Sony, Rootkits and Digital Rights Management Gone Too Far?

[DARK4SE]

I was reading through what this guy said. What do you think? I think Sony, like any company wants to protect their property, but I do not think the majority of the public will accept anything like this for a while. I think Sony should have waited to try something like this. It could sour allot of people on Sony :2cents:

Sony, Rootkits and Digital Rights Management Gone Too Far? (http://www.sysinternals.com/blog/2005/10/sony-rootkits-and-digital-rights.html)

[Murder Simulator]

Yeah they went way to far. I heard hackers and spammers have figured out how to make use of sony's software to plant their viri. I also read the software does phone home to sony after it's installed.

A day after this thing was reported they released what they called an "uninstaller" but it doesn't delete anything. It just lets you see the hidden files.

I know they have the right to protect their investment, but not by hiding things from the consumer. Next thing you know, they'll be trying to claim you don't realy own the CD, you just bought a licence to use it.

[alpha]

installing things on my computer without my knowledge is hacking and illigal, whether its some 17 year old, some spyware ring, or some giant corperation, it is still equally wrong, and I hope peolpe go to jail for this.

[Sleepy_Sentry]

The sad thing is the music industry always gets away with things like this. Look at the MIAA. They're allowed to search people without a search warrant.


Oh and by the way Sony announced for now they're going to stop producing CDs with this technology.

[WalkinTarget]

Sony could not be trusted even before this rootkit brouhaha came out .... I could list so many examples, but suffice to ay that I only have an hour for lunch and it would take longer to list everything.
I do think the root (no pun intended) is that Sony wants to control content whether or not it seems 'fair' to the average Joe PC user. Most people that buy the infected Sony CDs are not aware of this, so consequently they would not mind so long as their PC still functioned in the way they expect it to. Also, be aware that this rootkit has been active since April, and it took until Oct/Nov. for it to be discovered.
I'm done buying CDs, as I have no disposable income at all (I live on $30 a week total spending money, including gas :( ) so I live with my existing music library. I might get two CDs a year as gifts, but I make damn sure they aren't Sony artists !!

Edit: Sleepy, the reason Sony is stopping this particular kit is that they consider it an older technology now (read above) and they will in fact be updating the CDs with a more powerful alternative to it.

[Murder Simulator]

I told you so! This little article comes from the inquirer. Here's a quick quote.

"The CDs ship with an end-user licence agreement which implies you don't actually own the CD you have bought. This means that Sony can make certain demands."

Full story here: http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=27662

[WalkinTarget]

According to the EFF, the following CDs contain the DRM in question:

? Trey Anastasio, Shine (Columbia)
? Celine Dion, On ne Change Pas (Epic)
? Neil Diamond, 12 Songs (Columbia)
? Our Lady Peace, Healthy in Paranoid Times (Columbia)
? Chris Botti, To Love Again (Columbia)
? Van Zant, Get Right with the Man (Columbia)
? Switchfoot, Nothing is Sound (Columbia)
? The Coral, The Invisible Invasion (Columbia)
? Acceptance, Phantoms (Columbia)
? Susie Suh, Susie Suh (Epic)
? Amerie, Touch (Columbia)
? Life of Agony, Broken Valley (Epic)
? Horace Silver Quintet, Silver's Blue (Epic Legacy)
? Gerry Mulligan, Jeru (Columbia Legacy)
? Dexter Gordon, Manhattan Symphonie (Columbia Legacy)
? The Bad Plus, Suspicious Activity (Columbia)
? The Dead 60s, The Dead 60s (Epic)
? Dion, The Essential Dion (Columbia Legacy)
? Natasha Bedingfield, Unwritten (Epic)

The EFF says it is likely that other CDs also contain the application,
although Sony told ZDNet UK last week that discs containing this DRM
software had not been distributed in the U.K.

Edit: Added a picture showing the Sony infected PCs in the US from an Earth view, similar to what antivirus vendors use to show the spread of worms/virii
http://www.doxpara.com/planetsony_usa.JPG

And even better news, if you used the Sony tool to remove your rootkit, you now have a lot more problems down the road:
The Sony Web page where users can download the removal patch installs a program that remains on the user's PC even after removal tool has done its job, Felten said. And because of the way the tool is configured, he said, it allows any Web page that the user subsequently visits to download, install and run any code that it likes

Story found here:http://blogs.washingtonpost.com/securityfix/2005/11/sony_uninstall_.html

And another *updated* uninstaller link here: http://www.websensesecuritylabs.com/alerts/alert.php?AlertID=340

[alpha]

is anyone really going to say no, i like it when sony installs spyware on my computer without me knowing :? don't think so

[WalkinTarget]

:D :D :D :D

BAHAHAAAA, I tell ya, this is PURE COMEDY GOLD !!!!

Looks like Sony's rootkit, with its ties in the UK software developer Firt4Internet, has sufficient open source code in it to be considered unlicensed open source, and as such is a violation of the open source code !

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20051118/tc_nm/sonybmg_opensource_dc

from the link: ..

THE RULES OF THE GAME

If open source software is tightly integrated into a single executable program, the whole application has to become open source software, even open source software such as LAME whose MP3 encoder is licensed under the more relaxed Lesser General Public License (LGPL), a lawyer said.

"That's the flipside of open source: If you don't respect the open source rules, the old regime of copy protection comes back in full force," said attorney and Internet specialist Christiaan Alberdingk Thijm at law firm SOLV in the Netherlands.

[[bondage]]

so i looked at that list of bands with the software. and i must say, anyone that buys that stuff deserves to have spyware on their comp. :D hahaha

[alpha]

]so i looked at that list of bands with the software. and i must say, anyone that buys that stuff deserves to have spyware on their comp. :D hahaha

hahaha

[ViTO]

I will be sure not to pick any of those titles up BUT....

What's a person to do without another 12 Neil Diamond Songs ??

Ahh...The choices we must make in life :|

I will be sure not to pick any of those titles up BUT....

What's a person to do without another 12 Neil Diamond Songs ??

Ahh...The choices we must make in life :|

Hey cheer up Vito, there's always Engelbert Whatshisdink.

[Murder Simulator]

This just keeps getting better by the day. They got a bunch of british script kiddies and had them cobble together their new DRM, and they made it with Copyrighted code! HAHAHAHAHROFLEROFLEROFLE!!!!!!11111

How much money do you think sony paid out to first4internet for R&D this time? $20 million? $30? $50 million?

They're never going to learn. Resistance is futile.

[WalkinTarget]

Even more scarier reading here:
http://insight.zdnet.co.uk/internet/security/0,39020457,39237277,00.htm

How do we remove rootkits?
There is only one guaranteed way to remove a rootkit: you destroy the system and then rebuild it. There is no other way to reliable remove a rootkit ? no other way whatsoever.

You can't delete the file or even reinstall the operating system over the top of the existing OS ? which is a horrible practice anyway. It is super important to nuke the system because a rootkit's primary function is stealth ? what is it hiding? Do you know? Usually not. How can you reliably know what it was hiding, what it was compromising or what it was removing?

Are there any defences?
You should use malware scanners, firewalls, intrusion detection and prevention, strong passwords, regular patches and audits. They are easy to prevent, but extraordinarily difficult to remove.

What does the future hold?
We found one example of a rootkit recently that hides itself in video memory, and every time the system boots it loads up. This means that it doesn't exist on the hard drive, and so the only time you can detect it is when the system is running, which is when it is able to hide itself. That's where we see things going: harder to detect, better cloaking. And of course finding its way into DRM technology and increasingly into spyware too.

Thats just plain nasty ... so now your gaming performance will suffer too !

[Murder Simulator]

They hide in video memory now. That's pretty wild.

[alpha]

alright, this made me laugh, now that sony added rootkits and everyone found out about it, less people are buying CDs because they are afraid of what they will do to their computers, and they can't be burned, or converted to be put on their ipods and such. So this is making more people go online and illigally download the music, which is exactly what sony was trying to stop. by trying to protect their digital rights, they just reduced sales and increased illigal downloading. ha

[Nomadicus]

The entertainment industry is oppressing the people!!! lol

Seriously though, I have a friend with lots of knowledge about this tell me 4 years ago, that breaking the seal on a DVD is technically violating a copyright. I am not surprise to see SONY do this legally!

[Murder Simulator]

The user can simply apply a fingernail-sized piece of opaque tape to the outer edge of the disc, rendering session 2 - which contains the self-loading DRM software, unreadable. The PC then treats the CD as an ordinary single-session music CD, and the commonly used CD "rip" programs continue to work as usual.

http://www.techtree.com/techtree/jsp/article.jsp?article_id=69297&cat_id=582

[WalkinTarget]

The highly controversial XCP digital rights management (DRM) technology bundled by Sony BMG on 52 of its audio CD albums can be defeated by applying a small piece of tape to the discs, according to analyst firm Gartner.


http://www.vnunet.com/vnunet/news/2146367/garnter-piece-tape-defeats-cd

Late breaking news: All tape outlawed by music companies !!!
:P

[alpha]

ha, ha sony is being sued over this ha, ha

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/11/21/AR2005112100645.html

so well deserved :twisted:

[Murder Simulator]

If you ask me, sony and the RIAA are going about this whole DRM thing all wrong. Music is not consumed like food. Music is listened to, in your car, on your PC, on TV. Music is about freedom of expression. Once the song is over, does that mean I shouldn't be allowed to listen to it again till dinner?

Are there callories associated with different bands? Heavy metal? Light rock?
I can repeat a single track on any media player I have on my computer. Suppose I just want to listen to one song over and over again. Does that make me a heavy eater? Should I be made to pay 99 cents each and every time I listen to the same track?

Do these headphones make me look fat? How long after I've "digested" a song does it take for the music to "pass" through my system? If I don't like the song I'm listening to and decide I want to hear something else, am I charged for the first song even though I only "ate" part of it?

I can see it now: free Mcmusic download when you supersize your happy meal!

That's the kind of absurd corporate nightmare sony has planned for our future folks.

[juneau]

This made me chuckle :D

http://img300.imageshack.us/img300/4918/hellokitty6de.jpg