cleolinda | Nothin' but linkspam

Important! If you have played a Sony product on your computer, it apparently has downloaded a "rootkit" on your computer:

The software installs itself as a root kit, which is a set of tools commonly used to make certain files and processes undetectable, and they're the favored tool of crackers who are, as Wikipedia puts it, attempting to "maintain access to a system for malicious purposes." In fact, root kits are often classified alongside Trojan horses. And Mark Russinovich, who created a root-kit detection utility and was one of the first to blog about the Sony intrusion, discovered another little gem when he tried to remove the DRM drivers. It broke his computer--disabling his CD drive.

So, let's make this a bit more explicit. You buy a CD. You put the CD into your PC in order to enjoy your music. Sony grabs this opportunity to sneak into your house like a virus and set up camp, and it leaves the backdoor open so that Sony or any other enterprising intruder can follow and have the run of the place. If you try to kick Sony out, it trashes the place.

I'm hearing rumblings about a class-action suit. If anyone hears about anything more effective than a petition, let me know.

Australia foils major terrorist attack.

Police Find Bomb-Making Factory in Paris.

Defense lawyer in Saddam trial killed.

British author John Fowles, whose works include "The French Lieutenant's Woman" and "The Collector," has died. He was 79.

Urbina charged with attempted murder.

Drunk Death Row Escapee Captured in La.

Beatty Tries to Crash Schwarzenegger Rally.

Pirate Attack Repelled by Cruise Ship Crew.

Cheerleaders Had Sex in Bar, Witnesses Say. Yes, with each other.

Tom Cruise fires sister.

I've been sitting on this story for a while, because it's just too horrifying.

bacardibreezer7: "I'm sure you have already been told about this but check it out: so much cocaine use is going on in London that there are traces of it in the Thames." Actually, I hadn't, so: awesome. Now that Kate Moss has been to rehab, though, I expect those figures to start going down significantly.

Honey is medicinally awesome. Also: "When combined with water and oxygen, glucose oxidase forms gluconic acid and hydrogen peroxide—the very same stuff you probably have in your medicine cabinet right now. This means that diluted honey can serve as an excellent antiseptic, while being far less likely than ordinary hydrogen peroxide to harm already-damaged tissue."

Pictures:

jenni_talula's books and her Lost bear have arrived.

BookCrossing: Discovered this the other day on

scorpiosphynx's journal, and I'm having fun adding recently-read books to my bookshelf. The really fun part is that you can sign up for an alert for when someone releases a book "into the wild" in your city. (Eeeee! A book was released in the quad at my alma mater! Ooo, and it's a good book, too.)

Speaking of which: "Cleo, I'm sure you're tired of putting up these thefillintheblanksite things, but could you pimp The Literacy Site? It's like The Hunger Site, but it donates free books to children with every click. Today, every click is doubled. I don't know how long this will last." Actually, I'm not tired of them at all--they're all at the same hub site, so it's not like they're poser copycats or something. I just wanted to add a new one every so often rather than overwhelm people all at once, but if they're doing a special today, let's go for it.

ETA:

Alabama Governor Calls for Aruba Boycott

'Desperate Housewives' Actor Fired

Current Music: Natasha Bedingfield

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Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

dtwirler.livejournal.com

Stupid cheerleaders... as if the Panthers didn't have enough bad press! *is pissed*

From:

mehinda.livejournal.com

Not to be all Sony apologist or anything but here is an actual article (instead of someone's journal) that was published in a newspaper. http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/business/3445666 There were about 20 titles released on CD which used this software and users who've experienced problems or feel they might have this rootkit installed on their computer can contact Sony to have the issue resolved. Obviously this is in addition to whatever outcome there would be for a potential class action suit.

I found the journalfen posting quite hysterical.

From:

phanatic.livejournal.com

Instead of an article published in a newspaper, go to Mark's blog where he posts (http://www.sysinternals.com/blog/2005/10/sony-rootkits-and-digital-rights.html) about how he found it.

The journalfen posting isn't hysterical. Even if you subscribe to the notion of EULAs as binding legal agreement, the EULA in question didn't specify that the software would make such low-level changes to the operating system, didn't specify that no uninstall program was included, didn't specify that simply deleted the files it installed would break your computer, and didn't specify that the software sends data to Sony (http://www.sysinternals.com/blog/2005/11/more-on-sony-dangerous-decloaking.html), and can lead to blue-screen crashes because its incompetent lackwit authors don't understand race conditions. Moreover, the software wastefully scans all running processes on your machine, consuming several percent of your CPU resources even when you're not using it to listen to the CD! And finally, and probably worst of all, by hiding from the OS itself any file beginning with the string $sys$, it provides an excellent means for other malware to piggy-back onto it, thereby evading detection by virus scanners. Hell, hackers are already using it to circumvent Blizzard's anti-cheat mechanisms in World of Warcraft.

The incompetent lackwits who wrote this abortion pretending to be software responded (http://www.sysinternals.com/blog/2005/11/sonys-rootkit-first-4-internet.html) to Mark's claims, and if there's any doubt in your mind that the responsible parties should never, ever be allowed near a compiler again, their response should remove it.

And contacting Sony is of dubious value. As the second article I've linked to here shows, all Sony's titular 'uninstaller' does is install an updated version of the malware (and that's just what is is: malware) drivers that stop concealing $sys$ files from the OS.

In other words, contacting Sony resolves the issue only in the sense that traumatic amputation can resolve the issue of an ingrown toenail.

People seriously need to stop putting up with this shit, and they need to do it pretty damned lickity-split. This kind of bullshit would be illegal if virus-writers did it, the fact that it was done by a huge multinational doesn't change the fundamentally illicit nature of what was done. People need to be fired for this, people need to go to jail for this, and above all, people need to stop buying stuff that does this.

Classy dame, sparkle consultant, gothic enthusiast, sporadic recapper.

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