Cleaning up after the Sony Rootkit
Sunbeltblog has a suggestion (from Ben Edelman) for SONY on how to get the word out to customers that they have the problem laden XCP/ rootkit/ trojan/ drm software that’s been burning up tech news… Distribute an ad through their own rootkit. It does, after all, “phone home” from time to time and…. it looks like a banner can be displayed. Details on Ben Edelman’s site.
Basically when “phoning home” the software usually receives a response from Sony’s servers referencing a nobanner.xml… her basically set his hosts file to point to the local machine as the sony site, created a nobanner.xml that referred to an image of his choosing and…. drumroll… the XCP player software correctly retrieved the “warning” banner and displayed at the bottom of the player window. So, Sony has a NICE way to go ahead and notify ALL users of the situation if they wish.
This would be an easy way to communicate the issue and I think SONY ought to listen….