Sony in more rootkit rows

Accusations of sneakiness and unsafe practices hit media giants again.

Sony

has been tangled up in two separate rootkit scares in the past few days, with a brief outcry over hidden software installed by a PC game swiftly followed by more serious allegations about techniques used by a supposedly secure USB key system.

The game incident affected players of popular first-person-shooter game

BioShock

, which includes a copy-protection system named

SecuROM

, provided by

Sony

. The system uses hidden files and protected registry entries which were flagged by

RootkitRevealer

(now provided by

Microsoft

). This flagging was quickly interpreted as meaning the system used rootkit techniques, much like the long-running scandal involving

Sony BMG

installing rootkits as part of copy protection on music CDs. However, analysis quickly showed that the changes were only flagged as hidden, and did not constitute a security risk.

Before the hubbub had died down,

F-Secure

released details of another, more serious incident – a USB key from

Sony

which installed software using rootkit measures to hide a folder containing related files. The keys use fingerprints to prevent unauthorised access to data, and store the identification data in the hidden folder. However, the folder remains accessible via some methods, which could allow malware to take advantage of the changes cloaking the folder, and its contents, to hide their malicious code from the user.

The

MicroVault

USB stick tested by

F-Secure

is apparently an older model and may not be on general release, but researchers were able to find the potentially unsafe items on sale for testing. Their detailed blog entry on their discoveries is

here

. Information on the

BioShock

incident is at

arstechnica


here

.

Posted on 28 August 2007 by

Virus Bulletin