omgwtf!

You probably all know by now about the infamous Sony rootkit, which was included on a whole bunch of their music CDs, and which, when one of the affected CDs is played on a Windows computer, installs itself silently and then doesnt allow you to uninstall it again if by some miracle you happen to discover it’s even there in the first place.

It was discovered and revealed to the public by Mark Russinovich a few weeks ago, and the scandal that ensued was mighty. Sony is so far pretty well unrepentant; not only has there been no public apology for the dastardly deed of installing software on PCs that they do not own without asking permission, but they have yet to provide an uninstaller that doesnt actually do worse things to your system than the original rootkit itself does.

A lot of people are still in the dark about how to find out if their system is infected. Here’s the instructions on how to check your system:

Click start, then Run. In the box, type the following:

cmd /k sc query $sys$aries

One of two responses should come up. The one you want to see is:

“The specified service does not exist as an installed service.”

The one that should fill you with rage and hatred is:

STATE: 4 RUNNING

If you do see this second one, here’s one way to get rid of it as soon as you possibly can. Here’s another, better, but more technical source of removal info. If for some reason that doesnt work for you, Google it. You’ll find a number of different methods. Whatever you do, dont leave it there. Get it off your hard drive right away.

And then write Sony a really nasty letter, and boycott them. This shit is fucked.