Posted on 11/23/2005 10:35:17 AM PST by ShadowAce
Well, yes, it does make things easy for hackers. All they have to do is name the file containing their worm or virus $*****$ and the user will be unable even to see it.
Antivirus companies have been reluctant to deal with the problem, for fear of being accused of tampering with copy protection, which normally is a criminal offense.
I too, will be ignoring ALL Sony products for the next decade or so. I did the same when Intel got caught. It's not difficult.
There are always alternatives.
BTW. Whose doing the monitoring? Is this a poll or marketing result that Sony could buy, steal or spin to hide the truth?
Not that they would EVER do something sneaky and underhanded, of course...
"Once the protection installs itself on your computer, allowing every hacker in the world in, there is no way to remove it."
well, I doubt that. In fact, I can think of one way right off the bat. I'm sure a way that doesn't involve a reformat will pop up here pretty soon.
Of course it's a problem. But in the grand scheme of things i don't really consider it a big problem that will only be fixed when I have I am standing on a pile of rubble that once was Sony Corp.
AV companies typically check for viruses before they execute any programs, so once it is saved on disk it is basically too late. The only virus that uses the cloaking that I know of requires the user to click on an email attachment, then it executes and hides itself using the rootkit although it could have just as easily contained its own rootkit but that virus writer decided to be lazy.
That's false.
Xbox360 reportedly very unstable, prone to crashes (pics)
Heroes pull woman from Xbox blaze
You may want to pause before jumping to purchase a XBox 360. Or at least check your home owners' insurance.
Oh I am sure you can deal with it just fine, working for SONY and all.
The average user, however, is screwed. He is neither a geek not a programmer. Most users can't even mess with the registry.
A lot of tech-savvy people, including myself, buy digital music through iTunes, which of course is not affected by this at all. Apple has an excellent record of not cheating the people who buy music from them. I've been very happy with their music store and my purchases from it.
Those who really care about this issue wouldn't buy Sony's copy-protected CDs no matter what, or they would know how to defeat the copy protection. Apparently all you have to do is put some tape over the outside section of the CD and it will work just like a normal CD.
D
There was a story published just today or yesterday (I think it's on FR somewhere) about some outfit that bought an XBOX 360, took it apart, and determined that the cost of its parts is so high that Microsoft is losing something like $100 to $150 on each sale. (They're following the time-tested Gillette model: Sell the razor for next to nothing, and get the consumer hooked on the expensive blades that they have to buy over and over for years to come.)
It's almost certain Sony will do something similar. So if you want to screw Sony, go ahead and buy a PS3; just be sure to only play bootlegged copies of the games. (Assuming the PS3 games turn out to be crackable; the PS1 and PS2 games sure are.)
Personally I wouldn't buy either as they are both terrible deals compared to PCs (which is where I game / spend all day lurking on FR) but its a case of the lesser of two evils.
Most people haven't a clue what a rootkit is or why they should care. But if I were at SONY I wouldn't start gloating quite yet.
Sony BMG has nothing to do with Sony Computer Entertainment.
Get the PS3 if you want it.
The computer entertainment division is well known for releasing truly asstastic "products" in the form of patches to its games that have done everything from drastically changing gameplay after you plunk down more money for an expansion to causing massive Direct X corruption just by playing the affected game.
Patches are absolutely mandatory to log into the gaming servers.
Internet Security Systems Protection Alert
November 15, 2005
Sony BMG Bundled Software Vulnerabilities – November 2005
Description:
Sony BMG bundles copyright protection software made by First 4 Internet called XCP-Aurora. This software is installed when a user attempts to play a protected CD in a computer. Although the user is expecting to install a music player the user is actually prompted to install the copyright protection software. The software consists of several pieces of low level software that have the ability to monitor and hide from the operating system.
The software installs a device driver that will hide any file or process that begins with $sys$. Several Trojans are now actively taking advantage of this cloak. Two separate issues have been identified. First the software does not provide an uninstall feature. If a user tries to manually remove the software, the system will become unstable. Furthermore the software is also forced to launch in the special diagnostics mode of Windows, called safe mode.
X-Force R&D has also discovered that XCP-Aurora has vulnerabilities in the driver, which run with the highest privilege level and would allow an attacker to perform privilege escalation. This vulnerability will result in memory corruption that will allow attackers to execute code in kernel mode. This allows a regular user to take full control of an exploited machine.
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