The offending technology was designed to thwart music piracy. Sony BMG Music Entertainment and its partner, UK-based First 4 Internet, said they decided to offer the patch as a precaution, not because of any security vulnerability, which some critics had alleged.
"What we decided to do is take extra precautionary steps to allay any fears," said Mathew Gilliat-Smith, First 4 Internet’s CEO. "There should be no concern here."
The controversy started Monday after Windows expert Mark Russinovich posted a Web log report on how he found hidden files on his PC after playing a Van Zant CD. He also said it disabled his CD drive after he tried to manually remove it.
Russinovich made the discovery while running a program he had written for uncovering file-cloaking "RootKits." In this case, the Sony program hid the antipiracy software from view. Similar technology also has been used by virus and worm writers to conceal their code.
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