Sony embedded spyware into their new CDs

Sony embedded spyware into their new CDs and everyone’s pissed. Lawsuits left and right and a public relations nightmare should have taught them a lesson about the futility of resisting file-sharing, but like the other major record companies, they’re in denial about the painful changes ahead.

More than 50 CDs across all kinds of music had the XCP (“Extended Copy Protection”) software that reported back to Sony on the user’s behavior like burning CDs and also exposed the user’s computer to third-party attacks by manipulating basic functions of the operating system; tactics employed by the ‘rootkits’ commonly used by online attackers. All because users thought they were agreeing to “Bonus Content”.
Sony is taking remedial actions (but never really apologizing) and blaming “First 4 Internet”, the software firm that developed XCP. They’ve promised to exchange all the XCP cd’s for safe cd’s and have made available a program to remove the dangerous malware that they installed in consumers’ computers. Of course by then a trojan had already surfaced to take advantage of the weaknesses in users’ systems.
Later it turned out that the uninstaller leaved security gaps in your system. Then it seemed like XCP was made partly with opensource programs whose only condition to be reused and repurposed was to be acknowledged, which of course Sony didn’t do.

The Department of Homeland Security has issued a reccomendation to never install software from sources that you wouldn’t expect to have software like audio CD’s.

Microsoft’s anti-spyware program is incorporating a Sony-rootkit remover.
Artists are posting instructions on their websites for disabling XCP. Texas, Italy and the Electronic Frontier Foundation are sueing Sony. EFF is asking Sony to also stop using another DRM (“Digital Rights Management”) software called MediaMax that spies on you.

a comprehensive collection of posts at BoingBoing : Sony anti-customer technology

The Register: Texas puts Sony BMG in its sights