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This topic comprises 6 pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6
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Author
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Topic: Sony puts malware on its music CDs.
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Jason M Miller
Master Film Handler
Posts: 284
From: Kalamazoo, Michigan, USA
Registered: Jul 2004
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posted 11-22-2005 01:53 PM
Tape works: InformationWeek
quote:
Sony BMG Music's controversial copy-protection scheme can be defeated with a small piece of tape, a research firm said Monday in a demonstration of the futility of digital rights management (DRM).
According to Gartner analysts Martin Reynolds and Mike McGuire, Sony's XCP technology is stymied by sticking a fingernail-size piece of opaque tape on the outer edge of the CD.
That, the pair said in a brief posted online, renders "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."
Such simple work-arounds, said Reynolds and McGuire, make Sony's decision to copy protect is music CDs an even bigger mistake. "Sony BMG's DRM technology will prevent neither informed casual copiers nor high-volume 'pirates' from doing whatever they like with the content the disc," the analysts continued. "It does, however, load 'stealth' software — software that has been demonstrated to have suspect effects — on uninformed users' machines.
"The bottom line: Sony BMG has created serious public-relations and legal issues for itself, and for no good reason."
Only after 10 days of mounting criticism about its surreptitious installation of a hacker-style "rootkit" to users' PCs did Sony announce that it would end the copy-protection; a week later it said it would recall all unsold CDs and exchange those already in consumers' hands with unprotected discs.
Sony's exchange program also gives buyers of the 52 in-question CDs the option of receiving unprotected MP3 files of the album's tracks, in large part because the disc exchange process takes three to six weeks.
Those users will receive an e-mail directing them to a site where they can download the MP3 files, Sony said on its exchange program Web page.
This isn't the first time that simple methods have defeated a Sony copy-protection plan. An earlier technology that Sony used could be circumvented by using a black marker to draw a line near the edge of the disc.
"After more than five years of trying, the recording industry has not yet demonstrated a workable DRM scheme for music CDs," concluded the Gartner analysts. "It will never achieve this goal as long as CDs must be playable by stand-alone CD players."
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Leo Enticknap
Film God
Posts: 7474
From: Loma Linda, CA
Registered: Jul 2000
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posted 11-23-2005 02:02 AM
A while back the music industry floated the idea of releasing 'light' versions of music CDs at a reduced price. The idea was that they'd cost £2-3. The CD itself would be exactly the same pressing as the full price version, but it would come in a cardboard sleeve with only basic artwork and a track listing. Meanwhile, the full price version would have glossy packaging and extra crap thrown in, thereby giving consumers two product options for each release. The hope was that people who had previously made their own copies would henceforth buy the legit 'light' version. AFAIK the idea never went anywhere - probably because even £3 is around six times the cost of a blank. So, if you're the prepared to rip a CD off in principle, you're going to need more of an incentive than that to change your ways.
The root cause of this problem, IMHO, is that when the CD format was launched in the early '80s, no-one had any idea how easy it would become to make digital clones. Even in the late '80s, your typical PC at a high street store would have a hard disc capacity of 10-20mb: so in 1983, when the CD audio format was launched, the idea of PCs that could deal with 650mb at a time must have seemed like science fiction. In hindsight, we know that if the developers had paid any attention to Moore's Law, they'd have seen this coming. Making analogue copies of commercial music recordings and radio broadcasts had gone on ever since magnetic recording technology had been sold to domestic consumers. But the copies were usually of significantly lower quality, and could only be made in real time, thereby limiting the scale of the economic loss to the industry. Put simply, no-one ever foresaw a situation in which consumers would be able to 'clone' albums in 2-3 minutes and at virtually no up-front cost.
Two other factors are also clear: (i) that domestic copying of commercially published audio and video recordings is widely perceived to be a victimless crime; and (ii) that the technological approach to stopping it only works with a limited, technically less literate group of consumers.
I can't see any immediate hope of (i) changing any time soon. Sometimes public attitudes can be changed: for example, a friend of mine recalls that when he learnt to drive in the mid-60s, his instructor told him that 'it's probably best to leave the car at home if you're planning to have 5 or 6 pints, otherwise you may end up having to push it out of a ditch.' Now, of course, drink-driving is perceived as a taboo. If you casually mention over a coffee break that you drove home after drinking five pints the previous night, the reaction will probably be one of shock and hostility. But if you say that you listened to a CD which a friend copied for you, the response you'll probably get is: 'Oh, that sounds good; could you burn one off for me, too?'. But whereas public opinion was gradually convinced by the anti drink-drive arguments, they simply don't believe the music industry's claims that making one or two copies of a CD for friends or relatives damages artists' careers or supports drug smuggling and international terrorism.
So, given that neither technology nor PR is likely to significantly reduce domestic piracy any time soon, the industry is either just going to have to live with it and factor it in to its business planning, or come up with more attractive alternatives - it's as simple as that, as far as I can see.
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Bobby Henderson
"Ask me about Trajan."
Posts: 10973
From: Lawton, OK, USA
Registered: Apr 2001
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posted 11-23-2005 12:46 PM
Yeah, but what are they getting for "free?"
Typically "free" means a lossy data compressed music file with fidelity hardly any better than what you hear over the radio airwaves. Often, uploaded and shared music files have the front and ends clipped and other nonsense mucking up the audio. Then you have the risk of getting various newly released trojans.
Still, a great deal of people see those compromises (and risks) as being no big deal compared to spending upwards of $20 for what they see as a plain, bare bones music only CD. And even these days, the LPCM audio quality on many of today's CDs is horrible. This is especially true for many rock and pop music recordings where the tracks are badly overdriven. You can open one of these tracks in an audio editor like Sound Forge and clearly see the audio clipping the red all over the place.
So, DRM? Nah. The music industry has a crappy product on average that badly needs improvement. For $15 to $20, I want a very good quality recording and other bonuses to go with it. The DualDisc format has a lot of great potential for its ability to combine standard CD content with DVD-V, DVD-A and SACD content. Unfortunately, the music industry isn't doing enough to promote good music production and disc mastering practices within its industry. It is doing absolutely nothing to educate customers about higher quality audio formats and the value they bring to a disc. The music industry could use that DualDisc format to make music discs seem worth buying again and make downloading MP3s suck by comparison.
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Daryl C. W. O'Shea
Film God
Posts: 3977
From: Midland Ontario Canada (where Panavision & IMAX lenses come from)
Registered: Jun 2002
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posted 12-07-2005 09:54 AM
More crap:
quote: cNet
New Sony CD security risk found
By John Borland, CNET News.com
Published on ZDNet News: December 6, 2005, 4:58 PM PT
Sony BMG Music Entertainment and the Electronic Frontier Foundation
digital rights group jointly announced Tuesday that they had found,
and fixed, a new computer security risk associated with some of the
record label's CDs.
The danger is associated with copy-protection software included on
some Sony discs created by a company called SunnComm Technologies. The
vulnerability could allow malicious programmers to gain control of
computers that have run the software, which is typically installed
automatically when a disc is put in a computer's CD drive.
The issue affects a different set of CDs than the ones involved in the
copy-protection gaffe that led Sony to recall 4.7 million CDs last
month, and which has triggered several lawsuits against the record
label.
"We're pleased that Sony BMG responded quickly and responsibly when we
drew their attention to this security problem," EFF staff attorney
Kurt Opsahl said in a statement. "Consumers should take immediate
steps to protect their computers."
The announcement is the latest result of the detailed scrutiny applied
by the technical community to Sony's copy-protected discs, after a
string of serious security issues were found to be associated with the
label's antipiracy efforts.
The record label's copy-protected discs have been on the market for
more than eight months. But in late October, blogger Mark Russinovich
discovered that they surreptitiously installed a "rootkit" programming
tool. Rootkit tools are typically used by hackers to hide viruses on
hard drives, so Sony's move opened up a potentially serious security
hole.
The controversy escalated as other researchers discovered new security
flaws associated with the copy-protected CDs, which used technology
from British company First 4 Internet. Virus writers began
distributing malicious code that took advantage of the holes. The
label recalled all the discs with the First 4 Internet technology
installed, offering an exchange program for consumers who had
purchased any of the 52 CDs affected.
Following those revelations, the EFF asked computer security company
iSec Partners to study the SunnComm copy protection technology, which
Sony said has been distributed with 27 of its CDs in the United
States. iSec found the hole announced Tuesday and notified Sony, but
news of the risk was not released until SunnComm had created a patch.
Sony said another security company, NGS Software, has tested the patch
and certified that it addresses the vulnerability.
The patch can be downloaded from Sony's site. A list of the CDs
affected in the United States, and a slightly different list in
Canada, is also posted on the site.
Sony said it will notify customers though a banner advertisement
directly in the SunnComm software, as well as through an Internet
advertising campaign.
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