Quake3World

Sony is to suspend production of CDs using its controversial content protection technology, currently being exploited by a Trojan virus.

The technology employed by Sony to protect its music from illegitimate use was picked up by security software as a rootkit which hid files from Windows and made them impossible to detect. But simply using letters '$sys$' in a filename means that any such file will be hidden, even malicious files. And this is exactly what has happened with the latest virus.

What few people realize is that Sony uses another copy protection program, SunnComm’s MediaMax, on other discs in their catalog, and that this system presumably is not included in the moratorium. Though MediaMax doesn’t resort to concealing itself with a rootkit, it does behave in several ways that are characteristic of spyware.

Like XCP, recent versions of MediaMax engage in spyware-style behavior. They install software without meaningful consent or notification, they include either no means of uninstalling the software or an uninstaller that claims to remove the entire program but doesn’t, and they transmit information about user activities to SunnComm despite statements to the contrary in the end user license agreement and on SunnComm’s web site.