Rootkit scanner
September 14th, 2006
I’ve touched on rootkits before, specifically the Sony rootkit. I found out today that Sophos has a free anti-rootkit package. They even have a podcast on the subject. I use Sophos, and in a professional capacity I recommend and sell Sophos. I actually really like selling it, because it is really good software in general. So I downloaded the scanner and gave it a run. It seems to work smoothly and fairly quickly.
I actually found out about when Jodie, the lovely Sophos rep, visited us at Centra Networks today. The conversation quickly turned to the Sony rootkit, and I was reminded of a recent comment by Mark Cuban:
and for all you “but i can and do download everything ” types. Good for you. Get up and away from your computer and go see how the rest of the country lives. And when you hit 27, get a real job or move out of your parents house, whichever comes first, tell me if you are still downloading 10 movies and burning them for your friends and creating 10 playlists for Itunes every week like you did in college or when you first graduated. At some point you realize the time you spend downloading and burning to a DVD is worth more than the 10 bucks to go to a movie or 20 bucks or less to buy the movie. When that happens you will have figured out that all that time you spend burning DVDs and trying to manage space on your hard drive wasnt worth it
This sums up for me a big reason why DRM is a waste of time. The people who download illegally are either students who will grow out of it soon enough, or they are perpetual losers. And last time I checked, spending tens of millions of dollars pursuing losers is bad business.
[Update] BoingBoing reports that Texas is suing Sony over the rootkit affair.