Stories From the DRM World: The Settec Case

Overview

Alpha-DVD DRM protection contains rootkit-like code that may allow other third party programs to hide their processes and prevents security software from having access to their files. This code can readily be used by malware authors with little or no knowledge of rootkit techniques. Settec quickly released a free uninstaller for Alpha-DVD 1.0.3.5 and an updated version of the agent (1.0.4.0), which does not include the security issues discussed in this paper. This paper focuses principally on the Settec case. The paper discusses the security issues of the code implementation, including how it is different from the Sony case.