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11/02/2005 Archived Entry: "Sony is hacking your computer!"

Do not play Sony music CDs on your computer! Thanks to our friends the Millers for passing this warning along:

Here's a warning about a new and disturbing computer-virus issue. Latest Sony Music CDs can add a "rootkit" to your Windows-based PC -- a secret payload which, if you apply reasonable clean-up means, can disable your CD drive or worse. (There is some question whether these disks will play at all on Macs and Linux; apparently, they will play and won't "infect" 64-bit Windows -- yet.)

Amazon.com and similar sites should identify such music CDs as "CONTENT/COPY-PROTECTED CD", but can you be sure? (Or even that careful?) Until we get better news, we recommend that you do not play Sony music CDs in any Windows computer.

You can read more here; A more technical discussion is here; and the VERY technical details of the rootkit discovery and consequences (with insightful comments, as well) are at discoverer Mark Russinovich's "Mark's Sysinternals Blog".

I note that the Register article indicates that trying to remove Sony's rootkit can completely kill your Windows PC, forcing you to reinstall from scratch!  —brad