Quake3World

World of Warcraft hackers using Sony BMG rootkit
Published: 2005-11-03

Want to cheat in your online game and not get caught? Just buy a Sony BMG copy protected CD.

World of Warcraft hackers have confirmed that the hiding capabilities of Sony BMG's content protection software can make tools made for cheating in the online world impossible to detect. The software--deemed a "rootkit" by many security experts--is shipped with tens of thousands of the record company's music titles.

Blizzard Entertainment, the maker of World of Warcraft, has created a controversial program that detects cheaters by scanning the processes that are running at the time the game is played. Called the Warden, the anti-cheating program cannot detect any files that are hidden with Sony BMG's content protection, which only requires that the hacker add the prefix "$sys$" to file names.

Despite making a patch available on Wednesday to consumers to amend its copy protection software's behavior, Sony BMG and First 4 Internet, the maker of the content protection technology, have both disputed claims that their system could harm the security of a Windows system. Yet, other software makers that rely on the integrity of the operating system are finding that hidden code makes security impossible.


Posted by: Robert Lemos

R00k wrote:You can call it DRM or a rootkit or a trojan or whatever you want.

It's only a matter of time before someone finds a way to use the Sony/BMG application that is already running invisibly, to run their own undetected malware.

It's just rididculous. It should be illegal.

Iccy (temp) wrote:http://www.sysinternals.com/blog/2005/10/sony-rootkits-and-digital-rights.html

The tech is interesting, but the more i think about it, the more im getting pissed.

R00k wrote:

Iccy (temp) wrote:http://www.sysinternals.com/blog/2005/10/sony-rootkits-and-digital-rights.html

The tech is interesting, but the more i think about it, the more im getting pissed.

Thanks, I hadn't read that article before.

So Sony outsourced their DRM to a company which made the masked software, and they also sell that software to other companies.

I wonder how many different CDs have this - how many of us have it loaded on our PCs already and didn't know it? I've put a couple of music disks in mine that launched a proprietary player from the CD...

Looks like RootKit Revealer is about to become very popular.

CheapAlert wrote:dude this is seriously so 21 years ago