No Music to My Ear, Or Anyone Else's

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First the Run.
Another decent weekend on my feet. I finally got to wear my new purple Dri-fit, long-sleeved shirt when I discovered it was 47 degrees at 5:30 on Saturday morning. Hooray. The cool air helped propel me through a 5-mile loop with lots of hills. I wanted to keep running, but I also wanted to do Pilates in an hour and so I cut it short.

This morning I was prepared for equally stellar running weather but, alas, it was at least 10 degrees warmer. Which is still cool enough to thoroughly enjoy my usual Sunday two-hour trip around my suburb. I just sort of made up the course as I went along. Zigging here and zagging there. Checking out different neighborhoods. Taking in a gorgeous sunrise. Again, the hills were no problem. And again I stopped only because I had somewhere else to be in an hour.

Now to the DMZ.
In all the Hokie hype, I failed to mention a significant IT security story from last week that involves some seriously shady dealings by Sony. In order to protect the copyright on its CDs and DVDs, the entertainment giant for at least the last year has used a digital rights management tool that’s really stealth code used to hack into your computer, alter it and then spy on what you do. Who knows how long it would have gone undetected had the creator of a tool called Rootkit Remover not discovered it last week. And now that it’s out there, others are piggybacking on the cloaking technology to mask their own misdeeds.

There are said to be at least 24,000 “enhanced” Sony BMG CDs that install this rootkit on PCs. If you ever put such a Sony CD or movie into your computer and it asked you to install additional software – or just started to automatically run it – you’re likely infected.

Some articles to help explain what’s happened and what you should do:

PC Magazine: Sony DRM Uses Rootkit Techniques
SearchSecurity.com: The rootkit of all evil?
Information Week: Sony Issues Patch as Hackers Pounce on Rootkit
Wired News: The Cover-Up is the Crime

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