Free Culture @ NYU

Quite a bit has been happening! First of all, virus/trojan writers have started leveraging the rootkit to hide their malware:

First Trojan using Sony DRM spotted

Sony is also being sued:

Sony hit by lawsuits over root kit

AV vendors also have started releasing tools to remove the rootkit-like portions of the XCP software, such as Sophos. Laura pointed out that Symantec has also released a removal tool:

Sophos develops Sony DRM unmasking tool
Symantec: SecurityRisk.First4DRM

Microsoft, interestingly, has decided that the rootkit is a threat, and is planning to not only release a signuature for Windows Antispyware to remove the rootkit, but the removal tool will also be a part of the Windows Malcious Software Removal Tool, which is updated monthly and released through Windows Update (and therefore auto-updates):

Sony DRM Rootkit to be removed automatically by Microsoft
Anti-Malware Engineering Team: Sony DRM Rootkit

Sony has also [temporarily] stopped producing CD’s with the rootkit DRM, though they are not recalling existing CD’s (list compiled by EFF):

Sony suspends rootkit DRM

Finally, there is a good summary and analysis of the whole thing here:

Sony BMG faces digital-rights seige

Whew…quite a few articles! I meant to post some earlier, but things have been busy. But I think it’s an important move that Microsoft will be including it in the Malcious Software Removal Tool, because (assuming that most people have Auto Update enabled now), it will run automatically on most people’s computers and remove it.

Lastly, remember that the software was installed by Autorun. It used to be [fairly] easy to disable Autorun in earlier versions of Windows, but it’s a bit more difficult now (to disable it permanently; obviously holding down the Shift key is fairly easy!). This article has information on how to disable it using the registry…an action I strongly suggest.

-Tom

This entry was posted on Sunday, November 13th, 2005 at 2:58 pm and is filed under Media, Meta, News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.