Two worthwhile stories from Ed Vielmetti’s blog Vacuum.
- Sony rootkit music off the Ann Arbor District Library’s purchase list – a story about Ed’s librarian telling him of their decision to not buy music from Sony that installs “rootkit like” technology. These music CDs install nefarious software on a user’s system, ostenisbly to prevent illegal copying, and DRM circumvention and is highly controversial.
- Interlibrary loan system MiLE in Michigan irrecoverably hacked – hacking is malicious vandalism, granted, but this is a confidence shaking security breach. Electronic ILL service in a good deal of Southeastern Michagan is broken beyond recovery until the roll-out of the next version of the software, at least a month away. This is a large-scale failure that should have been avoidable. Disasters sometimes happen. Are you preapred for yours? Joyhn Blyberg from the Ann Arbor District Library outlines steps libraries should take to secure their system, not later, now.