Friday, November 04, 2005

Sony uses spyware and virus writers' techniques to prevent unauthorized music copying

Mark Russinovich couldn't understand how the rootkit had sneaked onto his system. An expert on the internals of the Windows operating system, he was careful when it came to computer security and generally had a pretty good idea of what was running on his PC at any given time. And yet the security tool he was using to check his PC was pretty clear: It had found the rootkit cloaking software typically used by virus and spyware writers.
The XCP software prevents users from making more than three backup copies of any CD, and Sony puts an XCP notification on the back of CDs that use the mechanism, according to Mathew Gilliat-Smith, First 4's chief executive officer.
Although the Van Zant CD software came with an end user license agreement (EULA) informing him that he would be installing software that would reside on his PC until removed, Russinovich, who works as chief software architect with systems software company Winternals Software, said he never expected to be installing a product that would then prove to be virtually undetectable and extremely difficult to remove.

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