From the world of technology comes the news that Sony has hidden a rootkit in the DRM protection scheme on some of its music CDs. For a technical look, go to the Sysinternals site for the straight dope. In layman's terms: When you play one of the content-protected CDs on your Windows computer, it installs some very sneaky software that runs in the background. Users won't notice its presence and, in fact, it is a rootkit which means that it hides its presence on your computer. The EULA (End User License Agreement) - that text that you automatically hit Yes or OK to without reading when you install software – apparently doesn't explicitly say that, by playing the CD, your computer will have software installed on it that you can't tell is there and have no way to uninstall. If you're paranoid and played one of these CDs on your PC and run a rootkit detector, the DRM hoolie will show up. Woe to anyone who tries to delete the offending files! Your computer's CD drive is thusly rendered useless. Now that some computer geeks have found the DRM hoolie, Sony now offers a tool to remove it.
The thing is, it's always been possible to circumvent copy-protection. It all depends on how much effort you wanna put into it. I hear that Plextor CD drives coupled with the company's PlexTools are really good at ripping copy-protected CDs. But anyone has had the ability all along – just plug the speaker or headphone output into the input of your soundcard and record. The Analog Hole. But who knows how long it will be before your hole is plugged. The MPAA is trying to plug the video version of it.
No comments:
Post a Comment