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To Ashley's Mind. (Not responsible for damages over 20$)

Thursday, November 03, 2005

Pirates say what?

For all of us that would like to retain the rights to things we have PAID for: http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=27426

Too laZy to read?

Quick summary:

Next time you go out to buy a CD, think twice about installing it onto your computer... you are most likely (and definatly if you are buying a Sony CD) putting malware onto your computer that will cause it to BREAK if you try to remove it. That is, if you even realiZe youve put it onto your computer.

"If you look at the Sony rootkit, it does several things. It strips you of your rights, it potentially causes your computer harm, it breaks your computer if you remove it, and eats your CPU time. All of these things are bad, no question there. It also does the end user no good in any way, shape or form, not even by the most demented stretch of the imagination. It only hurts those who spent money to buy it. "

"Say you want to remove the Sony stuff. According to no less a source than The Washington Post, the bare minimum you have to do to remove the rootkitted DRM infection is give up your privacy. If you go to the Sony page, here, you have to give Sony your email at the very least, and according to the WP story, Sony then grills you about your reasons for not liking being rootkitted. "

"If you try to remove it yourself, you risk breaking your optical discs, or it kills them for you. Mark from Sysinternals is more than smart enough to figure out how to fix this, but are you? Off the top of your head, how do you do that again, no looking it up? To make matters worse, it installs itself so it runs in safe mode, and if it conflicts with something, you are really hosed. Sony's response? "This component is not malicious and does not compromise security. There are already exploits out there that take advantage of this."

If you are further interested you might wanna check this article out as well:
http://www.sysinternals.com/blog/2005/10/sony-rootkits-and-digital-rights.html

and also:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/11/03/sony_rootkit_drm/

3 comments:

LandoMan said...

Their little plan to stop piracy or some nonesense comes back to bite them in the ass...but the public doesn't know/care...wtf?

Stephen said...

One thing you CAN do that is good about the sony rootkit...although it mostly sucks...is stop Blizzard's Warden software from telling them you're cheating on WoW....mwahahah.

Not that I condone cheating or anything of the sort, i just find it funny that Sony has made something capable of doing that.

http://www.securityfocus.com/brief/34

Anonymous said...

hmm..... yukkkkkk !

i love my cds but then what if one day they take over my pc ? weird stuff.