If you play music/DVD's by Sony watch out.

[Detector]

Sony's new DRM(Digital Rights Management) or 'cloaking' tool is designed to help keep users from copying CD/DVD's, but is leaving your PC wide open for a new Trojan.

Sony's CD's/DVD's have for some time now had their DRM which is meant to keep you from copying. The DRM code is installed when a user plays one Sony's copy-protected CDs in a computer. Any file with $sys$ in its name is then automatically hidden by Sony's copy-protection code, making it invisible on computers which have used CDs carrying Sony's cloaking tool.

The new Trojan(Tro/Stinx-E) takes advantage of this by copying itself to the name $sys$drv.exe which makes it invisible. The subject line on the spammed email is: Photo Approval Deadline. We have temporally blocked all .zip files until a solution can be found.

[Captain Kemical]

I read the other day that Sony is putting that type of protection on hold on their new products...doesn't help for the millions of copies already floating around though.

Be careful or

[dodgehighforeve]

Is that the same protection i heard about a year or so ago? That can be disabled by holding the left shift key while inserting the disk?

[Bubba]

I'm not 100% positive, but I don't think so, this puts hidden files in your registry. Now somebody has written a trojan that exploits that hidden registry file to really screw up your computer.

[Bubba]

Here is just one article I found on the subject, there are many others.

Trojan Horse Exploits Sony DRM Copy Protection Vulnerability
Posted on 10.11.2005


Experts at SophosLabs, Sophos's global network of virus and spam analysis centres, have detected a new Trojan horse that exploits the controversial Sony DRM (Digital Rights Management) copy protection included on some of the music giant's CDs.

The Stinx-E Trojan horse appears to have been deliberately spammed out to email addresses with filenames such as Article+Photos.exe, posing as a message from a British business magazine.

Typical emails look as follows:<snip>

http://www.net-security.org/virus_news.php?id=590

Hope this helps.

[lurker]

A few years ago I dropped some film at Wal(of China)-Mart and mistakenly checked the CD option. OK, having those snaps on CD wasn't important but I decided to go ahead and dropped the envelopes anyway.

When the CD's were inserted I was required to install their software in order to view the goddamn jpgs...... which I didn't do, simply because I wasn't informed what spyware I might have to endure in order to view MY standard pictures. I even posted a question about this on whazzit's board and Detector allowed it wasn't a problem from his experience............ but WTF is it that makes a company feel empowered to dump bloatware onto MY computer in order to use their product....

BTW, I hate popups too. But that's like saying "I hate flies" when surrounded by skunks.

[Bubba]