EFF: Sony Downloading Spyware to your PC
While surfing today I found my way to the Electronic Freedom Foundation's blog post on Sony BMG "Infections".: "As we've mentioned before, Sony-BMG has been using copy-protection technology called XCP in its recent CDs. You insert your CD into your Windows PC, click 'agree' in the pop up window, and the CD automatically installs software that uses rootkit techniques to cloak itself from you. Sony-BMG has released a 'patch' that supposedly 'uncloaks' the XCP software, but it creates new problems.
This, as my kids might say, so TOTALLY creeps me out. It is another indication that we have abdicated our freedoms to the corporations here in the US. We have to find our way back. I'm not buying any more Sony/BMG CDs till this is gone. Time to get out the guitar and get back to making my own music.
But how do you know whether you've been infected? It turns out Sony-BMG has deployed XCP on a number of titles, in variety of musical genres, on several of its wholly-owned labels.
EFF has confirmed the presence of XCP on the following titles (each has a data session, easily read on a Macintosh, that includes a file called 'VERSION.DAT' that announces what version of XCP it is using). If you have one of these CDs, and you have a Windows PC (Macs are totally immune, as usual), you may have caught the XCP bug."
Categories: EFF, SonySpyware
posted by Nancy White at 12:02 PM
1 Comments:
Nancy, make sure that you let your local library and your favorite used CD store know that they should take steps to pull these Sony BMG CDs from their collections.
I noted the problem to the Ann Arbor District Library and they took steps to remedy the problem - see
http://vielmetti.typepad.com/vacuum/2005/11/sony_rootkit_mu_1.html
for the details.
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