Yet another case of professionally produced corporate malware.

[theweaselking]

The uncrupulous morons at "StarForce" are the source of the latest idiocy sold to ignorant middle management and foisted on unsuspecting consumers. This Windows malware, obstensibly made to prevent copying, installs itself as hidden "device drivers" on your system, runs as part of the operating system, without telling the user. It collects data about your system, reinstalls itself if you attempt to remove it, and actively hampers the use of writable CD and DVD drives even for perfectly legitimate use unrelated to the protected game. It's been known to cause system failure in Windows and permanent hardware damage to some multi-mode CD/DVD rewriters. Oh, and they're threatening to sue people for talking about it.

There's a "Boycott Starforce" site with an up-to-date list of games that use it.

Comments

[corruptedjasper.livejournal.com]

A Guy-I-Know who's well connected in the Scene claims that this is basically propaganda, motivated by the fact that sf3 is so notoriously hard to crack it takes months after release before the cracked versions are out. Strangely, I see no such claims anywhere on google.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

#1: That's Starforce's claim.

I, however, got the stupid thing with my 100% legit copy of Splinter Cell 3, and have been having problems burning data DVDs lately - I've been getting far more coasters than there should be. Remove the StarForce infestation, and my problems with DVD burning went away.

chaobell experienced the same behaviour, and same solution.

#2: Cracked versions of starforce-protected games are available before the commercial release of the game.

#3: I fucking hate disk switching SO MUCH that I prefer cracked versions of all my games, which are perfectly legit and which I have the box and disks for sitting beside my PC.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

"StarForce claims to have quashed the rumours" (http://digg.com/security/Starforce_claims_to_have_squashed_the_rumors_) - of course, they can't replicate PHYSICAL HARDWARE FAILURE on demand, so they ask that you PAY FOR A TRIP TO FUCKING *MOSCOW* WITH YOUR SYSTEM, go to their office, and demonstrate the hardest of the problems to replicate, while ignoring the rest of the issues.

But they'll threaten to SLAPP you as soon as you say that their software is counterproductive to proper operation of your PC because it installs in an unsafe way, does not notify you of the installation, and does not uninstall with the application is piggybacks in on, let alone the demonstrable claim that it impairs performance.

Did you check out their website's claim that a downloaded game is not just a lost sale, but a guaranteed loss of 5+ sales?

Did you check out that they insist anyone stuck reimaging their box due to Starforce-caused driver fuckup is obviously just an amateur hacker trying to break their program, and not AT ALL a legit user trying to find out why their DVD drive isn't working right?

Did you check out their immediate bullshit claim of FBI investigation, which the FBI does not apparently know about?

Notice where ELSE these tactics show up most often on the internet?

StarForce use the methodology, tactics, and programming tricks of virus writers and spammers. This does not endear them to me, especially after the time it took me to clean off their rootkit and get my machine's strangely malfunctioning DVD burner back up to spec.