Mike did call Sony electronics who told him to call Sony Pictures which he did. The tech on the line told Mike that this was happening because of a new copy protection that Sony was using on those movies and that they would not change the way the copy protection worked. A firmware update would correct this situation and make the DVDs playable in his player. When he asked about the update he was told that it was not available yet and that it could take two to four weeks before it would be available.

Great story, is not it ? I really love the way the Sony tech reacted to Mikes question. Very professional to tell him that an firmware update would help but that it is not available now. Great help for someone who wanted to play legit DVDs on a DVD player. Why is it the case that only customers who buy DVDs and CDs are often having troubles playing them ?

I suppose there is only one solution to the problem. Avoid Sony at all cost, they had so many ****ups in the past years that I’m really wondering why they are still in the business at all.

“Sony-BMG’s rootkit DRM technology masks files whose filenames start with “$sys$”. A newly-discovered variant of of the Breplibot Trojan takes advantage of this to drop the file “$sys$drv.exe” in the Windows system directory.”

This new Trojan can only be detected by special software like the freeware product Rootkit Revealer. The trojan seems to be spread by fake emails asking people to verify their picture.

Update: There has been a lot of talk about Sony’s Rootkit. What we know is that the company used the technology on about 20 different music CDs that it shipped to retail channels. This reduces the likelihood of misuse considerably, considering that users not only had to play one of those music CDs in their PC, but also get that Trojan on their system somehow.

Here is the email that was used to distribute the trojan.

Hello,

Your photograph was forwarded to us as part of an article we are publishing for our December edition of Total Business Monthly.

Can you check over the format and get back to us with your approval or any changes?

If the picture is not to your liking then please send a preferred one.

We have attached the photo with the article here.

Kind regards,

Jamie Andrews

Editor

www.TotalBusiness.co.uk

**********************************************

The Professional Development Institute

And the attachment: Article+Photos.exe

A malicious IRC backdoor is then installed on the system which cannot be detected by normal security software if the Sony rootkit is running on the system.

The trojan then creates a startup key for itself in the Windows Registry, and connects to several IRC servers to wait for commands from the remote hacker. The malicious attacker can perform operations such as downloading, deleting or running files on infected machines without the user of the system ever knowing about it.

The trojan furthermore terminates processes of known security software to avoid detection and removal.