as has been reported in a number of places, sony has filed a suit against amergence (formerly sunncomm) because the drm they provided to sony was 'defective'...
contrary to what a number of folks have written, this has nothing to do with rootkits (and not just because 'rootkit' is the most misused term in anti-malware since 'virus')... the reason this has nothing to do with rootkits and the whole sony 'rootkit' debacle is that that debacle involved drm produced by a company called first4internet, not sunncomm...
sony was employing drm technology from 2 separate companies at the same time (xcp from first4internet and mediamax from sunncomm) and sunncomm was able to fly mostly under the radar because most people were so focused on the stealthkit functionality of xcp... of course the added attention to sony cd's probably did raise awareness of the spyware-like qualities of mediamax, but considering that even now most people jump to the conclusion that sony+drm='rootkit' it's clear that sunncomm dodged a big PR bullet when that fiasco was going on...
but all good things come to an end and now they're being sued for reasons that most people are associating with the 'rootkit' debacle... one probably wonders, then, why sony isn't suing firts4internet instead (since first4interent's xcp cost sony a heck of a lot more than sunncomm's mediamax), and i wonder how they're being sued at all since software liability is supposed to be something we need not something we have (if schneier is to be believed)... my best guess is that with existing precedents for spyware prosecution, sony may believe they have a better chance of a judgment in their favour with a sunncomm suit than with a first4internet suit... however, if the claims that sony had final say on the functional specification of the software is true (and given that control is a strong motivator in the decision to deploy drm, it wouldn't surprise me if those claims were true), then sony shares an equal portion of the blame for anything the software did to sony's customers...
but the true lesson in this is for drm providers everywhere: if you're unethical enough to try and provide drm technology, you may one day find your customers (the content industry) trying to bite the hand that feeds them (you)... and when that happens, having customers with deep pockets won't seem like such a blessing anymore...
Showing posts with label drm. Show all posts
Showing posts with label drm. Show all posts
Monday, July 16, 2007
Tuesday, February 14, 2006
what is DRM?
digital rights malware (or digital rights management software if you prefer) is any program bundled with media (text, graphics, audio, video, or some combination thereof) that takes some measure of control over the user's electronic device(s) in order to limit what the user can do with the media, often in contradiction to some extent with what applicable laws say the user should be allowed to do with it...
the user is often unaware of the presence of the digital rights malware his/her media purchase has been crippled with or how it invariably works against his/her interests, so it therefore qualifies as a kind of trojan...
in recent months there has been a trend to label any form of digital rights malware that uses stealth to hide itself (and in order to be effective against any user with half a brain they have to use stealth) as a rootkit... this is part of a larger and rather misguided trend to call anything that uses stealth a rootkit... while DRM is malware, it is not necessarily a rootkit...
there is an older trend (and some well known examples of success) of trying to get protection of digital rights malware enshrined in the law... this moves the creation and maintenance of copyright policy out of the hands of the government and into the hands of various corporate interests and has sometimes been called paracopyright... in places where this has taken place many of those corporate interests have proven themselves uninterested in the user's rights many times over...
(see my previous posting on digital rights malware here)
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the user is often unaware of the presence of the digital rights malware his/her media purchase has been crippled with or how it invariably works against his/her interests, so it therefore qualifies as a kind of trojan...
in recent months there has been a trend to label any form of digital rights malware that uses stealth to hide itself (and in order to be effective against any user with half a brain they have to use stealth) as a rootkit... this is part of a larger and rather misguided trend to call anything that uses stealth a rootkit... while DRM is malware, it is not necessarily a rootkit...
there is an older trend (and some well known examples of success) of trying to get protection of digital rights malware enshrined in the law... this moves the creation and maintenance of copyright policy out of the hands of the government and into the hands of various corporate interests and has sometimes been called paracopyright... in places where this has taken place many of those corporate interests have proven themselves uninterested in the user's rights many times over...
(see my previous posting on digital rights malware here)
back to index
Tuesday, December 06, 2005
digital rights malware
you might think that there's a legitimate need for DRM... you might think that DRM gives users options and flexibility... you might think that the Sony BMG DRM rootkit fiasco was an isolated incident that would never happen again...
you'd be wrong...
digital rights management, or more accurately digital rights malware is a technology whereby people who provide the user with content exercise what they feel is their right to take some measure of control over the user's electronic equipment...
it doesn't prevent copying (it can't prevent copying), at best it prevents using copies on machines that the content providers (or DRM providers acting as agents of the content providers) don't think the user should be allowed to use the copies on... i say at best because it totally ignores the concept of the darknet which effectively renders copy controls useless as soon as one person finds a way around the controls...
DRM takes control of the user's equipment - not to the same degree (usually) as a remote access trojan, but it's still taking some control and it is doing so without the authorization of the user... even under those circumstances where the full extent of the DRM's behaviour is revealed in an End User License Agreement (EULA), the EULA will go unread (as they all do) because EULA's are so full of legalese that the ordinary person can't actually understand them...
DRM can't work without treating the user as an opponent, it's entire reason for being is to prevent the user from doing things that the user wants to do... there can be no legitimate need to install software on user-owned computers that acts against the user's interests unless you condone a copyright police state...
copyright should be protected by law, not technology, but the content providers don't trust the law to do that so they turn to DRM in order to gain more control... then they lobby for anti-circumvention laws to protect their DRM, effectively legitimizing the control they're grabbing in the eyes of the law and shifting the authority to make copyright policy away from the government and towards content providers (with all their vested interests)... but of course they don't trust the laws that protect DRM anymore than they do the laws that protect copyright so they employ additional offensive technology to protect their DRM as happened in the Sony BMG debacle, and as will continue to happen (though with better PR) and possibly even escalate... it has to keep happening or the content providers have to start relying solely on the law to provide protection, thereby giving up the control they so obviously desire...
ultimately what it comes down to is control... DRM is meant to usurp the user's (and, when combined with anti-circumvention laws, the government's) control and therefore is much deserving of the malware classification (even if anti-virus/anti-spyware/anti-malware vendors can't or won't deal with that particular class of malware (yet)...
you'd be wrong...
digital rights management, or more accurately digital rights malware is a technology whereby people who provide the user with content exercise what they feel is their right to take some measure of control over the user's electronic equipment...
it doesn't prevent copying (it can't prevent copying), at best it prevents using copies on machines that the content providers (or DRM providers acting as agents of the content providers) don't think the user should be allowed to use the copies on... i say at best because it totally ignores the concept of the darknet which effectively renders copy controls useless as soon as one person finds a way around the controls...
DRM takes control of the user's equipment - not to the same degree (usually) as a remote access trojan, but it's still taking some control and it is doing so without the authorization of the user... even under those circumstances where the full extent of the DRM's behaviour is revealed in an End User License Agreement (EULA), the EULA will go unread (as they all do) because EULA's are so full of legalese that the ordinary person can't actually understand them...
DRM can't work without treating the user as an opponent, it's entire reason for being is to prevent the user from doing things that the user wants to do... there can be no legitimate need to install software on user-owned computers that acts against the user's interests unless you condone a copyright police state...
copyright should be protected by law, not technology, but the content providers don't trust the law to do that so they turn to DRM in order to gain more control... then they lobby for anti-circumvention laws to protect their DRM, effectively legitimizing the control they're grabbing in the eyes of the law and shifting the authority to make copyright policy away from the government and towards content providers (with all their vested interests)... but of course they don't trust the laws that protect DRM anymore than they do the laws that protect copyright so they employ additional offensive technology to protect their DRM as happened in the Sony BMG debacle, and as will continue to happen (though with better PR) and possibly even escalate... it has to keep happening or the content providers have to start relying solely on the law to provide protection, thereby giving up the control they so obviously desire...
ultimately what it comes down to is control... DRM is meant to usurp the user's (and, when combined with anti-circumvention laws, the government's) control and therefore is much deserving of the malware classification (even if anti-virus/anti-spyware/anti-malware vendors can't or won't deal with that particular class of malware (yet)...
Friday, November 18, 2005
what's that so-called real story again?
bruce schneier spins a yarn quite well in his recent article on the sony DRM scandal so i'm not goint to bother making any kind of 'story' here...
read it... see if you can see what i see...
no, no, not the terminology misuse (that his own readers picked up on - in the industry it's that pesky cloaking business that makes something a rootkit, regardless of how bizarre that sounds)... no, he blames anti-virus companies for not detecting the rootkit sooner...
hello?!?! where was bruce almighty during that period, hmm?? where was his company counterpane and their managed security solution? didn't they detect anything??? we're talking managed security here, with actual people at the helm rather than the automatons that anti-virus software represents... i don't recall bruce raising the initial alarm, do you?
anti-virus software detects what it knows... how does it get to know something? by the people who make it being given samples or at least pointed in the right general direction as f-secure was...
how exactly were they going to get that information sooner than they did? ('chance' is the only way i can see that happening) and without that how were they supposed to detect it? are anti-virus companies supposed to sift through and analyze every line of code on the planet, and if so are we to believe audio CDs should have been high on their priority list?
and then, to go on and make the disingenious statement that that kind of protection is exactly what we pay anti-virus companies for when he knows damn well (writes about it, talks about it, made a business model out of it) that real security isn't as simple as installing software and expecting it to protect you, that it's a process, that it requires real people making intelligent and informed security decisions - i'm sure that made for good copy but it's still hipocrisy... people protect computers, the software is just a tool to help them do the job... and of course no security, no matter how good, is perfect...
anti-virus software cannot protect you from everything all the time... many of them have no anti-rootkit technology yet, and detection of phoning home is generally relegated to the software firewalls...
bruce appears to be too far removed from the anti-virus community (note, i'm not specifying the industry) to get it... i've been part of the community for well over a decade and the only person i know who even mentions his name is me... i suspect the security guru simply considers viruses to be a small niche in the overall security landscape, and that may be true but the devil's in the details and those are something he isn't displaying a firm grasp of here...
i'm no anti-virus apologist here, though... he did get one thing right, any av company that wasn't all over this when the new broke deserves a swift boot in the ass... f-secure shouldn't have been the only av company denouncing sony's move from the get-go...
read it... see if you can see what i see...
no, no, not the terminology misuse (that his own readers picked up on - in the industry it's that pesky cloaking business that makes something a rootkit, regardless of how bizarre that sounds)... no, he blames anti-virus companies for not detecting the rootkit sooner...
hello?!?! where was bruce almighty during that period, hmm?? where was his company counterpane and their managed security solution? didn't they detect anything??? we're talking managed security here, with actual people at the helm rather than the automatons that anti-virus software represents... i don't recall bruce raising the initial alarm, do you?
anti-virus software detects what it knows... how does it get to know something? by the people who make it being given samples or at least pointed in the right general direction as f-secure was...
how exactly were they going to get that information sooner than they did? ('chance' is the only way i can see that happening) and without that how were they supposed to detect it? are anti-virus companies supposed to sift through and analyze every line of code on the planet, and if so are we to believe audio CDs should have been high on their priority list?
and then, to go on and make the disingenious statement that that kind of protection is exactly what we pay anti-virus companies for when he knows damn well (writes about it, talks about it, made a business model out of it) that real security isn't as simple as installing software and expecting it to protect you, that it's a process, that it requires real people making intelligent and informed security decisions - i'm sure that made for good copy but it's still hipocrisy... people protect computers, the software is just a tool to help them do the job... and of course no security, no matter how good, is perfect...
anti-virus software cannot protect you from everything all the time... many of them have no anti-rootkit technology yet, and detection of phoning home is generally relegated to the software firewalls...
bruce appears to be too far removed from the anti-virus community (note, i'm not specifying the industry) to get it... i've been part of the community for well over a decade and the only person i know who even mentions his name is me... i suspect the security guru simply considers viruses to be a small niche in the overall security landscape, and that may be true but the devil's in the details and those are something he isn't displaying a firm grasp of here...
i'm no anti-virus apologist here, though... he did get one thing right, any av company that wasn't all over this when the new broke deserves a swift boot in the ass... f-secure shouldn't have been the only av company denouncing sony's move from the get-go...
Wednesday, June 23, 2004
false authority syndrome finds it's way to The Register
in reference to the following artice:
Beastie Boys CD installs virus | The Register
the author of this article is Thomas C. Greene... consider the byline:
[quote]
Thomas C Greene is the author of Computer Security for the Home and Small Office, a comprehensive guide to system hardening, malware protection, online anonymity, encryption, and data hygiene for Windows and Linux.
[/quote]
there seems to be every reason to take his word as gospel, doesn't there... one problem, the article he wrote for The Register indicates that he clearly has no idea what viruses, worms, or trojan horse programs (3 major classes of malware) are...
the DRM software installed by the new Beastie Boys album is not a virus for 2 reasons... most importantly, it does not self-replicate - it does not make copies of itself, copies aren't placed on your existing music CD's, the installer is not (as far as i can tell) get placed on any new CDR's you happen to burn - the most fundamental requirement for classifying something as a virus is that that something has to self-replicate (this has been true ever since the invention of computer viruses by Fred Cohen in 1983, and you can refer to his numerous works on the subject if you don't believe me)... second, it does not infect any host program - by which i mean that it does not attach itself to any program in such a way that when an attempt is made to execute the host program the DRM software does not get executed as well as or instead of the host program... infection of host programs is generally regarded as a requirement for calling a self-replicating program a virus instead of a worm (another kind of self-replicating malware) or something else...
so it's not a virus because it doesn't self-replicate and it doesn't infect host programs...
Mr. Greene makes further errors in his justification of calling it a virus rather than a worm... there is an argument (that is not particularly well thought out) that says that viruses require user intervention and worms do not - however that argument is meant to be applied to the way the virus or worm gets executed, not how it gets copied (as Mr. Greene seems to think)... clearly, as the DRM software autoexecutes, the DRM software in question better suits the classification of worm under this (dubious) argument...
what the DRM software in question actually is, is the payload of a trojan horse - a trojan horse being something that advertizes itself as performing some desirable function but does something bad in addition to or instead of that desirable function... even a passing familiarity with the field of malware should have made this readily apparent to Mr. Greene....
the legal implications are pretty much the same, though... that much he got right...
Beastie Boys CD installs virus | The Register
the author of this article is Thomas C. Greene... consider the byline:
[quote]
Thomas C Greene is the author of Computer Security for the Home and Small Office, a comprehensive guide to system hardening, malware protection, online anonymity, encryption, and data hygiene for Windows and Linux.
[/quote]
there seems to be every reason to take his word as gospel, doesn't there... one problem, the article he wrote for The Register indicates that he clearly has no idea what viruses, worms, or trojan horse programs (3 major classes of malware) are...
the DRM software installed by the new Beastie Boys album is not a virus for 2 reasons... most importantly, it does not self-replicate - it does not make copies of itself, copies aren't placed on your existing music CD's, the installer is not (as far as i can tell) get placed on any new CDR's you happen to burn - the most fundamental requirement for classifying something as a virus is that that something has to self-replicate (this has been true ever since the invention of computer viruses by Fred Cohen in 1983, and you can refer to his numerous works on the subject if you don't believe me)... second, it does not infect any host program - by which i mean that it does not attach itself to any program in such a way that when an attempt is made to execute the host program the DRM software does not get executed as well as or instead of the host program... infection of host programs is generally regarded as a requirement for calling a self-replicating program a virus instead of a worm (another kind of self-replicating malware) or something else...
so it's not a virus because it doesn't self-replicate and it doesn't infect host programs...
Mr. Greene makes further errors in his justification of calling it a virus rather than a worm... there is an argument (that is not particularly well thought out) that says that viruses require user intervention and worms do not - however that argument is meant to be applied to the way the virus or worm gets executed, not how it gets copied (as Mr. Greene seems to think)... clearly, as the DRM software autoexecutes, the DRM software in question better suits the classification of worm under this (dubious) argument...
what the DRM software in question actually is, is the payload of a trojan horse - a trojan horse being something that advertizes itself as performing some desirable function but does something bad in addition to or instead of that desirable function... even a passing familiarity with the field of malware should have made this readily apparent to Mr. Greene....
the legal implications are pretty much the same, though... that much he got right...
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