I’m a bit late to this party, but it’s been a busy week.

Update…GRC has some great information about this. Click here to check it out.

For those of you that haven’t heard, Sony’s DRM has some funky provisions when you try to play the tracks on a Windows PC: From Mark’s Sysinternals Blog

The DRM reference made me recall having purchased a CD recently that can only be played using the media player that ships on the CD itself and that limits you to at most 3 copies.

What this means is that in order for you to play this particular CD on a Windows PC, you have to install the player that comes on the disk. While not necessarily a bad thing, there is a small problem with the player. It installs what is called RootKit technology.

A rootkit is a program that modify’s the Windows Kernel in a such a way that it allows programs and processes to run virtually undectected. Scary stuff to be sure, but necessary in some instances. Most of the major anti-virus companies use them to help rid your machine of virus’.

But the stuff on this Sony player is nasty. It really acts more like malware than anything else. Once it starts, it doesn’t stop. It will continue to use CPU cycles even after you stop the program. It does not come with an uninstall utility. If you manually remove the files, you will loose your CDROM drive. And, this is the really bad part, if you have this on your PC and a hacker knows about it, they can start processes very easily that you won’t see!

You can get more information about this over at Sysinternals.com or listen to the latest Security Now! podcast. That one is usually too geeky for most of you, but this episode is very very interesting.

So, to be sure, do not play Sony CD’s in your Windows computer if they prompt you to install a player. Hell, don’t play any CD’s in your Windows computer if you need a special player. Use them in your car, on your home stereo or your portable CD player, just keep it away from Windows.

Of course, you Mac and Linux peeps can pretty much ignore all of this. I’m really going to start using the Linux box more often…

3 Responses to “Don’t buy this CD!”

1. jSchwa Says:
   November 5th, 2005 at 11:20 am

   See the story about the DRM company that admitted to an angry cd purchaser that Sony uses the DRM not to prevent piracy, but to get back at Apple for not opening up the iTunes/FairPlay technology?

2. db Says:
   November 5th, 2005 at 11:39 am

   I haven’t, but that makes a little bit of sense. I did read someplace that Sony has actually been in talks with Apple to open up the ITMS DRM, but they aren’t budging.

   I also don’t think that opening the ITMS DRM would affect iPod sales, since it is a superior device to just about everything else on the market, but the thinkers @ Apple I’m sure have different ideas.

3. wind(the)frog(dot)net » update Says:
   November 26th, 2005 at 9:08 am

   [...] I said in this post not to agree to the EULA if prompted by a Sony CD. That is entirely false. Turns out that all you have to do is put the CD in. By the time the EULA comes up, the nasty stuff is already installed. [...]

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