Anti-malware team blogs about Sony DRM Rootkit

by on November 13, 2005

Guttorm Aase, a Microsoft customer, wrote me this morning and said “interesting post from the Windows Defender team.” Here’s the post he is talking about.

OK, we have so many teams now blogging that I’ve lost track. I love it when customers write me and tell me when a team is doing something good.

Here’s what else Guttorm wrote:

“Lots of nice comments from people on this. I especially liked this one: Before seeing this, I wouldn’t have belived that MS is truly objective when it comes to malware removal. This changes my mind. It makes [me] feel a lot better about using Microsoft products.”

This is the reason I’m still a big evangelist for blogging and it makes me a bigger believer in this team (which I already believed in, I’ve talked with them several times over the past year and they are trying to do the right things for customers).

  • Great move Microsoft. What a difference a simple thing (it is simple to do it, tough to decide to do it, though!) like this makes to the company's image.
  • dir@sbate.com
    Microsoft is effectively using blogging to get over the liability issue.
  • +1 on the trust totempole, still not there yet to convince the lniux geeks.

    i'll be honest, as much as i love windows, i used to dual boot suse because there were so many netowrk worms and virii on the campus network at my old school that it would be insane to boot into anything else.

    i wish microsoft had a retail space where people can actaully go and try products, and there is one more thing i love that apple does, they hold public seminars where anyone can sit in and learn how to do something cool with OSX you wouldn't have even known about!
  • anon
    Those are the guys who tell everyone to ignore Claria in the anti-shitware product. Highly trustable too. Or how to hide a lot of politics behind technical details...
  • Christopher Coulter
    Well anon took away my snarky retort, per Claria. I wanted to be first to point out that quite hypocritical notation. Oh well. But hide politics behind technical details...oh totally. Modus Operandi.

    Bash Sony, in midst of a speccy Bluray fight, bash when down and safe to do so. Gator? DRM5? Well let's not be so hasty. The Sony Rootkit ain't gonna sidetrack BluRay; Microsoft don't get your hopes up. That said, glad more people are kicking in the jams with this one. Interesting as to how the DMCA will apply, as technically it be illegal to remove said "toolkit". Some sort of blanket file-sharing license akin to ASCAP and BMI is really what the Studios need to do.
  • it's the right move...
  • There's some more interesting discussion on this going on over at http://arstechnica.com/journals/microsoft.ars/2... (disclosure: i wrote the article).
  • Mikataur
    Microsoft must relish sticking the knife in Sony over this, considering that Bill Gates had yelled at Sony CEO Howard Stringer over Blu-ray DRM not letting Microsoft in the door:

    http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/...

    http://games.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/10/...

    Still a stupid thing for Sony to do and I hope they lose a lot in lawsuits, sales, and ill-will.
  • I'm amazed at the great press Microsoft is recieving because of this announcement, I'm one of the happy people too :)
  • Yes, they got alot of press for this and against Sony. We'll see how it plays out.
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