A vulnerability and a security issue have been reported in First4Internet XCP DRM software used to playback Sony copy-protected music CDs, which can be exploited by malicious, local users to gain escalated privileges or to hide certain actions on a vulnerable system from the Administrator,

1) The "aries.sys" device driver hides all files, registry keys and processes on the system that have names that start with "$sys$", regardless of whether the file is part of the XCP software. This can be exploited by malicious users and malware to hide files and processes from the Administrator by prefixing their names with "$sys$".

2) Some unspecified errors in the driver may be exploited to corrupt kernel memory, potentially allowing execution of arbitrary code in kernel space.

Solution
Use another product.

Provided and/or discovered by
1) Mark Russinovich, Sysinternals.
2) David Maynor, ISS.

Changelog
Further details available in Customer Area

Original Advisory
Sysinternals:
http://www.sysinternals.com/blog/2005/10/sony-rootkits-and-digital-rights.html

ISS:
http://xforce.iss.net/xforce/alerts/id/208

Deep Links
Links available in Customer Area