Posted on 11/21/2005 9:38:17 AM PST by TommyDale
I almost NEVER got it off.
Deinstall is flaky at best on windows because most programs muck with the registry and leave some trash behind. At the very least this slows down system shutdown. There are still programs mucking with other system files although XP has fixed the DLL hell problem for the most part. The 2% of CPU is not typical for most programs, but any program that monitors anything will suck up some CPU.
Yay, let's all buy Sony products! Sony DVD players! Sony stereos! Sony MP3 players! Sony Playstation 3! Yayyyyy!!! /SARCASM
The death penalty may be too harsh. I would settle for 20 years breaking rocks, with no possibility of parole, for the Sony music execs. A good desert climate would suffice for the rock breaking exercise.
I really want to see them so hard hit by this that they will not only want to sell their music biz, but will be willing to pay someone to take it off their hands.
This puts some of us who are security nuts off Sony quite permanently.
Any antivirus program that runs on a system that has this rootkit installed will be totally blind to any virus with filename prefixed with '%sys%' - that is very much a safe harbor.
ping
It's one of many ruses to get lowly "consumers" accustomed to the idea that it's alright for corporates to do what the children of "consumers" go to prisons for.
Wake up, folks. Our country is mobbed up from municipals to state governments and has been for a long time.
Antivirus programs normally check files before they are executed. In the case of the one virus I have heard of using this rootkit, the user had to click on an email attachment. The AV would kick in and stop the virus program from executing. At that point there is no file on disk to be hidden so the rootkit is irrelevant. A later scan of the disk would not show the file, but the real problem comes with executing the file, once it is on disk it's basically too late.
*ping*
I've never actually heard an explanation as to why payola is/should be illegal.
>Just remember - many movie and music companies are not happy that you can burn CDs and send files over the internet, regardless of what you were going to burn or send - they would rather you not have the ability at all, end of story
I still think this has more to do with Sony's fight with Apple. Sony wants people to buy their MP3 players instead of iPods, and what's lost in the XCP controversy is that their other version of copy-protection software (by a company called Suncomm) renders the music files unplayable in ITunes--and iPods. Oh, and I read somewhere that Suncomm's product also manages to do what is generally thought to be impossible--it is apparently capable of behaving like spyware, on Macs.
In addition, Sony & other labels are not satisfied with the price points set by Apple in its ITunes music store, and have reportedly been negotiating aggressively to force Apple's hand. Steve Jobs has steadfastly refused to raise the prices. And ITunes' stores in Australia and Japan are not licensed to carry any Sony artists.
>This is a fight that has been going on since audio cassette recorders and VCRs first came out (many people aren't old enough to remember, but the movie industry fought VCRs because they felt that VCRs and the ability to record content off of TV would kill off movies and TV shows).
Ironically, it was Sony, the manufacturer of the Betamax, that they fought, and lost. When it was convenient for their purposes to sell hardware that could potentially infringe on the copyrights of others, they sang a different tune.
The worst of it for them, and perhaps the most bizarre aspect, has been their reluctance to issue any statements remotely admitting that they did anything wrong, their numerous changes to the section of their website dealing with this controversy, their underhanded way in dealing with the issue, apparently by providing (with no small difficulty) an uninstall tool that is said to be the potential cause of more problems than perhaps even the rootkit itself...but it was the statement of the executive, that 'most people don't know what a rootkit is anyway, so why would they care?'
A couple of weeks ago there was someone here who put up a post that remains the only evidence I've seen that anyone could possibly believe that the lawsuits filed against Sony are, as he put it, 'frivolous.'
I read that the act of running the rootkit revealer utility that identified the cloaked software was itself a violation of the DMCA, as was any attempt to remove it. But is that valid since the software itself runs open source code that the programmer did not provide proper credit for? This is a tangled web of ineptitude that grows increasingly bizarre with each development.
I wonder how those Dexter Gordon, Bob Brookmeyer, Neil Diamond, Bette Midler, and Jane Monheit CDs are selling? I know their fan bases are of course the people most involved in copyright infringement, but it was interesting that Sony chose nearly as many jazz, MOR, & adult pop titles as they did anything that the stereotypical adolescent downloader would...probably not pay for anyway even if they couldn't download it illegally for free.
From what I've read, the XCP "uninstaller" only uncloaks it. No means is provided for removing the other malware parts of it.
IMHO, software that is deliberately constructed so as to be hard to remove, and which installs itself without the user having explicitly consented to this fact is malware.
Note that there are sometimes legitimate reasons for software to be hard to remove. Removal of something like a Stac/DoubleSpace driver, for example, will generally leave the compressed data inaccessible. But Sony's software provides no such notice or opportunity for informed consent.
I recall reading a statement attributed to a media-company bigwig (can anyone else fill in the details) that the reason for downgrading the output of 'non-secure' movie playback devices to 720x480 resolution was not that it would discourage piracy of the downgraded content (many pirates will put up with absolutely lousy quality) but rather because, if such downgrading were not enforced, nobody would by DRM-compliant television sets.
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