Psionicist
Explorer
Most of you have probably heard about the copy protection mechanism music labels put on CD:s to protect them from piracy. Many of you probably don't care too much about it. However, I think you should. The famous Windows experts from SysInternals.com have discovered a new dangerous copy protection program from Sony, on a album with Van Zant. It's reasonable to assume this new mechanism exist on all new CD's from Sony.
Unlike many other copy protection programs this variant installs silently in the background when you play the CD on a windows system. Unlike many other copy protection programs this one modifies your computer to hide itself. Unless you have a very deep knowledge of how Windows works, you cannot uninstall this without completely breaking your computer, and it's very hard to even know if the program is installed or not.
Unlike other copy protection programs, and even most spyware and malware, this program works very deep inside windows in what's known as kernel mode, alongside drivers. As many of you have probably experienced, a buggy driver can completely ruin your system, unlike a buggy application like Word. Unfortunately, several flaws have been discovered in this copy protection program and under certain circumstances it will break. With the additional quality of the program hiding itself and that it also runs in safe mode, it will be _very hard and expansive_ to fix your computer if it breaks.
Many people have already experienced problems with this new copy protection mechanism:
* Degraded performance.
* Blue screens of death.
* CD-burners and readers promptly stopped working and "disappearing".
So basically what this program does is:
- Installs itself on your computer without asking first
- Hides itself using very advanced techniques commonly found on the kind of programs that steals your credit card info
- Prevents you from uninstalling it
- Modifies your system without asking first
- Possibly breaking your system (now or in the future)
- Prevents you from copying the music to, say, an iPod
- ... all of the above without mentioning it in the EULA.
Lots of groups are very angry about this and people are talking about a huge class action lawsuit against Sony.
In the meantime, I suggest all of you to install and run RootkitRevealer: http://www.sysinternals.com/Utilities/rootkitrevealer.html
This program will discover programs and files that attempts to hide themselves from you. It's a complement to antivirus programs and antispywareprograms.
Also: Do not insert a Sony CD into your computer, or don't buy them.
UPDATE: It appears the program _is_ actually silently connecting to sonys server, unlike what Sony claimed. See last page.
Unlike many other copy protection programs this variant installs silently in the background when you play the CD on a windows system. Unlike many other copy protection programs this one modifies your computer to hide itself. Unless you have a very deep knowledge of how Windows works, you cannot uninstall this without completely breaking your computer, and it's very hard to even know if the program is installed or not.
Unlike other copy protection programs, and even most spyware and malware, this program works very deep inside windows in what's known as kernel mode, alongside drivers. As many of you have probably experienced, a buggy driver can completely ruin your system, unlike a buggy application like Word. Unfortunately, several flaws have been discovered in this copy protection program and under certain circumstances it will break. With the additional quality of the program hiding itself and that it also runs in safe mode, it will be _very hard and expansive_ to fix your computer if it breaks.
Many people have already experienced problems with this new copy protection mechanism:
* Degraded performance.
* Blue screens of death.
* CD-burners and readers promptly stopped working and "disappearing".
So basically what this program does is:
- Installs itself on your computer without asking first
- Hides itself using very advanced techniques commonly found on the kind of programs that steals your credit card info
- Prevents you from uninstalling it
- Modifies your system without asking first
- Possibly breaking your system (now or in the future)
- Prevents you from copying the music to, say, an iPod
- ... all of the above without mentioning it in the EULA.
Lots of groups are very angry about this and people are talking about a huge class action lawsuit against Sony.
In the meantime, I suggest all of you to install and run RootkitRevealer: http://www.sysinternals.com/Utilities/rootkitrevealer.html
This program will discover programs and files that attempts to hide themselves from you. It's a complement to antivirus programs and antispywareprograms.
Also: Do not insert a Sony CD into your computer, or don't buy them.
UPDATE: It appears the program _is_ actually silently connecting to sonys server, unlike what Sony claimed. See last page.
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