Sony cancels CD code after hackers’ exploitation

“As a precautionary measure, Sony BMG is temporarily suspending the manufacture of CDs containing XCP technology,” the company said in a statement. “We also intend to re-examine all aspects of our content protection initiative to be sure that it continues to meet our goals of security and ease of consumer use.”

Sony BMG included the program as a copy protection device on some 20 popular music titles from the likes of Celine Dion and Sarah McLachlan.

When the affected CDs are played on a Windows personal computer, the software secretly installs itself and limits how many times the CDs can be copied. The code was discovered by Windows experts Mark Russinovich on Oct. 31.

Sony is already facing at least six lawsuits over the program. The discovery of three Trojan horse viruses that use the secret program to enter computers undetected instantly increased the backlash against the company. “The development we feared most from Sony’s inclusion of technology to conceal its DRM (digital rights management) software was its use to conceal malicious code,” said David Emm of security firm Kaspersky Labs. “Unfortunately, it seems our fears were well- grounded.”

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