Gaffer Tape Defeats Sony DRM Rootkit

Sony’s controversial DRM technology - which installs rootkit-style software when users play Sony BMG CDs on Windows PCs - can be defeated easily with nothing more than a piece of masking tape, security researchers have discovered.

Analyst house Gartner has discovered that the technology can be easily defeated simply by applying a fingernail-sized piece of opaque tape to the outer edge of the disc. This renders session two — which contains the self-loading DRM software — unreadable.

"The PC then treats the CD as an ordinary single-session music CD, and the commonly used CD ‘rip’ programs continue to work as usual. Moreover, even without the tape, common CD-copying programs readily duplicate the copy-protected disc in its entirety," Gartner (which is at pains to say it doesn’t endorse the use of rip technology) explains.

The Register