The Sony Rootkit Story

Though this is not this morning breaking news, the story of the Sony rootkit still surfs many of the top news headlines as it keeps evolving and revealing more of its nasty nature.

What Sony did, was to include within commercial music CDs a hidden malicious software (a rootkit) with the supposed goal of protecting its own interests and preventing illegal use or copying of the included music.

The frustrating issue is that this malicious software is run without the user knowledge or consent -- or even against her consent -- and if such rootkit infects your computer through a Sony music CD, you would be exposed to high security risks as any capable hacker could gain access to your computer without your knowledge or ability to detect it.

The ever excellent Cory Doctorow has been posting on Boing Boing an omnibus collection of stories documenting and reporting on this story, providing a uniquely useful set of resources to study and understand what realy went on with this Sony rootkit, and how the details of the story gradually become available.