Sony Micro Vault USM-F - Beware Of Rootkit

Sony is one of those companies that anymore we almost love to hate. Don't get me wrong, they make plenty of good products, but they've had their share of bad press. Take for instance the millions of batteries that have been recalled and the infamous rootkit ordeal back in 2005. Unfortunately, Sony is now looking at another fiasco involving rootkits.

If you own a Sony biometric Micro Vault USM-F thumb drive, you can bet that you've been infected with one of Sony's notorious rootkits. What happens is that the software for the biometric scanner installs itself as a driver on top of the Windows file system stack. It cloaks itself from being detected and ultimately would allow a malicious program to also hide itself and do very nasty things to your system.

This has only recently been discovered, and no fix has been released. You can be sure that I won't be buying any thumb drives from Sony for a while.

Another Sony rootkit worms its way to the surface [via arstechnica]