "Because of the way the tool is configured ... it allows any Web page that the user subsequently visits to download, install and run any code that it likes". Oops.
Even Microsoft is getting into the act. .... "Microsoft said it would remove controversial copy-protection software that CDs from music publisher Sony BMG install on personal computers, deeming it a security risk to PCs running on Windows."
(Excerpt) Read more at slashdot.org ...
Good day to be a class action lawyer.
On the other hand, DOD computers should be for official use only and people introducing this software by unofficial use should be reprimanded for it.
beat me by 20 seconds :)
The message from many on this forum for a long long time has been...
Rule number one, corporations are beneficial
Rule number two, corporations can do no wrong
Rule number three, see rules one and two
I've seen a good many things explained away using these rules
There are exceptions to every rule, and Sony's problem makes that clear
People are people. They tend to view their desktop as "their own" even if said desktop is Government property.
Almost every place where you have people working who don't have to be on the phone, you see them with their headphones on listening to stuff, frequently music.
Mega-mega big oops! Sony may have just caused a worldwide panic by their bumbling software. It is good they are removing the cd's from the stores, but what about the ones already sold? and what about all the pc's that already infected? Or the pc's that have not been affected today, but might be tomorrow when someone loads the cd onto their pc? and what about the networks that are infected? and the software removal tool, how it opens the door for many future viruses and unauthorized programs to load? Sony is in very deep doo-doo over this. This thing just keeps growing! We have not seen the end of this, I am afraid.
The thing is, from what I understand, this isn't spyware loaded with software, it's artifacts left behind by simply playing music CDs on the computer, which should have been harmless enough, lots of people play some music while they work.
Am I wrong about this? I'm not geeky enough to really understand this bug.
Playing a cd in your computer is hardley an attempt to install software, that was the big problem with this type of copy protection technology, it didn't let you know what it was doing. you thought you were playing some music while it did the dirty work without you knowing.
with original at http://www.doxpara.com.nyud.net:8090/planetsony_usa.JPG
and for Europe which was not supposed to have any is at
Absolutely correct.
With regards to Sony, this was a damaging marketing concept and implementation. Sony is not customer focused here.
That is what I read it as...
however, most DOD networks enforce GPOs which (supposedly) forbid users from being able to load or modify software on that machine.
That's not to say that an Administrator won't or can't do it, because they can and will, but it won't be me :)
That is the wierd part. From what I am hearing it seems somehow Sony's little spyware seems to have bypassed a lot of anti-virus and system lockouts.
But I could be hearing wrong.
But that's the thing... I don't know if this stuff announces itself or asks to be installed... and would that kind of network security prevent changes even to the individual's computer? I'd hope the systems designed to keep security would catch them, I just don't know if they do.
For that matter, I haven't actually heard of exactly what harm is caused by these 'rootkits'. It might be a lot of chicken little squaking for all I know. ;~D
Well I haven't seen anything indicating that, yet, but I will keep looking.
They haven't pushed anything out yet to possibly fix this from the AFCERT, so I wonder if the AF is looking into it or if it has decided it isn't a threat....
it's all about rights and being in certain groups....
it's easier to show than to type it out.....
There can be certain groups built into your baseline load that would enable a certain user to have more power on the computer than any other.
A normal user (or even a fairly knowledgeable user) would not expect the normal operation of playing a music CD to install software. It looks like Sony's rootkit cracked network security.
Your explanation would probably be wasted on me, anyhow. But it's enough for me that you understand it :~D
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