It has been reported by the BBC that Sony have come under fire after their XCP software, which is used to make CD"s unusable by media players in windows, was referred to as "malware". Sys Internals owner Mark Russinovich came across some rootkits when searching his computer. He was confused as to where these had come from, as he only uses trusted software and browses the web safely.
Mr Russinovich said "Not only had Sony put software on my system that uses techniques commonly used by malware to mask its presence, the software is poorly written and provides no means for uninstall," In his blog, and also stated that when accepting the license agreement it made no mention that the software could not be uninstalled or of the significant changes that the programme made to his computer.
Sys Internals, whose software offers users the ability to search for rootkits say that users trying to remove the XCP rootkits could wreck their system. Sony has responded to this by offering a form which is sent to customer services, who will respond with software that will enable you to remove this software. XCP is currently being used on over 20 titles, equating to more than 2 million discs sold with the XCP software.