Virus Writers Exploit Sony Anti-Piracy Software

November 10, 2005 D. H. McKee

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Anti-virus maker Sophos is reporting that it has spotted an e-mail going around that tries to exploit the controversial file-hiding abilities of anti-piracy software embedded on some of Sony BMG’s music CDs.
According to Sophos, the e-mail, posing as a message from a British business magazine, begins:
“Hello, Your photograph was forwarded to us as part of an article we are publishing for our December edition of Total Business Monthly. Can you check over the format and get back to us with your approval or any changes? If the picture is not to your liking then please send a preferred one. We have attached the photo with the article here.”
If the recipient has Sony’s anti-piracy installed on his or her machine and happens to click on the file attached to the e-mail, the computer is infected with a Trojan horse that copies a file to the victim’s machine — “$sys$drv.exe.”
As Security Fix has noted in past posts, the Sony software successfully hides any file with the “$sys$” convention in it.
Security Fix – Brian Krebs on Computer and Internet Security – (washingtonpost.com)

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As a guy who occasionally curates art shows and wrangles artists together, I often have to edit and post artist bios, profile pictures, and artwork images. This can be a problem, since many artists and writers aren’t used to selling themselves. Artists rarely know how to present their art for display in a brochure, and writers aren’t used to writing about themselves.

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Like blogs of old, this one is a personal document of the comings and goings of me. Articles I’ve written, links I’ve posted, videos I liked, etc. Here, a first-person perspective is the way to go, at least for now. So, this is my site. I’m D. H. McKee, a sometimes artist, sometimes writer. Mostly just a guy on the internet.