“On Tuesday, we reported the story of Mark Russinovich’s discovery that the new new Van Zant CD, published by music giant Sony-BMG, contains aggressive anti-piracy malware. This low-level, hidden code not only prevents you from playing the CD in Windows Media Player, WinAmp or any other software, but the drivers installed without user consent to run the in-built player chew CPU time even when you’re not playing music, and can leave your PC crippled if you attempt to remove them,” Geoff Richards reports for bit-tech.net. “In a victory for common sense everywhere, the enormous public backlash (including bit-tech readers) against this ‘technology’ has forced Sony-BMG into an embarrassing U-turn.”
November 2, 2005 – This Service Pack removes the cloaking technology component that has been recently discussed in a number of articles published regarding the XCP Technology used on SONY BMG content protected CDs. This component is not malicious and does not compromise security. However to alleviate any concerns that users may have about the program posing potential security vulnerabilities, this update has been released to enable users to remove this component from their computers.
“You can download the Service Pack from the XCP-Aurora,” Richards reports. “Amusingly, the fun & games doesn’t stop there, as the download requires the use of Microsoft’s ActiveX – one of the major vulnerabilities in the browser-based security issues that have plagued Internet Explorer. FireFox is commonly believed to be a more secure browser because it does not support ActiveX, yet FireFox users wanting to download the XCP Service Pack because of concerns it opens them to ‘potential security vulnerabilities’ are greeted with this message:”
ActiveX Unsupported
Sorry, your Internet Browser does not support ActiveX Controls.
Please use Microsoft Internet Explorer to continue.
“In other words, please switch back to the browser you’ve moved away from for security reasons in order to download the patch that removes the security issues from our software that we installed without your permission,” Richards writes.
Full article with links to the Service Pack here.
[Thanks to MDN reader “DreamTheEndless” for the heads up. If you have an article, you’d like to see, click “contact” above and send us the link and the name you’d like us to use to thank you below the article.]
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Sony lost their edge long ago. That company needs to conduct a serious rethinking of its goals. Does Sony want to continue to throw up 1-inch tall wet cardboard roadblocks that Apple doesn’t even see as it drives of them at the speed of music? Or does Sony want to start making quality products again and compete with others on the merits of their products and services?
Our advice to Sony: give up the music device and music service markets. You’ve already lost badly and you simply look foolish and full of sour grapes. Concentrate on working WITH Apple and you’ll end up with Sony monitors, cameras, etc. in Apple Stores, Sony Pro products tied to Apple’s pro audio & video applications and systems plus, who knows, maybe even a Mac OS X license for your PCs (okay, that’s pushing it, but you get the idea).
Related articles:
Report: Sony copy-protected CDs may hide Windows rootkit vulnerability – November 01, 2005
How to beat Apple iPod-incompatible Sony BMG and EMI copy-protected CDs – October 04, 2005
Sony BMG and EMI try to force Apple to ‘open’ iPod with iPod-incompatible CDs – June 20, 2005
New Song BMG copy-protected CDs lock out Apple iPod owners – June 01, 2005
And the Active X doesn’t actually remove the files, all it does is makes the files visible so you can go in and delete them if you want.
How pathetic.
Just when you think they’ve made as big a mess with the music business as possible, they go and out-do themselves again. Congratulations Sony! You’ve taken a great company and flushed it down the toilet! Bravo!
Reason #5,782 why I do not use Windows: the OS allows anyone to take over and cripple your computer without your knowledge
Genius, what a farce.
Can’t believe sony sometimes….
They think that it would hurt their music business if people could copy purchased CDs….
The story continues here…
http://www.boingboing.net/2005/11/03/felten_on_sonys_root.html
Apparently, the uninstaller comes with a new rootkit!!?!!
Between M$ and Sony here are prime examples of what is going terribly wrong on the Windoze platform. They don’t worry about the people who write malware, they are too busy writing it themselves!
MW = working
as in, working against you, not for you.
Baaaaaad Sony!
I will never purchase any product that you manufacture or from a company you align with!!!
an OS that ALLOWS such low-level malware to be planted in the first-place!
If you can’t trust your OS, you can’t trust the most basic things… like a music CD!
Live in fear, Windows lemmings. I’m happy on my Mac.
“Baaaaaad Sony!
I will never purchase any product that you manufacture or from a company you align with!!!”
Didn’t Sony have a presence on stage during the keynote at the Macworld expo last January???
…Apple’s OSX users unaffected.
you mac heads suck
SONY … the company that brought you the wonderful gazillion-selling Walkman now brings you … [drumroll] … MALWARE!
For the 7th time: Abandon all hope ye who thinketh to beat iTMS lest thy fukceth thy future.
For the 1st time: Abandon all hope ye who inserteth any SONY media in thy box lest it fukceth thy system.
Now you know … when you hear, It’s a SONY, it means, This product/device/service cannot be trusted.
This company is self-destructing; the content business is killing the hardware business. Oh the magic of SYNERGY! There’s a lesson for Apple there too, of course.
MikeR: “Baaaaaad Sony!
I will never purchase any product that you manufacture or from a company you align with!!!”
Sony and Apple are currently aligned on Blu-Ray. Does this mean that you won’t be buying anything from Apple? Just a thought.
Bakatarera! Naaani yatten’ da yo!!??
They hired the wrong guy to run this company — a second-Stringer because of a typo. What message would you like to tell your partners, “P2P is safer?”
Wired has a good take on the situation, with an amusing title with timely allusions to current politics:
The Cover-Up is the Crime
http://www.wired.com/news/rants/0,2350,69467,00.html?tw=wn_tophead_2
They should’a hired me instead. Too late now. I’m planning on changing labels.
I can’t, they’ve got me by the balls.
i like sony. they make some sweet stuff. I like Apple way more, of course, but sony doesn’t need to be beat up for making a mistake. Their hidden software didn’t effect apple computers, so as far as I am concerned it is the pc users getting what they deserve.
A consumer boycott is in order here. $ony, M$ and the lot need to shown who is boss of their own peecee and music they purchase.
Nice to see them get flogged!
MDN is right about $ony loosing their “edge” a long time ago. I remember buying a ‘n’ generation $ony Walkman many moons ago and thinking how crappy the design and workmanship was. They were coasting from then on the brand name.
R.I.P. $ony.
Sony may even have committed a crime under the U.S. Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, which can carry fines and prison terms for anyone who “knowingly causes the transmission of a program … and as a result of such conduct, intentionally causes damage, without authorization, to a protected computer.” Corrupting Windows so it misreports the contents of a hard drive sounds a lot like “damage,” and the click-wrap license agreement on the Sony disk amounts to pretty thin “authorization” — disclosing only that “this CD will automatically install a small proprietary software program … intended to protect the audio files embodied on the CD.” [Wired]
Maybe I can help you sony guys, but first listen to these tracks I recorded.
Hey, I got a whole CD! Sign me up.
fuckers
I’ve got a defense plan that can’t fail. Russinovich’s got a PC, and everyone knows that PCs are contaminated by all sorts of baad shit. Any file extracted from a PC could have been contaminated by any of the ten’s a thousands’ a malware. Ain’t no way to tell what’s in a PC, right? The glove won’t fit!
What? You admitted guilt? Why the fuck you do a thing like that!? Shit! We gotta get F. Lee Bailey on this!
Do i smell a new class action lawsuit?
</sniff sniff>
Hey…what was the name of that Mafia$oft lawyer that filed on the behalf of all those people with scratched iPod Nano’s???? I think he should start another class action lawsuit…this time at Sony…..but then again, peecee people are use to this type of treatment and can’t see the light. They use mind dumbing machines that have mind dumbing operating systems and blissfully walk off the cliff on a daily basis.
iDon’t: you mac heads suck
stabtheman (the surreal one): Truth hurts, don’t it? You have my sympathies.
If you read the article on the Register http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/11/03/secfocus_drm/ the “patch” released by Sony only removes the cloaking devise (sounds like Star Trek) so you can see the files they’ve deviously installed. You will still ‘break’ your optical drive or your entire Windows OS, requiring a full reformat and reinstall (what a bizzare concept), if you try to remove the software.
So from Phoney, we get “sorry for secretly installing malware without your permission and hiding it from you. Here you go, we’ll let you see the malware we’ve installed without your permission, but you’re not allowed to remove it anyway.”
Sony is a company in decline. They were once a great company, with fantistic products and good support. But that’s the past.
They have gotten too big, too greedy and have their fingers in too many pies. I know I’ll never buy one of their crap products ever again. I’ve been burnt too many times now.
This thing lacks some perspective. I mean Windows makes software that is user friendly and Sony is fully living up to that feature with it’s rootkit. I mean you need a whole bunch of friends to help you with your PC to figure out virues, spyware, trojans and now of course music CD’s.
It it perfectly aligned with the MS “Preys for Sure” motto.
Macs on the other hand are not user friendly. You turn on the mac and do your work, no friends required to help you figure it out.
Sony is simply providing a feature to the PC world. Illegal? Sure it is, just like MS. I mean (out on a tangent here) with the Bush administration leading the way, even “politics” is a politically incorrect term.
Sony is one screwed up company with too many divisions, and some of them actually compete against eachother.
Sony Connect (IT / Media download services),
Sony DHE (Digital Home Entertainmaint )
Sony Pictures (aka Sony SPE, Sony Pictures and Entertainment)
Sony Pictures Digital
Sony/BMG Music
SOE (Sony Online Entertainment aka thestation.com)
Sony Electronics
Sony Broadcast
Sony Broadband Services
Sony Games
etc. etc.
Overwhelming imperial evidence concludes:
Windows users suck.
Yeah I know. Suckers.