Top ten terrible tech products

By Nate Lanxon on 20 November 2007, 3:50pm

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Sony rootkit CDs
Would you say an audio CD that installs hidden software on your PC, without your consent, that compromises your computer's security to the point that hackers could use it for malicious purposes, was:

a) a really great product,
b) an average product,
c) an extremely bad product, or
d) the worst product anyone has ever released in the history of the music industry?

If your answer was anything but d, you're wrong.

The sad fact is that in 2005, Sony BMG put Extended Copy Protection (XCP) and MediaMax CD-3 software -- the black death incarnation of DRM -- on a total of 102 CD titles.

Users who played these CDs on their computers unknowingly had malware known as a 'rootkit' installed on their machines. Rootkits can avoid detection by anti-virus and security programs by hiding deep within a computer's operating system. This rootkit left PCs on which it was installed at the mercy of hackers.

Sony paid dearly for its work, but maintained that "there were no security risks associated with the anti-piracy technology". Right. It did, however, exchange CDs containing the questionable security protection for versions without it. Just for fun.

For extensive further reading, Wikipedia has a detailed account of the entire story, which can be found here.