Ubisoft Uplay DRM found to include a rootkit

Ubisoft is one publisher that has fully embraced the use of always-connected DRM in its games. They believe this cuts down of privacy, but at the same time it frustrates gamers who legitimately purchase Ubisoft titles because without a reliable Internet connection they can’t play the game they have bought.

Those same gamers may have another reason to get very angry with Ubisoft today. It has been discovered that the Uplay system Ubisoft uses to both check a game is legal and offer up gaming achievements, multiplayer, and additional content, actually contains a rootkit.

The discovery was made by Tavis Ormandy, and information security engineer at Google, when he installed Assassin’s Creed: Revelations on his laptop. He noticed that during the installation Uplay installed a browser plug-in that allows any website to gain access to your machine through a backdoor and take control of it.The plug-in can be classed as a rootkit because it is thought to allow continued privileged access to a machine without a user’s consent