Friday, November 04, 2005

Mark Russinovich has discovered a bundle of info about the DRM that Sony installs on your PC with the new Van Zant CD. You can find the article here.

The nutshell is this: Sony releases the new Van Zant CD. On the computer, it only plays within its own executable, not via Windows Media Player or any other software. You are allowed to burn three copies of the CD, and then it's done with.Well, it appears that, to enforce this DRM, Sony are installing device drivers, DLLs and registry hacks, then running a Rootkit process to mask their installation. If you attempt to uninstall the playing software, the device drivers are left installed, and are left active. Trying to delete the drivers manually - providing you can even find them - can leave your PC crippled. The code is programmed so badly, you can be losing 1-2% of your CPU time even when the CD isn't in the drive, as the DRM software is searching your machine to check nothing is going on that it should know about.This technique of masking files and folders to prevent detection is commonly used by malware and spyware to prevent uninstallation. Only by using a RKT detector can you see the processes running and from there, it's an incredibly complicated process to break down the inbuilt protections in the software.

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