This researcher has probed the caching on DNS servers to see how many requests are made for the www addressed used by the rootkit. He's gone a generated some nice geospatial plots of the results. The West is burning!
The Sony DRM rootkit will re-write your hard drive. Not only that, but it will scramble any disks that are even close to your computer. It will recalibrate your refrigerator's coolness setting so all your ice cream goes melty. It will demagnetize the strips on all your credit cards, screw up the tracking on your television and use subspace field harmonics to scratch any CD's you try to play.
It will give your ex-girlfriend your new phone number. It will mix Kool-aid into your fishtank. It will drink all your beer and leave its socks out on the coffee table when there's company coming over. It will put a dead kitten in the back pocket of your good suit pants and hide your car keys when you are late for work.
The Sony DRM rootkit will make you fall in love with a penguin. It will give you nightmares about circus midgets. It will pour sugar in your gas tank and shave off both your eyebrows while dating your girlfriend behind your back and billing the dinner and hotel room to your Discover card.
It will seduce your grandmother. It does not matter if she is dead, such is the power of The Sony DRM rootkit, it reaches out beyond the grave to sully those things we hold most dear.
It moves your car randomly around parking lots so you can't find it. It will kick your dog. It will leave libidinous messages on your boss's voice mail in your voice! It is insidious and subtle. It is dangerous and terrifying to behold. It is also a rather interesting shade of mauve.
The Sony DRM rootkit will give you Dutch Elm disease. It will leave the toilet seat up. It will make a batch of Methanphedime in your bathtub and then leave bacon cooking on the stove while it goes out to chase gradeschoolers with your new snowblower.
Somebody needs to modify the worm that takes advantage of the rootkit so that it will : A) distribute Sony's copyrighted music and b) distribute the DRM code with the LGPL violation in it.
Trespass and tampering with computer networks are crimes.
Of course, I doubt we'll see any of the creative accounting used to set damages as was used in cases like AT&T vs Mitnik. Hey, they said they're sorry (they got caught...) what else do you want?
I can't wait until Whitfield Diffie gets thrown in GITMO for checking out a Chinese paper on the internal operation of federally-sanctioned quantum Clipper chip.
This was asked when the rootkit was first announced, but NOW can somebody get a security bulletin out on this damn rootkit?
Oh, no, we can't possibly imply that some corporation is behaving in bad faith! A vulenrablity is a vulnerability, no matter who's responsible or what their intent.
(What the hell, the CERT site isn't even coming up for me now...)
"It's basically a way of conning the uninformed out of their legal rights,"
Isn't that illegal? (Hell, it sounds like grounds for disbarment to me, but then. I'm not ethically challenged enough to have attended law-talking-guy school.)
That's what the media distribution companies are really afraid of -- some copyright infringement now is small potatoes. Hell, they chalk it up to the advertiszing budget.
They're really up a creek without a paddle once people realize they don't need them at all.
Yeah, but there's a lot of paper MSCE's that would pass themselves off as computer security experts. There's a lot of people looking to cash in on some of that free-flowing homeland security money. Sadly, most law enforcement agencies aren't up to speed on technology, and can't tell the gurus from the frauds.
Do you really want to rot in a cell because some MSCE can't figure out how to properly mount r/o and copy an ext3 file system?
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"Yeah, but does it run MAME?
Yet?"
I don't think 'botnets are commonly considered to be supercomputers.
This researcher has probed the caching on DNS servers to see how many requests are made for the www addressed used by the rootkit. He's gone a generated some nice geospatial plots of the results. The West is burning!
"I told them I wanted my red stapler back."
The Sony DRM rootkit will re-write your hard drive. Not only that, but it will scramble any disks that are even close to your computer. It will recalibrate your refrigerator's coolness setting so all your ice cream goes melty. It will demagnetize the strips on all your credit cards, screw up the tracking on your television and use subspace field harmonics to scratch any CD's you try to play.
It will give your ex-girlfriend your new phone number. It will mix Kool-aid into your fishtank. It will drink all your beer and leave its socks out on the coffee table when there's company coming over. It will put a dead kitten in the back pocket of your good suit pants and hide your car keys when you are late for work.
The Sony DRM rootkit will make you fall in love with a penguin. It will give you nightmares about circus midgets. It will pour sugar in your gas tank and shave off both your eyebrows while dating your girlfriend behind your back and billing the dinner and hotel room to your Discover card.
It will seduce your grandmother. It does not matter if she is dead, such is the power of The Sony DRM rootkit, it reaches out beyond the grave to sully those things we hold most dear.
It moves your car randomly around parking lots so you can't find it. It will kick your dog. It will leave libidinous messages on your boss's voice mail in your voice! It is insidious and subtle. It is dangerous and terrifying to behold. It is also a rather interesting shade of mauve.
The Sony DRM rootkit will give you Dutch Elm disease. It will leave the toilet seat up. It will make a batch of Methanphedime in your bathtub and then leave bacon cooking on the stove while it goes out to chase gradeschoolers with your new snowblower.
Somebody needs to modify the worm that takes advantage of the rootkit so that it will : A) distribute Sony's copyrighted music and b) distribute the DRM code with the LGPL violation in it.
I think somebody should write an upgraded worm that abuses the rootkit to steal Sony's music off of peoples' computers.
Of course, I doubt we'll see any of the creative accounting used to set damages as was used in cases like AT&T vs Mitnik. Hey, they said they're sorry (they got caught...) what else do you want?
I can't wait until Whitfield Diffie gets thrown in GITMO for checking out a Chinese paper on the internal operation of federally-sanctioned quantum Clipper chip.
"If you outlaw quantum computing,
only outlaws might have quantum computing."
Oh, no, we can't possibly imply that some corporation is behaving in bad faith!
A vulenrablity is a vulnerability, no matter who's responsible or what their intent.
(What the hell, the CERT site isn't even coming up for me now...)
Isn't that illegal? (Hell, it sounds like grounds for disbarment to me, but then. I'm not ethically challenged enough to have attended law-talking-guy school.)
"It was horrible! There were 1's and 0's everywhere! And I think I saw a 2!"
The gun is good. The penis is evil.
But this fails to shed light on the ancient conundrum, "If monkeys fight robots, does a robot monkey fight with itself?"
Sounds like a design flaw (or limitation) coupled with user error. They probably replace blown fuses with pennies, too.
They're really up a creek without a paddle once people realize they don't need them at all.
It you want to get pedantic, isn't any such "fingerprint" a derived work?
I think it would be poetic justice if you stole Sony's DRM to cheat at WoW.
Extra bonus points if you figure out how to use it to cheat at Everquest.
Don't they need rye bread to breed the ergot that fuels the management / marketing team?
No, this is some horrible mistake! I think the man you really want is Harry T uttle
Oh, wait, probably the same ones that would buy a crippled "CD" like this. Carry on.
Do you really want to rot in a cell because some MSCE can't figure out how to properly mount r/o and copy an ext3 file system?
You think that they can afford to hire some lunix rocket surgeon as a computer forensics expert on what the local PD pays?
That just wasn't him that came back!