Impact of XCP
Beginning as early as August 2005, Windows users reported crashes related to a program called aries.sys, while inexplicably being unable to find the file on their computers. This file is now known to be part of XCP. Call for Help host Leo Laporte said that he had experienced a rise in reports of "missing" CD-ROM drives, a symptom of unsuccessful attempts to remove XCP. Security researcher Dan Kaminsky used DNS cache analysis to determine that 568,000 networks worldwide may contain at least one XCP-infected computer. Kaminsky's technique uses the fact that DNS nameservers cache recently-fetched results, and that XCP phones home to a specific hostname. By finding DNS servers that carry that hostname in cache, Kaminsky was able to approximate the number of networks affected. After the release of the data, Kaminsky learned that an as-yet undetermined number of "Enhanced CDs" without the rootkit also phone home to the same address that rootkit-affected discs use, so infection rates are still under active investigation.
Read more about this topic: Extended Copy Protection
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