Privacy and security experts charged that the technology built into many of Sony's music CDs since March is unnecessarily invasive and exposes users to threats from hackers and virus writers.
"Here you have one of the biggest name-brand corporations on the planet getting into what many people in other circumstances would consider hacking," said Richard Smith, a security and privacy consultant based in Boston. "That's just not acceptable."
Earlier this week, computer security researcher Mark Russinovich published an analysis showing that some new Sony CDs install software that not only limits the copying of music on the discs, but also employs programming techniques normally associated with computer viruses to hide from users and prevent them from removing the software.
Russinovich's findings -- posted on the Web site (
http://www.sysinternals.com/) that he runs with another researcher -- indicated that the CDs in question use software techniques that behave similarly to "rootkits," software tools that hackers can use to maintain control over a computer system once they have broken in.
He found that traditional methods of uninstalling the program would not work, and that attempts at removing it corrupted the files needed to operate his computer's CD player, rendering it useless.
