GERMAN MOVIE FANS NOTE:

Heise Online, a German news outfit, has discovered that the movie "Mr & Mrs Smith," on DVDs distributed in Germany, incorporates a Digital Rights Management system called "Settec Alpha-DISC copy protection" that uses a root kit similar to the one previously used by Sony BMG on several audio CDs.

An eWeek Report, 'Mr. & Mrs. Smith' DVD Ships with Rootkit-like DRM, By Ryan Naraine, February 14, 2006 gives a brief report. The article includes links to additional sources.

[quote]
According to anti-virus vendor F-Secure, based in Helsinki, Finland, the German DVD release of "Mr. & Mrs. Smith"—a recent movie starring Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie—contains a DRM (digital rights management) protection scheme that uses rootkit-like cloaking technology.
[end quote]

According to F-Secure analysts, the specific DRM device used on this DVD does not hide files on your hard drive like the Sony root kit did, but it does cloak processes so that the user or computer administrator cannot know that they are running. Since no files are hidden, AV and other antimalware programs can scan all files, but it is possible for malware processes running in RAM to cloak themselves using the "method" installed by the DVDs.

Thus far, this one DVD is the only one reported to be "infected" by this crud; and no distributor was named in the article. The report, at this point, indicates that only DVDs distributed in Germany are known to be afinfected.

Settec, the maker of the DRM software, provides a removal tool; but F-Secure advises that you NOT play this DVD on your computer.

John