Peace On That

I was rolling through the web when I came across an interesting article on Sony Music. It seems that Sony Music placed an anti-piracy program on its music CD that prompts the user to install it when they get ready to play the CD. The problem is that the program cannot be uninstalled and has a feature called "rootkit" that makes the program undetectable from Antivirus software.

The problem with this it seems is that the rootkit enables other viruses undetectable, causing a serious security risk to your system. The other problem is that to remove the "rootkit", you have to reformat the hard drive - and if you ever had to do that you know how much of a pain it is to get your system back to where it was. Additionally, by removing the "rootkit" it not only disable the ability to play the disk, it completely disables the disc drive.

This is some pretty scary stuff. There are patches out there. So, just be careful when you purchase a disc because no one is sure how many CD's have this technology.

Other Resources:
http://www.pcpro.co.uk/news/79474/sony-rootkit-drm-to-spark-copycat-viruses.html

http://thebosh.com/archives/2005/11/sony_rootkit_dr.php

http://antivirus.about.com/od/securitytips/a/rootkits.htm