Thirty seven days after Sony was outed for including a rootkit (a piece of software that hides itself from the Windows filesystem and process manager, and allows viruses to opportunistically do the same) they've finally released an uninstaller that you can download and run on your own computer (previous uninstallers ran from the Web and left you computer vulnerable to total takeover through simple attacks like embedding malicious code in web-pages). Of course, Sony knew about the rootkit for at least 28 days, so all told, this uninstaller took sixty five days to arrive.
Please note that uninstalling from your computer the XCP software and associated content protection files loaded from an XCP-protected CD will NOT delete or affect your use of any audio files that you have previously transferred from an XCP-protected CD. Such files remain subject to the digital rights management rules in the End User License Agreement: namely that you may rip the audio into the secure formats provided on the disc, move these tracks to compatible portable devices, and make up to three copies of each track on to CD-Rs.Please be advised that this program is protected by all applicable intellectual property and unfair competition laws, including patent, copyright and trade secret laws, and that all uses, including reverse engineering, in violation thereof are prohibited.
Talk about "unclear on the concept!" So, we'll uninstall the software, except we're not really giving you back control over your computer and if you try to understand what we're actually doing, technologically, you're in violation of a bunch of scary made-up lawyerese crap.
Previous installments of the Sony Rootkit Roundup: Part I, Part II, Part III, Part IV
(Cool Sony CD image courtesy of Collapsibletank)
