Audio Video News

A decade ago Sony was scrambling to recover from the infamous CD Rootkit Fiasco, brought about when Sony BMG, then the second largest music group, placed copyright protection software on 52 CDs.

You could play the discs on a regular CD player but if you popped it into your PC, you had to install an antipiracy program and media player needed to play the CD. The program installed hidden "rootkit" software deep in Windows (Macs weren't affected) that limited the number of copies you could burn and prevented you from loading the songs to an iPod. It also installed spyware that could track music habits.

Then all hell broke loose when hackers used an opening in the program to spread several viruses (including Stinx-E). Amid an uproar, Sony BMG stopped making CDs with the Extended Copy Protection (XCP) software, recalled some 5 million infected discs, and offered new CDs in exchange for the tainted ones,

Ken Pohlmann wrote at the time:

From the vantage point of Sony BMG'S corporate headquarters, it probably seemed like a good idea at the time. With music piracy up and profits down, it made complete sense to add some get-tough digital-rights management (DRM) to certain CDs. But what seemed smart in the corporate world led to a royal debacle in the real world. [emphasis added]...

The supreme irony? Many honest people avoid illegal file sharing precisely because they're afraid of contracting a virus. Now, they buy a Sony BMG disc, and it makes them vulnerable to—guess what?—viruses.

Read Ken’s full column here.