No more rootkits.. for now...

Sep 4, 2007 13:58 GMT  ·  By

Sony has finally dealt with the rootkit problem and released a new software for the affected device. Non-rootkit of course.

In case you have no idea what I'm talking about, Sony has been disclosed (last week) to use rootkit technology for the second time in the last 3 years. In case you are wondering what this root-shmoot-kit does, well, it basically creates a folder on your PC over which you have close to zero control unless you know some code. Yeah, it's pretty bad, a hacker could hide a lot of viruses in it and your AV will not detect them. But this flaw does not do anything bad to your PC by itself, it just makes it more vulnerable.

In any case, this flaw has been discovered by F-Secure experts to affect the MicroVault USM-F USB stick. The single good part about this is the fact that only Windows can be harmed and no other operating system. Anyway, they have released a new software that you can download from here Note that the new one will be kind of the same thing, but no vulnerabilities this time!

They've patched up pretty fast, even though I never thought this was going to happen again after the debacle in 2005. They've also said that the affected series has not been sold in too many copies, but I think they've lost a lot of customers' trust, because many people will tend to panic and go "No wonder my PC is broken, I have a Sony MP3 player! Who knows what issues that has!" but I think that they need to relax. The problem was not as big as initially thought and it has been solved now, so I, for one, still put my trust into Sony!