Sony BMG Sued Over Rootkit (Again), Trojan Spotted

A blizzard of lawsuits appears to be facing Sony in its different guises after Mark Russinovich revealed copy protection software installed rootkits on people’s machines. The US Electronic Frontier Foundation is also collecting information on the case
the Inquirer - Sony BMG sued over rootkit (again), Sony sued over Playstation, PSP

The [class-action lawsuit in California by consumers] claims that around June 2005, Sony BMG began to issue some CDs that install digital rights management software that continuously monitor for rights problems, depleting a computer’s available resources. The suit says the technology cannot be removed without damage to the system and that Sony BMG does not advise consumers of the existence or true nature of the program.
Reuters - Suit targets Sony BMG anti-piracy technology

“This is spyware, pure and simple,” says Sam Curry, vice president of security software maker Computer Associates. Sony put a downloadable patch on its website to make the formerly hidden file no longer invisible, but that has done little to put out the fire.
Yahoo News - Some Sony CDs’ piracy protection called spyware

In an interview with NPR late last week, Sony BMG’s Global Digital Business President Thomas Hesse downplayed the recent DRM fiasco saying he objected to terms such as malware, spyware and rootkit. “Most people, I think, don’t even know what a rootkit is, so why should they care about it?” he said. “This is purely about restricting the ability to burn MP3 files in an unprotected manner.”
BetaNews - Sony President: Rootkit of No Concern

Virus writers have begun taking advantage of Sony-BMG’s use of rootkit technology in DRM software bundled with its music CDs. Sony-BMG’s rootkit DRM technology masks files whose filenames start with “$sys$”. A newly-discovered variant of of the Breplibot Trojan takes advantage of this to drop the file “$sys$drv.exe” in the Windows system directory.
The Register - First Trojan using Sony DRM spotted