Beware of Sony's Copy-Protection!

Visual Novel Community Off Topic
#1

Hi everyone, I haven’t posted much on this board, but I’ve been an active lurker for the past few years. As such, I still vividly remember the v-mate wars and the whole turmoil about copy-protection.

Recently, I’ve come across an article about a copy-protection scheme that lets v-mate look harmless in comparison and is implemented by no other than Sony…for music CDs. I thought I shared (It’s from the 31st oct 2005):

(Beware, it’s very technical)
http://www.sysinternals.com/blog/2005/10/sony-rootkits-and-digital-rights.html

Summarized: A developper of tools for sysadmins finds a rootkit on his PC. That’s a program which hides files, directories or registry keys from the system and is usually used by spyware to cloak its presence. Further investigation showed that the rootkit was installed by copy-protection software from a music CD published by Sony. The program was installed without the knowledge of the user and it took some rather adventurous means to remove it without crippling the system. So, for the average computer user it is undetectable and unremoveable.

What makes the whole situation worse, is that the code is poorly written and consumes processor time even after the CD is removed, it even caused several crashes, at least one of them was unrecoverable. Even if it were better written, rootkits always increase the risk of conflicts and therefore of crashes, as well as creating possible weaknesses which could be exploited for attacks on an infected system.

If your computer (Windows only) ever crashed and reported an error in connection with a file called aries.sys then your system is infected. If that’s the case Read the cited article carefully and/or contact the guys at sysinternals.

By the way read the comments to the article, some of them provide further interesting information.

[This message has been edited by Akela (edited 11-05-2005).]

#2

I read the whole article.

It’s funny how he doesn’t like root kits being put on his system without permission, while he still uses IE, which is the prime cause of malware.

Yeah, that DRM is really bad.

#3
quote:
Originally posted by Benoit:
I read the whole article.

It's funny how he doesn't like root kits being put on his system without permission, while he still uses IE, which is the prime cause of malware.

Yeah, that DRM is really bad.


Maybe he has a hardware firewall, which actually protects from most of the ugliness that IE is vulnerable to. Also, the knowledgable user can disable much of the activex junk and other vulnerability of IE through the control panel.

Yes, I agree with him that DRM like this does indeed cross the line. It's like V-mate on steroids - invisible steroids at that.

#4
quote:
Originally posted by Nameless Mofo:
Maybe he has a hardware firewall, which actually protects from most of the ugliness that IE is vulnerable to. Also, the knowledgable user can disable much of the activex junk and other vulnerability of IE through the control panel.

Perhaps it's because I don't use Internet much, but I don't have problems with IE... AFTER installing this, this and this (in addition, I routinely delete cookies and temporary files after each and every Internet session).
#5

Baldo, you just proved my point. IE in itself isn’t safe. You need programs to watch its back.

I don’t have an anti-malware or anti-virus scanner. I’ve been surfing malware-free and virus-free since more than two years, thanks to Mozilla Application Suite.

#6