Today marks the 30th anniversary of the founding of Zophar's Domain, the original emulation archive & news site. I am extremely proud that all these years later, emulation is not only still relevant, but crucial as physical hardware can't last forever.
Emulation Forever!
Let me tell you about the time Sony put malware on 22 million music CDs.
Sony the corporation, on purpose.
2005. you buy a CD at a music store. you get home. you put it in your computer. Windows autorun kicks in.
Sony's software silently installs a rootkit on your system. It hides itself using the same techniques professional malware uses to evade detection. it runs constantly in the background. it phones home to Sony with information about what you're listening to.
and it cannot be uninstalled.
The removal tool Sony eventually released to fix it required your email address and installed additional software that introduced further vulnerabilities. the fix was worse than the rootkit.
A security researcher named Mark Russinovich found it on Halloween 2005. published his findings. the internet erupted.
Sony's President of Global Digital Business responded: "most people don't even know what a rootkit is, so why should they care about it?"
things then got worse:
other malware authors discovered that anything hidden using Sony's rootkit technique became invisible to antivirus software too. they started hiding their own malware inside the same hidden directory. Sony had accidentally created the perfect malware concealment system and shipped it to 22 million people.
50 artists had CDs with the rootkit. Celine Dion. Neil Diamond. Santana. none of them knew.
Van Zant's album that started the whole investigation ranked 887 on Amazon. after reviews warned about the rootkit it dropped to 25,802 in three weeks.
Sony recalled the CDs. settled with the FTC. paid millions. Mark Russinovich became CTO of Microsoft Azure.
the rootkit is the reason we now consider autorun a security risk.
Sony shipped malware to protect music.
the malware protected nothing.
the music got pirated anyway.
Casey Neistat, they guy who pulled out his Israeli flag when people where protesting the genocide in Palestine, supporting a company ran by a pedophile adjacent, ai weapon making ultra zionist.
[pretends to be shocked]
A white U.S. figure skater is being celebrated for a backflip at the Winter Olympics.
But when a Black skater did the same move in 1998, she was punished.
Trump primarily mobilizes White people and men. Wins handily. After the election, Democratic pundits say mobilizing “identity groups” don’t work and “failed miserably,” erasing Trump’s mobilization of White and male identity groups. Instead, they claim Trump prevailed with a “working class coalition,” erasing the women and Black people who are disproportionately working class. Double erasure.
To be racist and sexist is to erase the presence of Black people, of women—and center White identity and male identity so profoundly that White people and men are no longer seen as “identity groups.”
https://t.co/X03HLPUfJ9
Cities criminalize houselessness and the Supreme Court upheld it like a week ago, right.
Today, I'm out for a walk in my neighborhood, after time away, working on my book, and general busyness. I see an unhoused neighbor (she's my neighbor even if she doesn't have a house).
@RingerVerse Yo what happened to Young Justice?! And spiderman animated series?! Personally would add spectacular Spiderman but not the original 90s series? We need a second episode in this one for sure!
Hey, @acm_chi we redesigned the logo for you!
In Hawaii, we are still finding bodies, we are grieving, we are dealing with compound disasters. And CHI, the "Decolonize Computing" conference, opens up paper submissions. #whycHI
https://t.co/rkaUS11LBG
@vickiebananas@Papaya_Project Yup!! A student gave me the words a while back, "the further i get on this path the further i feel from my Latinidad" 😩 damn. Appreciate the work y'all are doing!! Striving to reach those heights!