Sony to offer patch for 'rootkit' DRM

Found on The Register on Wednesday, 02 November 2005
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Sony BMG said today it will offer a patch for one of its own exploits - one that comes bundled with its music CDs.

The code cloaks itself and by intercepting and redirecting low level windows system calls, forces the audio through a custom player, and restricts the number of CD burns that can be made.

Russinovich also pointed out that because the cloaking technique it used to hide itself was so crude, malware authors could hide their own nefarious programs on users hard disks using Sony's DRM software.

However, the patch that Sony will offer doesn't remove the 'rootkit' DRM: it only makes the hidden files visible.

Incredibly, the Sony DRM malware has been out on the market for eight months and is bundled on 20 CD titles. Sony said it hadn't received a single complaint until this week. So, disturbingly, most people either haven't run into serious problems yet, or even more disturbingly, don't find the Sony DRM particularly onerous. We pray it's not the latter.

Now that was quick. Just a few days after being made public, they offer a fix. It's pretty safe to assume that this fix was made at the time of the development, but had not been released because nobody asked. However, the people have to pay more attention to what's going on; with stunts like this, the entertainment industry tries to enforce it's total control scheme. And when people don't cry out, they will take it to a new level every time.