Sony, Rootkits and Digital Rights Management Gone Too Far

Sony Rootkit CD providers!

As stated on the story: Sony DRM Installs a Rootkit, it seems that some of Sony's disks install a rootkit on your system after you try to listen them on your PC.

Why does it matter?

A rootkit is A type of Trojan that keeps itself, other files, registry keys and network connections hidden from detection. It runs at the lowest level of the machine and typically intercepts common API calls."

It is dangerous because hackers and virus writers can use it to help the attacker [hacker] to maintain his or her access to the system and use it for malicious purposes

On this page one of the developers at SysInternals explains what and how is the rootkit installed WITHOUT ASKING YOU when you insert any of the affected AUDIO CD's to play them on your computer running WINDOWS

Which CD's?
I have made a list of the CD's that are "Enhanced" and "Copy Protected" from sony with the XCP copy protection that provides a Rootkit.

It is easy to get an "up to date" list with
this google query.

The list of CD's so far are:
Nothing Is Sound. Switchfoot
Unwritten [CONTENT/COPY-PROTECTED CD] [ENHANCED]
Natasha Bedingfield

Ride [CONTENT/COPY-PROTECTED CD] [CONTENT/COPY-PROTECTED CD]
Shelly Fairchild
12 Songs [CONTENT/COPY-PROTECTED CD]
Neil Diamond
Touch [CONTENT/COPY-PROTECTED CD] [CONTENT/COPY-PROTECTED CD]
Amerie
Bloom Remix Album [CONTENT/COPY-PROTECTED CD] [ENHANCED]
Sarah McLachlan
Kasabian [CONTENT/COPY-PROTECTED CD]
Kasabian
The Essential Pete Seeger [CONTENT/COPY-PROTECTED CD] [CONTENT/COPY-PROTECTED CD] [ORIGINAL RECORDING REMASTERED]
Pete Seeger
Jeru [CONTENT/COPY-PROTECTED CD] [ENHANCED] [ORIGINAL RECORDING REMASTERED]
Gerry Mulligan
imes Like These [CONTENT/COPY-PROTECTED CD] [CONTENT/COPY-PROTECTED CD]
Buddy Jewell,
Bob Brookmeyer & Friends [CONTENT/COPY-PROTECTED CD] [ORIGINAL RECORDING REMASTERED]
Bob Brookmeyer
Healthy In Paranoid Times [CONTENT/COPY-PROTECTED CD] [ENHANCED]
Our Lady Peace
Cautivo [CONTENT/COPY-PROTECTED CD] [DUALDISC]
Chayanne
The Invisible Invasion [CONTENT/COPY-PROTECTED CD]
Coral, The Coral
Defined [CONTENT/COPY-PROTECTED CD] [CONTENT/COPY-PROTECTED CD]
Amici Forever
Suspicious Activity [CONTENT/COPY-PROTECTED CD] [ENHANCED]
The Bad Plus
Manhattan Symphonie [CONTENT/COPY-PROTECTED CD] [ORIGINAL RECORDING REMASTERED]
Dexter Gordon
Phantoms [CONTENT/COPY-PROTECTED CD] [CONTENT/COPY-PROTECTED CD]
Acceptance
On Ne Change Pas [CONTENT/COPY-PROTECTED CD]
Celine Dion

Get Right with the Man [CONTENT/COPY-PROTECTED CD]
Van Zant
To Love Again [CONTENT/COPY-PROTECTED CD] [ENHANCED]
Chris Botti
Life [CONTENT/COPY-PROTECTED CD] [DUALDISC]
Ricky Martin
The Essential Dion [CONTENT/COPY-PROTECTED CD] [CONTENT/COPY-PROTECTED CD] [ENHANCED] [ORIGINAL RECORDING REMASTERED]
Dion
Faso Latido [CONTENT/COPY-PROTECTED CD] [CONTENT/COPY-PROTECTED CD]
A Static Lullaby
Change It All [CONTENT/COPY-PROTECTED CD]
Goapele

Susie Suh [CONTENT/COPY-PROTECTED CD]
Susie Suh

My Very Special Guests [CONTENT/COPY-PROTECTED CD] [CONTENT/COPY-PROTECTED CD] [ORIGINAL RECORDING REMASTERED]
George Jones

Broken Valley [CONTENT/COPY-PROTECTED CD]
Life of Agony
Silver's Blue [CONTENT/COPY-PROTECTED CD] [ENHANCED] [ORIGINAL RECORDING REMASTERED]
Horace Silver
Z [CONTENT/COPY-PROTECTED CD] [ENHANCED]
My Morning Jacket
The Dead 60s [CONTENT/COPY-PROTECTED CD]
The Dead 60s

What Can I do?
It is important to note that if you have tried to listen any of the above mentioned CD's your computer may have the rootkit installed. Hence, your system may be in danger of being hacked.

If you feel outraged because of this, you can write to the artists and complain about the problem. Tell them that their CD breaks your system as it opens a security hole.

If you think that there are other CD's which should be on this list please feel free to list them in a comment, also if you think any of the listed CD's DOES NOT actually have this problem please also state it in a comment.

Thank you!.

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Sony BMG rootkit hides Warden hackers
Two stories merge in bizarre twist
TWO STORIES of the week have spectacularly merged today. Apparently hackers are using the Sony BMG rootkit cloaking system to cover up their cheating on Blizzard's World of Warcraft, by hiding from Warden.

Warden, which is designed to monitor cheating in the game was named by electronic freedom group as major spyware.

Apparently all the hackers have to do to hide from Warden is buy a Sony BMG copy protected CD.

Warden, the anti-cheating program cannot detect any files that are hidden with Sony BMG's content protection, which only requires that the hacker add the prefix "$sys$" to file names.

More here. µ

Click to expand...

On the other hand you can stop piracy by making your crap so good that people actuaily want to buy them

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Player-X said:

Sony BMG rootkit hides Warden hackers
Two stories merge in bizarre twist
TWO STORIES of the week have spectacularly merged today. Apparently hackers are using the Sony BMG rootkit cloaking system to cover up their cheating on Blizzard's World of Warcraft, by hiding from Warden.

Warden, which is designed to monitor cheating in the game was named by electronic freedom group as major spyware.

Apparently all the hackers have to do to hide from Warden is buy a Sony BMG copy protected CD.

Warden, the anti-cheating program cannot detect any files that are hidden with Sony BMG's content protection, which only requires that the hacker add the prefix "$sys$" to file names.

Click to expand...

How the MPAA killed the movie theater experience: a first-hand report


[I'd be glad to share other experiences, or a reply from the MPAA should
they choose to send one along. --Declan]

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: MPAA kills movie experience.
Date: Fri, 4 Nov 2005 11:22:20 -0500 (EST)
From: James Reid <[email protected]>
To: [email protected]


Hi Declan,

My girlfriend and I are writers here in Toronto and
I thought I'd share this, as if you needed evidence
that privacy abuses are out of hand, here's our
completely insane experience with the MPAA from
last night.



OMGMPAA1984WTF?


I wonder what kind of dystopian cyberpunk
future we live in when you are physically
searched before entering a movie theatre.

Last night (November 3rd), my girlfriend brought me
along to see a screening of Derailed at the Paramount
theatre in Toronto, which she had to
review for a magazine she works for. The lineup
for the screening was unusually long, as I think
they also fill seats at press screenngs with radio
call-in winners, who in hindsight, might have
accepted such poor treatment in exchange for
the ostensible privilege of paying for $30 worth
of parking and fast food at a free $13 movie.

Anyway, the line was moving slowly because they were asking
customers to raise their arms so that they could be
electronically frisked with a metal detector, and
women's purses were being searched by uniformed
security guards. Try to remember that this is
Toronto, Canada we're talking about here, not
New York, Tel Aviv or London.

People who submitted to the search (everyone from
what I could tell) had their cellphones taken from
them and checked at a table set up in front of
the theatre and they were given a ticket to reclaim
it when they left.

I was having none of this, and checked
the back of my ticket stub to ensure that there
was no mention of being required to submit to a
search listed as a condition of sale. As my girlfriend
and I made it to the front of the line, the guard
looked at me and asked me to raise my arms for the
search. I politely declined saying "No, thank
you", and proceeded to the ticket taker. I could hear
him calling "Sir! Sir!" behind me, but even though
I slowed my pace in case he was really going to do
something about it, as I had expected, I wasn't
stopped.

The ticket taker took my ticket and I waited for my
girlfriend just inside the gate, as her purse was
being subjected to a thorough going through by one
of the guards.

Since she was there for work, and her deadline was
that night, she was not ready to risk not seeing the
movie. Her 150 words won't have room for what
happened next.

Her phone was taken from her and put in a sealed
plastic bag with a claim ticket, and she
joined me where I was waiting, past the gate, and
we walked into the theatre together.

To add further insult to the debacle at the
gate, near the exits at stage right and left
were two uniformed security guards at each door,
all four with video cameras scanning the crowd
and making themselves very conspicuous.

This was not just a bit of pre-show MPAA theatre,
they stood there for the entirity of the movie, red
LED's glowing, scanning the crowd to remind
us that we were under close surviellence and our
actions were being recorded.

If you have sat in a chair in a dark room watching
disturbing scenes unfold in front of you, while four
uniformed people with video cameras stand in front
of your, silently recording your reactions, you might
be reminded of scenarios from a Clockwork Orange,
Brazil, 1984, Videodrome, and strangely,
that 90's relic: SFW.

Security guards regularly use handheld video
cameras to harrass and intimidate people,
particularly during political rallies and protests,
as the guards know that the cameras carry with
them a clear implication of future retribution
against those being recorded. The cameras are
quite literally, a threat.

( The threat is that if you do not behave as
the camera holder asks, the recording of your
actions will be used to persecute or discrace you.)

Upon leaving the theatre, my girlfriend and I
had to stop at the security desk to claim her
phone, which involved them searching through a
pile of bagged cellphones for the correct one.
We took another moment to turn the phone on
and wait for signal in the threatre to validate
that we in fact had the correct phone.

My girlfriend had said that if she hadn't already
agreed to her deadline, she would have made
a point of walking out of the screening and
giving the PR person a talking to. I did not
confront the camera wielding guards in the
theatre because she was my host she had a job
to do.

Only people who think they have done something
wrong, or deserve to be searched, submit to that
kind of authority, which is why guards get away
with it, and the rest of us continue to be
subjected to it and it becomes "normal".

Anyway, apparently this is Alliance Atlantis'
idea of how to treat an audience, then I for
one can certainly live without seeing any of
their films, and we will be skipping movies
at the Paramount theatre. I also know that
at least one reviewer will also be seeing
her movies elsewhere too.

I would also say that this is further evidence
that movie studios are losing revenue because
of the increasingly poor movie-going experience
and general low-quality of the movies they are
making, as after this, I can certainly undertstand
why someone would prefer to watch a movie on their
14 inch screen than suffer the indignity of a multiplex.
--
batz

Click to expand...

ChankastRules said:

I'll write a email to paramount and tell them to make me VD because I must be a 1000 times smarter than the people in charge ( I'm not claiming to be that smart either )

Click to expand...

Well, 0 * 1000 = ???

...just kidding

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HAhahaha, You've got a point, although if they had 0.... they wouldn't be able to walk I guess and they can ( at least I think so )

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Hard core Rikki said:

Meanwhile, back to rootkits and DRM...

If Sony is suicidal enough to install hidden rootkits on users' HDs that can still be detected but hardly removable at all, don't you think that means it's planning hardware lock-ins as well in the furute?

The Playstation 3 will probably ship with a HD unit, with a GNU/Linux system preinstalled to provide emulation of PS1 and PS2 games "in software and hardware".
Don't you think this could also mean such rootkits might be present BY DEFAULT on the HD, and any tampering with these could mean lost functionnality for your PS3, as it is the case currently with the XboX (tampering with hardware means your console will be banned from XboX Live FOREVER, even if nothing actually occured)

With hardware lock-ins, it will (most) definitely impossible to remove such a piece of scumware from your HD unit, even for skilled techs...

Dudes, watch out for anything with SONY on it, keep your computers safe, this scheme surely isn't restricted to music CDs, probably doable on anything with a HD (computers, consoles, huh...iPods?)

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Player-X said:

You do realise we already said SONY is going to be using GUNU/linux on the PS3 HD and they are the ones who use rootkits on thier own music CDs right? therefore it's more likely they have this kind of crapware copyprotection built in to the PS3 hardware and the PS3 OS, there is a good chance that the ps3 will also have some kind of DRM mechinism that reports back to SONY or some other greedy bastards everytime you play a "personalrightsprotected"(I am making a new term that will hopefully spread around here, it means it stops you from using your right to copy, rip or even play your cds in certain devices) CD/DVD/BRD(Blue Ray Disc)

Click to expand...

Player-X said:

It could be intergrated into the CPU and other components making it harder to crack than a simple modchip

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