Thanks everyone for your help and for the heads-up.  You saved me what would 
have, no doubt, been hours of frustration.
PM Lyman
  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: classicsat 
  To: [email protected] 
  Sent: Sunday, November 13, 2005 9:33 AM
  Subject: [TVRO] Re: [Whitmores_Announcements] BMG (Sony) RootKit on some 
audio CDs


  My opinions, from what I read. It is about the Sony DRM, not about the
  worm/virus that has taken advantage of it.

  --- In [email protected], "PM Lyman" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
  >
  > Dan,
  > I have a few questions re your post below.  
  > 
  > 1) You said not to put a cd in the cd drive of a Windows machine. 
  >Does that mean not even to play it?

  TMK, if you turn off autorun, you should be fine, but won't be able to
  play the CD unless you have a player app that directly controls the CD
  drive.

  > 2) I searched for any files w/ $sys$ in the name and did not find
  any.  I also did the test, creating a $sys$.txt file.  It did not
  disappear when I hit refresh. Are the $sys$ files installed by Sony's
  rootkit? 

  Yes,  buy a part of the rootkit hides files that begin with $sys$ . If
  they don't hide, you are surely not "infected" with the XCP software.

  > 3) You said if you do find a $sys$ file and remove it, it disallows
  access to the cd drive.  Why remove it, then?  Does the $sys$ file
  prevent you from ripping songs?


  I think it is the driver (aries.sys) that hides the files, and also
  proxies the CD-drive, so its removeal will cause problems.

  > 4) Would an ordinary disc copy (not rip) be affected by the rootkit?
  I don't know.

  > 5) Other than saying, don't put any Sony discs from up to 3 months
  >old in your computer, is there any way to detect the presence of
  >rootkit software?
  Rootkit revealer will show if it has run on your PC. On the "CD" 
  itself , you will see references to xcp, in the data sructureof the
  CD, a file called version.dat with a version of xcp

  More info at http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/archives/004144.php

  > 6) Do you recommend downloading the software from Sophos on the link
  >your provided below? The site said "This version of the tool detects
  >and disables the Sony DRM cloaking copy protection technology (which
  >Sophos refers to as Troj/RKProc-Fam)."  I haven't bought anything
  >from Sony recently, and I passed the test, so what would be the
  >effect of running the tool on an uninfected machine?  Would it
  >provide protection for the future in case I run into the Sony >rootkit?
  >

  Likely it will not find the infection and do thothing.

  > I buy cds all the time, and I usually rip them to mp3.  I really
  >appreciate your heads-up.  I definitely don't have time to rebuild my
  >operating system on a consistent basis.  I'm thinking about just
  >getting a ripper computer.

  Do that, and put Linux on it.

  > 
  > Thanks.
  > PM Lyman







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