Then again….
eWeek is reporting that Microsoft’s much vaunted new anti-spyware technology is already being used by miscreants to load spyware on silly people’s systems.
“When a user tries to play a protected Windows media file, this technology demands a valid license. If the license is not stored on the computer, the application will look for it on the Internet, so that the user can acquire it directly or buy it,” Panda Software explained.
An unsuspecting user attempting to download the DRM (digital rights management) license will instead be redirected to a Web site that loads a large quantity of adware, spyware, modem dialers and other viruses, the company said in an advisory.
“It’s pretty ingenious,” said Patrick Hinojasa, chief technical officer at Panda Software. “To take an anti-piracy feature and use it to feed spyware is extremely ironic.”
It sure is and just goes to show that once again Microsoft just doesn’t cut the mustard. By trying to develop entirely proprietary systems and protocols MS leaves itself open to this type of abuse. If MS adopted open source (yeah I know, dreaming here) stuff like this would be less likely to happen because there would be a whole community dedicated to both looking for, and closing, security holes.
You have to stop and almost cheer these spyware assholes because the hole they found was so blatant, you have to wonder how friggen blind the engineers are, at MS, to have missed something so obvious. It’s a function of the system itself, and it’s going to be very difficult for MS to get around this one without going to a centralized license database located only at MS and then rejigging WMP to only look in that databse and not the internet itself when searching for a DRM license.
Hmmm, maybe that was MS’ plan all along - need a license for a DRM locked media file? Well then the only place to get it is at MS and they sell on behalf of the artists or the RIAA and cut all the other media sellers, especially Apple, out of the loop.
Then again, maybe it’s time to buy a Mac after all 
