I have faith that the techie community will be more clever ferreting out their malware than Sony and their ilk will be hiding it.
You shouldn’t as far as the blue ray stuff is concerned. The reason the sony anti copy CDs don’t work very well is that there is nothing the the CD standard about copy protection. They need to make CDs that will work in old CD players.
With the new standards they can implement features to prevent coping and locking a player to a dvd correctly because the hardware will be there to make these things work.
I wonder if Sony will demand back the royalties paid (if any) to the artists on the recalled discs.
My suspicion is that they will simply replace the disks with non-“protected” versions.
Or, if they’re really stupid, disks with a different, but equally moronic, protection scheme.
Well they did.
But also they (and first 4 internet) may have lifted part of there player from open source software:
http://news.com.com/Did+Sony+rootkit+pluck+from+open+source/2100-1029_3-5960222.html?tag=nefd.top
My understanding about using open source software is that you must make your ‘creation’ also open source,
Now I’m getting curious about the competition of Blu-Ray and HD-DVD (is that the term for the other format?)
From what I understand at it’s base, the competing technologies are roughly the same as Beta vs. VHS. With Sony and a few big shots going up against Microsoft and a few big shots. (Any links to straightforward, clear, non-biased comparisons?)
I know this much. Thanks to this shit if Blu-Ray becomes the standard, I’ll glom onto any and every other technology/process I can find to get my movie fix. As a side note, with Microsoft having such a dominating market share of home computers and the fact they’re puching something different than Blu-Ray, topped off with linking everything in your house to a PC very soon, I just see this DRM as a digital way of Sony shooting themselves in the foot right before running a marathon.
The latest update of Microsoft Antispyware will remove the Sony DRM rootkit:
Stupid Sony. I love my PS2 and was planning on buying a PS3 (eventually) but I’m also a bit of a paranoia-phile and I hate crap like hidden shit on CD’s. Arrrggghhh.
…but, what does “DRM” stand for?
“Digital Rights Management”
George Orwell would be proud.
Forgive me if these items have been brought up in this 4-page thread already and I missed it.
It’s damming that, in a program designed to prevent copyright infringement, code has been found that was ripped off from others, violating a copyright:
http://dewinter.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=215
No, I can’t hold Sony harmless because they didn’t write the software. Surely they have an obligation to their customers.
It has been noted that even though the Sony malware disks have been on the market for 8 months, all the security companies (Symantec, etc.) have either ignored the threat to their customers, or, one accusation says, reached an agreement with First4Internet (the malware developer) to not tell anyone. This includes Microsoft, which is now in the security business (finally!), which provides excellent fodder for MS-bashers and conspiracy theorists.
I can’t see any way those companies can get off the hook. If they weren’t aware of the problem, what good is a security company that doesn’t detect a virus for 8 months? And if they were aware, how can they say they didn’t know what the software could do (open back doors, etc.)? Isn’t that their job, to analyze suspicious software? And if they knew, but chose to keep silent, what does that say about ethics in a company whose business is selling trust?
It all comes down to a lack of concern for customers. And a blind spot in future vision.
Ah, but, you see, this suspectware was not distributed by “Them”, the scuzzy, unwashed subversives; it was distributed by “One Of Us”, a respected and very powerful corporate content-provider. And DRM has the full legal blessing of the Powers That Be.
Wanna hear something amusing?
I work for Sony (games, not the music division). One of the perks we get is that we get to order a Sony music CD once a month for free. The very first computer that those CDs get played on is, of course, our work computer.
I wonder how many Sony employees’ computers have the DRM toolkit at this point?
This DRM shit is bad, but let’s not dillute the term “virus” to include it. This thing does not copy and spread itself, it’s NOT a virus. And since it’s not a virus, I wouldn’t have expected any anti-virus company to be on the lookout for it. Now that it’s made news, I wouldn’t be surprised if the anti-virus companies start looking for this and other rootkits now, but I don’t think it’s reasonable to expect anti-virus progs to have looked for this stuff before now.
Revtim Most of the anti virus companies have products for detecting and removing mal ware. Their response has been pretty week.
I still have not seen anything to remove the program. The details I have read about what sony does to remove the program are vauge but it sure does not sound to me like they are doing any more than removing the cloaking part.
Yeah, the AV companies haven’t done much. I think Sophos (which is what I’m running) will do something about it and MS has got their antispyware program to delete the rootkit with the latest upgrade. I can’t test it because I don’t have any of the CDs in question and I’m not about to purposefully infect my machine.
The definition of virusfits this just fine:
You’re thinking of a computer worm, which spreads itself over a network.
Thank you Revtim and Fear Itself, for pointing out what I must do to protect my computer from this.
It does not fit that definition at all.
The first sentence of the virus definition you provide is “A virus is a type of program that can replicate itself by making (possibly modified) copies of itself.” The Sony rootkit DRM does not do this. It cannot spread from a computer it is installed on to other media or other computers. All it does (as is known so far) is DRM functions, such as preventing MP3 ripping and whatnot.
If it’s discovered that a computer with this DRM installed can copy the DRM to another computer via some means such as infecting media or copying over the network, then it’s a virus. This is what is meant in your quoted definition when it says "it spreads itself by means of ‘hosts’ ", which nobody to my knowledge has accused the Sony DRM of doing.
If you count it being installed from the Sony CD as replication, then there’s practically no software written that does not fit the definition of a virus. This shit is deceptive and dangerous, but it’s not a virus unless one dilutes the definition of a virus beyond the point of usefulness.