I finally got around to reading Mark Russinovichs blog entry on Sony’s rootkit. First and foremost, its a great read and my hat is off to Mark. I highly recommend reading it if you are at all interested in computer security. If you can’t read or don’t want to, check out Steve Gibson’s Security Now podcast on the subject. I don’t want to go into a long diatribe about how wrong Sony was in including this rootkit malware on a number of their compact discs, as that point has been beat to death. I have an entirely different perspective to share. Taking nothing away from Mark, but I believe someone probably found out about this rootkit long before he did. However, this individual realized that if he (or she) went public with the finding, everyone would know that the person listens to some major league crap. Mark got the rootkit via a Van Zant cd. On one hand I give Mark a huge thumbs up for finding it because my guess is that if he hadn’t, by this time next year the number of cd’s with this malware included would be fivefold the number affected today. On the other hand I gotta give him a thumbs way down for his choice in music. Have you seen Van Zant? The denim industry should be sueing these guys. In all seriousness, if you own any of the cd’s included on the list (Ricky Martin, Celine Dion, Neal Diamon to name a few), you probably deserve the rootkit.
