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quinn222 at 05:35am on 17/12/2005
quinn222 at 05:35am on 17/12/2005Because this has been such huge news in the computer security and coders world I assumed every knew about this but poor![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
plumsuede has shown me otherwise, so I'm going to point this out. Some of the technological language may not interest you but the bottom line should. boingboing.net has posted a timeline of the SONY debacle.
In brief, SONY decided it was going to prevent you from making any copies of your SONY cds. So they put a bit of software on them to prevent it. There were multiple problems with this. Among them:
1: they didn't tell anyone they did it.
2: The software is so malicious that even if it does not destroy your computer it leaves a back door open that can be used to let in the worst sort of harmful things and you will never even know it.
3: It's damn near impossible to get this thing off your computer because it was written to be hidden even from the registry (which is what makes it such a lovely host for viruses.)
to top it all off, much of the code used in this thing was allegedly stolen from Open Source sources.
MicroSoft, Norton, etc. have declared the sofware an extreme threat. Microsoft is providing a removal tool in it's malicious software removal tool (http://blogs.technet.com/antimalware/). That software is free and whatever your opinion of MS use it if you think you're infected with the Sony Rootkit.
MS Malicious Software Removal Tool
Twelve days after what they were doing was discovered Sony stopped shipping the CDs contianing the software. Or so they claim. They also issued a recall.
Sony is being sued all over the world as a result of the damage they both caused and allowed to be caused.
Read the details here.
Seriously. Some of it may be heavy going but it's important that you have some idea what's been happening over the last two months or so with Sony. Especially if there is any chance at all that one of the infected disks is sitting in your possesion.
plumsuede has shown me otherwise, so I'm going to point this out. Some of the technological language may not interest you but the bottom line should. boingboing.net has posted a timeline of the SONY debacle.In brief, SONY decided it was going to prevent you from making any copies of your SONY cds. So they put a bit of software on them to prevent it. There were multiple problems with this. Among them:
1: they didn't tell anyone they did it.
2: The software is so malicious that even if it does not destroy your computer it leaves a back door open that can be used to let in the worst sort of harmful things and you will never even know it.
3: It's damn near impossible to get this thing off your computer because it was written to be hidden even from the registry (which is what makes it such a lovely host for viruses.)
to top it all off, much of the code used in this thing was allegedly stolen from Open Source sources.
MicroSoft, Norton, etc. have declared the sofware an extreme threat. Microsoft is providing a removal tool in it's malicious software removal tool (http://blogs.technet.com/antimalware/). That software is free and whatever your opinion of MS use it if you think you're infected with the Sony Rootkit.
MS Malicious Software Removal Tool
Twelve days after what they were doing was discovered Sony stopped shipping the CDs contianing the software. Or so they claim. They also issued a recall.
Sony is being sued all over the world as a result of the damage they both caused and allowed to be caused.
Read the details here.
Seriously. Some of it may be heavy going but it's important that you have some idea what's been happening over the last two months or so with Sony. Especially if there is any chance at all that one of the infected disks is sitting in your possesion.
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