Cnet: Sony goes BLACK HAT with root kit

[aahhaaa]

In yet another PR (at least) blunder, Sony just announced their free video & VoIP service:
The electronics giant launched a free Web-based phone service on Wednesday called Instant Video Everywhere, designed to link users of the service via their computers.
http://news.zdnet.com/2100-9588_22-5957132.html

Right, and it won't have any backdoor rootkit so their techs can peek in and listen to... well, you?

How easy is it to keep rootkits out of your office:
http://blogs.zdnet.com/askbloggie/index.php?p=19

Rootkit attacks from Mideast & AOL:
http://news.zdnet.com/2100-1009_22-5958838.html

[aahhaaa]

apparently they've been using open source for the dirty work:

Sony rootkit: The untold story Posted by David Berlind @ 11:16 am

... While many people are worried about how open source code may infringe on the proprietary world's intellectual property (and the open source community is responding by circling its patent wagons), Sony is now caught in the Web of news that things are actually the other way around for its rootkit. According to a Reuters report on ZDNet, it looks as though UK-based First4Internet, the company that developed the rootkit software used on the Sony CD, probably used open source code in its proprietary product without proper attribution. It's a copyright gaff that most in consumer-land won't understand but that open source advocates are likely to make serious hay about.

Now onto the untold story.

In his column on Wired.com, Schneier makes his own hay because of the way that the anti-malware providers may have been co-conspirators in the rootkit fiasco. They apparently gave First4Internet (and by way of inheritance, Sony) a hall pass to surreptitiously install and run the rootkit on users' PCs. Now you know why I called it a Trojan horse when I first wrote about it. Dan Gillmor picked up on Schneier's report. Indeed, if the anti-malware companies have been lured into becoming foxes that watch the henhouse, that's a major problem. But, while that may be the real story, and while there's obviously another big story lurking in the fact that the blogosphere is ultimately what sent Sony reeling from explaining itself to offering fixes to withdrawing the product from the market in only two short weeks (wow. just wow), the untold story, if you ask me is that the outrage against Sony is being misplaced.

more at: http://blogs.zdnet.com/BTL/?p=2177

[MU]

>the untold story, if you ask me is that the outrage against Sony is being misplaced.


my english is not so good... does that mean, that sony is not responsible, but the company that created the rootkit for them?

if yes: As far as I know, IBM has dozends or hundrets of lawjers, that check IBM-products for possible patent-problems.

A huge company like sony, that is active in the fight against "stealing intelectual property" (music), really should have such lawjers, too.
It is unexcusable, if they are not paying attention on their products, when they want other people to act "correct" with their own products.

The other point is: even if they were not responsible for the code:
But they wre responsible for selling the CDs. So they are responsible, to make it as easy as possible for the customers, to remove the code.
Thats to say: free download of removal-tools, and not ordering them in a bureaucratic act where you have to give your personal data (nice for the marketing datamining).

Mark