Trojan exploits Sony DRM rootkit

BRITISH FIRM Sophos said that a Trojan which exploits Sony's DRM copy protection is in the wild.

The Stinx-E trojan appears to have been spammed to email addresses under the guise of a message with files like Article+Photos.exe.

Said Graham Cluley, senior tech consultant at Sophos: "Sony's DRM copy protection has opened up a vulnerability which hackers and virus writers are now exploiting."

The firm said it will issue a tool later today which detects the existence of Sony DRM copy protection on Windows computers, disable it, and stop it from re-installing.

It is acting on "customers' concerns that the software on Sony's CDs is introducing a vulnerability which hackers and virus writers are able to exploit," he said. "We will give customers the ability to determine if their computers suffer from the vulnerability and remove it if necessary." µ