October 31, 2005

Sony's new DRM: a rootkit

A few years ago, Sony released a version of DRM that could be blocked by use of a magic marker.

It seems that they’ve now gone to the other extreme. New Sony CDs install hidden software onto your machine to protect their content. If you try to delete the code, it disables your CD drive. Mark Russinovich writes about his experience finding this and the pain of removing it from his PC.

The music industry really is just completely out of control.

Posted by Mike at October 31, 2005 08:05 PM
Comments

But this CD will work perfectly on a Mac.

The hidden software is reserved solely for PC's.

http://bigpicture.typepad.com/comments/2005/10/drm_crippled_cd.html

Posted by: Just Al on October 31, 2005 08:35 PM

they've moved onto mistreating their own customers.

There isn't a brain in the bunch.

send them a message and complain!

ConnecteD@sonymusic.com

http://cp.sonybmg.com/xcp/english/form12.html
http://cp.sonybmg.com/xcp/english/form11.html

Posted by: howie on November 2, 2005 08:41 PM

More fun with sony!
http://www.securityfocus.com/brief/34
http://www.infoworld.com/article/05/11/04/HNsonydrm_1.html
not the best secureity system, is it?

Posted by: Ian Weir on November 5, 2005 08:20 PM

It works on Macs too. Just doesnt do it automatically since Autorun is disabled on Macs by default.

On Macs it tries to install kernel extensions which do the same thing.

And according to http://digg.com/technology/Sony_rootkit_based_on_LGPL_and_breaches_licence_ their drm software violates LAME's license. OH THE
IRONY!

Posted by: Pramod on November 13, 2005 08:43 PM