Sony, Rootkits, and DRM

Oh, so much to say. I’ll get around to adding more as I can, but first of all I should point you to a couple of great “round-up” sites with information about the Sony copy-protection debacle:

BoingBoing, which has the distinction of being the most popular blog on the Net, has two round-ups. The first one is here, and the second one is here.

What’s great about BoingBoing is that is provides links to everyone quoted, so you can get back to the source for the nitty-gritty details.

The question that tops my list: Do Sony computers have this rootkit technology built in?

Sony originally claimed only 20 disks were infected. This was a lie, and the bloggers called the company on it. Bloggers found at least 47; now Sony has released a list of 52 infected titles.

So let’s see… Sony hid the nasty rootkit without in the installation of its music player, denyed its existence, claimed it wasn’t a security issue, released a “patch” that added nastiness and created a worse security whole, claimed only 20 titles were infected….

Anyone else see a pattern here?

More:

Microsoft’s anti-spyware tool, Windows Defender, now removes the Sony rootkit.

Symantec already had a removal tool available.

Update: Thanks to Deon Robinson for pointing out that Sony’s virus, er… DRM, also affects the Mac:

The user then is prompted by the program for a user name and password. After that information is provided, the program seemingly quits. However, it actually installs two kernel extensions, PhoenixNub1.kext and PhoenixNub12.kext, in the OS X system files.