[jqp]

"Music company Sony BMG faced a firestorm of criticism after anti-rootkit scanners fingered the use of stealthy rootkit-type techniques to cloak its DRM scheme. After malicious hackers used the Sony DRM rootkit as a hiding place for Trojans, the company suspended the use of the technology and recalled CDs with the offending copy protection mechanism.

A spokesman for Symantec referenced the Sony flap in a statement sent to eWEEK, but downplayed the risk to consumers. "In light of current techniques used by today's malicious attackers, Symantec re-evaluated the value of hiding the [previously cloaked] directory. Though the chance of an attacker using [it] as a possible attack vector is extremely slim, Symantec's update further protects computers by displaying the directory," the spokesman said.

"




http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,1910077,00.asp

[ricmon]

found a cool tool for getting rid of the dreaded rootkit - rotkitrevealer

http://www.sysinternals.com/Utilities/RootkitRevealer.html

[jqp]

Sysinternals is a great co - I use their tools fairly often. High quality products that seem to always perform without a hitch. And most of them are free.

Symantec on the other hand...I cringed when they bought the Ghost products from Binary Research I think is the name. And before that when they bought the Norton tools.

They seem to be one of those big companies that buys products and tries to turn them into cash cows but instead alienates the users...

The sad thing about this incident was that Symantec was warned by security experts about this stupid move - yet they are supposed to be the security experts.