Archive for January, 2006

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Infected by Starforce DRM

Monday, January 30th, 2006

And I was wondering why my Windows system was so unstable lately. I managed to avoid the Sony debacle just to get hit by the Starforce mallware. What is it? It is yet another retarded copy protection tool that is installed on your system without your knowledge – but it is not bundled with music, but with commercial games.

What does it do?

one of the common problems brought by Starforce: under Windows XP, if packets are lost during the reading or writing of a disk, XP interprets this as an error and steps the IDE speed down. Eventually it will revert to 16bit compatibility mode rendering a CD/DVD writer virtually unusable. In some circumstances certain drives cannot cope with this mode and it results in physical hardware failure (Most commonly in multiformat CD/DVD writer drives). A sure sign of this step down occurring is that the burn speeds will get slower and slower (no matter what speed you select to burn at). Starforce, on a regular basis, triggers this silent step down. Until it reaches the latter stages most people do not even realise it is happening.

Moreover, the Starforce drivers, installed on your system, grant ring 0 (system level) privileges to any code under the ring 3 (user level) privileges. Thus, any virus or trojan can get OS privileges and totally control your system. Since Windows 2000, the Windows line security and stability got enhanced by separating those privileges, but with the Starforce drivers, the old system holes and instabilities are back and any program (or virus) can reach the core of your system by using the Starforce drivers as a backdoor.

Emphasis mine. And yes, I had allot of issues with my burner lately, and allot of stability issues. McAfee did not detect anything so far, but it is very possible that I have been rooted. I’m preparing to move some of my data around to other partitions and drives and do a clean install sometime soon. Sigh…

How do you know if you have Starforce? Go to device manager, then enable the “show hidden devices” in the view menu, and look under Non-plug and play. If you see anything named Starforce there you are infected. I recommend downloading the removal tool as soon as possible. This tool worked for me.

Of course, you have to stop playing the game that infected you. Starforce usually reinstalls itself whenever you launch the application it protects.

Following games are known to be carriers of this nasty mallware. I am hiding the list save space on the front page. Please click on the link to expand the list below.

# 7 Sins
# Anstoss 4
# Area 51
# Bandits: Phoenix Rising
# Bet on Soldier
# Beyond Divinity
# Black Mirror
# Blitzkrieg 2
# Blitzkrieg: Rolling Thunder
# Breed
# Broken Sword 3: The Sleeping Dragon
# Brothers in Arms: Earned in Blood
# Chaos League
# Chaos League: Sudden Death
# Codename: Outbreak
# Codename: Panzers – Phase One
# Codename: Panzers – Phase Two
# Cold War
# Colin McRae Rally 2005
# Cossacks II: Napoleonic Wars
# Cross Racing Championship 2005
# Curse: The Eye of Isis
# Cycling Manager 3
# Cycling Manager 3
# Cycling Manager 4
# D-Day
# Dead to Rights
# Demonic Speedway
# Desert Rats vs Afrika Korps
# Domination
# Emergency Fire Response
# Enigma: Rising Tide
# Etherlords II
# Fire Chief
# Fire Department
# Freedom Force vs The Third Reich
# Gangland
# Garfield
# Gooka: The Mystery of Janatris
# GT Legends
# GTR: FIA GT Racing Game
# Heroes of Might and Magic V
# Horse Race Manager
# Icewind Dale: Heart of Winter
# Keepsake
# Kicker Manager 2004
# Kill Switch
# King Kong
# Knights of the Temple 2
# Korea: Forgotten Conflict
# LMA Professional Manager 2005
# Lock On: Flaming Cliffs
# Medieval Lords
# Namco Museum 50th Anniversary
# Neuro Hunter
# Obscure
# Pariah
# Pax Romana
# Pferdehof – Pferd und Pony
# Pop Star Academy
# Postal 2: Apocalypse Weekend
# Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones
# Pro Rugby Manager
# Psi-Ops
# Pure Pinball
# Rally Championship Xtreme
# Restaurant Empire
# Restricted Area
# Revolution
# Runaway: A Road Adventure
# Scrapland
# Second Sight
# Silent Hunter 3
# Silent Storm
# Silkolene Honda Motocross GP
# Singles 2: Triple Trouble
# Singles: Flirt Up Your Life
# Sniper Elite
# Soldiers Heroes of World War 2
# Sommerspiele 2004
# Space Rangers 2
# Splinter Cell 3: Chaos Theory
# Star Wolves
# Steel Saviour
# Still Life
# Street Racing Syndicate
# Sudeki
# SuperPower 2
# Syberia II
# The Fall: Last Days of Gaia
# The Moment of Silence
# The Suffering: Ties That Bind
# The Westerner
# TOCA 2
# TrackMania
# TrackMania Nations
# TrackMania Sunrise
# Traitors Gate 2: Cypher
# UFO: Aftershock
# V8 Supercars 2
# Virtual Skipper 3
# Virtual Skipper 4
# Vivisector
# Wildlife Park
# World War II: Frontline Command
# Worms 4: Mayhem
# X2: The Threat
# X3: Reunion
# XIII
# Xpand Rally
# Xuan-Yuan Sword 4

If you installed any of the games on the list, you might be infected! Please check your device manager and throw that game out.

Update Wed, February 01 2006, 01:01 AM

It seems that Starforce creators are abusive and litigious bunch. They apparently threatened Cory Doctorow with a lawsuit for expressing his views on their shady software. Heh… Of course this is pure BS. I personally don’t think they have any legal grounds to do anything – but then again IANAL.

Doctorow on the other hand, worked for EFF so he probably has a pretty good idea of how silly that email is.

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Talking to Users

Monday, January 30th, 2006

Hehe… This is so true:

Dilbert Comic

I was working on a little online app for my company once, and I asked them if they want to have give users different permission and access levels. They said no. I added some rudimentary access control in anyway, but left it disabled by default.

2 minutes into the demo, they decide that they need 3 permission levels – for standard users, reviewers and administrators. It took me maybe 5 minutes to enable my access controls, and lock out some areas. If I coded it to their spec, I would have to spend hours re-designing my app.

Rule of thumb: the spec should be 40% of what users want, and 60% of what you think that users need. In most cases at least half of your guesses will be right-on-target. So your app has a chance of being be at least 75% of what users really need rather than measly 40%.

You can sell them the rest of the features as “fluff” or “enhancements” – in most cases they will not mind this stuff unless you make them pay out of their arse for it. In worst case, use modularity so you can remove crap that they do not want.

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Applying Music Industry Logic to Other Enterprises

Sunday, January 29th, 2006

Tarmle from Autumnal City has posted this little comparison. What if we applied the Music Industry business logic to another business? For example, grass cutting:

I would alter the current grass cutting technology to limit the degree to which it is useful by, for example, raising the cutting device so that the grass is left long, or blunting it so that it cuts unevenly. This will leave the market for grass cutting open to me to provide consumers more effective grass cutting services.

People might try to alter their now limited grass cutting technology to make it as effective as my own. This, of course, cannot be permitted so I must persuade the government to make it illegal to supply consumers with grass cutting technology that may be used or altered to cut grass effectively. In fact, lets make it illegal for people to cut anyone else’s grass at all!

Thus my business is secure. I can now justify its existence by actively protecting the grass cutting rights of my thousands of professional grass cutters – you wouldn’t want to take away their livelihoods would you? I can further justify imposing these limitations by pointing out that the grass cutting industry already existed and that the availability of new technology threatened it by allowing anyone to cut grass.

But now I have to deal with the issue of people allowing their grass-eating pets to wander through other people’s gardens, keeping their grass neat without paying the licensing fees. These Neighbour-to-Neighbour herbivore networks must be stamped out!

Hehe. I think we could continue and extend this a little bit more. For example, why stop at Neighbor-to-Neighbor networks. After all, it’s the herbivores themselves that threaten your business. You should aim to make it illegal in US to allow herbivores to graze on any kind of grass.

Agricultural technology should also be legislated. After all, farmers may want to use their farming equipment to cut grass. Therefore you should lobby for all farming equipment to have optical sensors which would detect what type of foliage they are cutting and lock the blades in place whenever they detect grass.

You should also pre-emptively lobby against genetic engineering. What if scientists one day produce a breed of grass that does not grow beyond certain length and thus requires no trimming? It should be prohibited to do any kind of genetic research on any kind of grass like flora.

Thus you completely mess up not only the grass cutting business but also agriculture and scientific sectors. Just like entertainment industry proposed legislation will mess up technology, electronics and computer science.

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