First bots hitting now: CNet News
Just gets better and better, doesn't it? Lol.
Thanks for the post. This is where a huge lawsuit would be a good thing!
Remember in 2004 when TurboTax pulled some similar stunt? They hue and cry was pretty load and they came back on bended knee apolgizing.
Sony is notoriously bad with respect to DRM. They assume EVERYONE is a pirate and restrict their stuff accordingly. I say - Sony keep your cruddy music!
Techie Meta-ping
Thanks for this update. I think my best bet is to simply not buy Sony music, or, for that matter, anything Sony. This really stinks.
I emailed this to Mark (and haven't heard back yet), but I might as well put it out here as well, since it will probably get more play here:
I found this thing on my system. I do not play music CDs on my system, so it couldn't have come from there. Checking the ownership of the files revealed that they were owned by another user in our network who would never have cause to log on to my machine. I can only assume, therefore, that the rootkit installed itself on this user's machine when they played a sony CD, then searched across the network for open network shares (of which I had one, temporarily). I can only assume that this is intended to make sure that when a home user gets this thing, that they can't use another machine to remotely do a copy (and thus bypass the DRM protection), by installing itself on any machine it can find on the network.
The upshot is, this rootkit doesn't just install itself surreptitiously on your machine and hijack your CDrom drivers, it also propagates across the network, and can infect machines that you didn't even log on to. It's a virus as well as a rootkit.
Here is the scoop on Sony's use of the rootkit function.
wow
/bookmarked
There will soon be a lot of Sony BMG discs in bargain bins and a lot of ticked of Sony BMG artists.
Just read about this in USA Today during lunch and remembered my wife made a copy of the new Neil Diamond CD last night. Thanks for posting this so I can spend time this weekend cleaning the computer.
And in the future, Sony can kiss my rosy red rectum...