Sony Rootkit Phones Home 494
strider44 writes "Mark from Sysinternals has digged a little deeper into the Sony DRM and discovered it Phones Home with an ID for the CD being listened to. XCP Support claims that "The player has a standard rotating banner that connects the user to additional content (e.g. provides a link to the artist web site). The player simply looks online to see if another banner is available for rotation. The communication is one-way in that a banner is simply retrieved from the server if available. No information is ever fed back or collected about the consumer or their activities." Also on this topic, Matt Nikki in the comments section discovered that the DRM can be bypassed simply by renaming your favourite ripping program with "$sys$" at the start of the filename and ripping the CD using this file, which is now undetectable even by the Sony DRM. You can use the Sony rootkit itself to bypass their own DRM!" Update: 11/07 14:21 GMT by H : Attentive reader Matteo G.P. Flora also notes that an Italian lawyer has filed suit against Sony on behalf of the Italian equivalent of the EFF. Translation availabe through the hive mind. Update: 11/07 15:18 GMT by H : It does appear that in fact Sony does see through the $sys$ - see Muzzy's comment for more details.
Ha Ha! (Score:5, Funny)
Uh Oh (Score:5, Funny)
Re:I wonder... (Score:5, Funny)
In Sony's Japan... (Score:5, Funny)
Brilliant marketing (Score:5, Funny)
30 comments and no "ET Phone Home" one yet (Score:3, Funny)
Sony sues... Sony ! (Score:1, Funny)
Isn't that a DMCA violation ? Sony had better do something about this by suing
Apparently their new business model is something like this : (Cue Underpant Gnomes)
1. Release rootkit into the wild, including ability for it to bypass your own copy protection.
2. ?
3. Sue self into oblivion. Wait, shouldn't item 3 be "Profit" ?
Comment removed (Score:5, Funny)
Re:"digged"? (Score:1, Funny)
Re:The market provides! (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Sony sues... Sony ! (Score:1, Funny)
No, better make item 3
3.) recursion: n., see recursion
This will keep them busy for years!
It's Matti Nikki, (Score:1, Funny)
Re:"digged"? (Score:0, Funny)
You must be new hear.
Re:Also, First 4 Internet's rebuttle (Score:0, Funny)
Re:Also, First 4 Internet's rebuttle (Score:3, Funny)
Either that, or "buttle" is what the guy in the tuxedo is doing when he brings a tray of cocktails.
Re:The market provides! (Score:3, Funny)
J.
Now I'd just love... (Score:5, Funny)
Trojan detected: WIN32.DrmSony.SPY@mm - Threat: medium; class: Spyware, Rootkit, OS-damage.
Known to cause CD drive malfunction, secretly uploads third party data, prevents certain userspace programs from running, hides from the OS, installs itself without user consent.
OS infection prevented.
Warning: E:\ Volume is Read-Only. The virus cannot be removed (cause: Data written to non-erasable CD.)
Recommendation: Back up all non-infected data from the medium by re-burning it to a new blank CD, destroy infected disk.
Re:Also, First 4 Internet's rebuttle (Score:5, Funny)
sign here... (Score:3, Funny)
the spice MUST flow! (Score:3, Funny)
Re:cnet has a intresting article (Score:5, Funny)