a good summation of sony's xcp

[rone]

Or, in layman's terms, the so-called "rootkit" found in some of their recent music "CDs" (which i just read somewhere on my friends list that they aren't technically CDs because they're so badly botched that Philips won't let Sony use the term).  Anyway, Bruce Schneier writes about it in Wired.

Comments

[drieuxster.livejournal.com]

Isn't there some sort of illegal crime that comes with installing hacker ware on another person's computer....

Has anyone informed the Department of Homeland Security about this issue with Sony being in league with the whole Gay HomoZexual Zombie Pirate Marriage Initiative bent upon the destruction of our White Christian America... Or is the DHS hoping that no one notices, and that gosh, there goes another way of finding out who has become an enemy of the state...

[ronebofh.livejournal.com]

If you'd actually read the damn thing, you'd see that the DHS is in fact mentioned.

[drieuxster.livejournal.com]

I see the article in blogs.washingtonpost.com - I see that there is a reference to someone who has been apointed by the president to work with DHS, as an assistant secretary for policy, but it is not clear from this information that the DHS has actually been informed of this - nor whether it resolves if DHS is upset at losing this Hack Point as a way to work around the limitations of all of the other manifestations of Carnivore et al....

Noting that

could have profound and unexpected effects on the security of the nation's critical infrastructures.

may be a way of trying to suggest or imply that the DHS has some position - but in the current era, it is so not clear which of them they are having at this time...

[tronpublic.livejournal.com]

I actually expected (and hoped) that Sony would be even more defensive about the whole issue - allowing more time for a furor to develop. It has gotten a lot of press lately but I don't think too many people other than computer nerds are following it. I was hoping for some full scale FUD over music CDs that would really piss off the music companies:

"Dude, don't put that CD in my computer."

"Why not?"

"Because music CDs have some evil virus."

"I heard that it was just Sony CDs. This is MCA."

"Yeah, but doesn't Sony own a bunch of companies?"

"Yeah, but I don't think it owns MCA. Besides, it's only a few CDs."

"Which ones?"

"Um, Dion... Dio... wasshername... and, I don't know all the titles."

"Then don't put that CD in my computer."

"Oh for fuck's sake, fine. Let's find the MP3 on a peer to peer site. They're safer than CDs, right?"

[urbeatle.livejournal.com]

I said exactly that on my LJ.

because I did see a dumbed-down ordinary news item about the issue, and to me that indicates the general public is going to get just that kind of vague idea about "something's wrong with music cds".

and it's going to bite the entire music industry in the ass.

[tronpublic.livejournal.com]

Ahh, but I was hoping that Sony would deny things for a bit longer. They seem to be starting to take the right steps by admitting that there is a problem and withdrawing all of the CDs. If they had held out a bit longer, our paranoia based media outlets would have had the public believing that CDs will melt your computer, cause cancer, spread bird flu, and probably abduct your children.

[wisn.livejournal.com]

And through what major media resource owned by a multinational corporation which also owns at least one music label do you expect to see this?

[tronpublic.livejournal.com]

DOH!

[drieuxster.livejournal.com]

Reading the article and chasing around - it seems that the non-Microsoft OS's could be hacked with this, but there seems to be this issue with getting the 'admin/root' password ... and why would one give that up to simply play a CD?

Am I missing something there?

I have a lot of "old CD's" - and have only learned in the last few years that one can play them on a computer... and my Mac Friends have helped me install them with the iTunes on the Mac I have, so forgive me if I sound like the old Unix Guy in the Corner wearing the braces and all... But my base expectation has been - put CD in drive, have iTunes note that it is there, do the query to whereever so that it can look up the tracks and titles stuff - poke 'import' and away we go - no need to have any 'additional software installed' - I mean I OWN the license to the CD...

But I have not been following this part of the technology and culture as much as some of my friends who are more into music... and with the dialog with my children, I expect that I will wind up buying some new "music" from groups 'dear old dad' has never heard of... So what IS my real risk and exposure here?

[palecur.livejournal.com]

braces

'suspenders,' drieux. In the 21st century, we call them 'suspenders.'

[drieuxster.livejournal.com]

Unless HM's English has drifted that radically under the Red Socialist Regime, the term 'suspender' meant the device that young ladies wore to keep their stockings up, and 'braces' meant the device that men wore to keep their trousers up... I can appreciate that many americans have been inclined to assert 'that is clearly belt and suspender coding' - but that has always been a bit queer and expression - as I really do not write drag code.... but I will confess I have never really asked my code what it does when I am not around, sort of a 'do not ask, do not tell' sort of thing....

be that as it may, my angst is still my angst...

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

Mostly, you have to be sure not to type that admin password whenever the computer tells you to without thinking first. But as an old Unix Guy, this is second nature to you already.

[drieuxster.livejournal.com]

I tend to decide that IF they want me to do something as ROOT, the product really has to be something that I have a REALLY HIGH degree of confidence in - and yes, being able to review the code is one of the requirements - OR it has to come from a reputable vendor...

So my account on the box is not my root/admin account - so that I can work as a happy and contented pleasant person, without worrying that things which might show up and try to crash on through will have to get root's permission....

All of which seems to suggest that IF I get asked these sorts of silly questions when I put a music CD into play, I should consider it fundamentally a THREAT, and react accordingly?

[wisn.livejournal.com]

If you check Sony's list of CDs infected with their rootkit (http://cp.sonybmg.com/xcp/english/titles.html), it's curious that they would go through this ridiculous re-engineering effort to protect the intellectual property of some B-listers and a pile of reissues. I can't believe Sony would prioritize protecting a discount-line Flatt & Scruggs release, or that AOR fans are more prone to pirate music than the hip-hop audience.

[ronebofh.livejournal.com]

My first reaction is that this was their beta run.

[drieuxster.livejournal.com]

The 're-issues' - things like Billy Holiday - would be for targetting us OldBies...

And yes, I rather doubt that we profile as your basic 'pirate music types'...

[dagbrown.livejournal.com]

Oh, you silly, silly person.

Those CDs don't sell poorly because people merely aren't interested in them. They sell poorly because they're the most widely pirated! Why would anyone ever buy anything they can just acquire for free from the Internet?

That's why those are the CDs that require secret rootkits that protect them from being stolen by evil thieves, assuming that all evil thieves run Windows! The hip-hop CDs, on the other hand, generally sell well, which means that they're not being pirated.

You just have to think about it from a record exec's point of view.

(For being a group of alleged people who supposedly decide what's cool and what isn't, I doubt you'd ever find as out-of-it a group of people as record company executives.)

[drieuxster.livejournal.com]

You will forgive me, but my friend james once noted to me, some web entry he found about paladin's and it asserted 'they do what is on the tin' - and I said, yes, if there are instructions on the Tin it is the first place I check.... So I Buy Music under the presumption that it will help the overall music community directlly by way of royalty, or indirectly by providing a profit margin so that 'record company execs' will have a motivation to keep on working with the next generation of music...

I have this thing with piracy - as I find it morally reprehensible. So I simply DO NOT support it.

[khansemporium.livejournal.com]

Sarcasm is such a dying art form.

[drieuxster.livejournal.com]

alas, I agree. Sarcasm/Irony are culture based...

But this whole issue has me a bit squimish, since I would like to ascribe to MERE STOOPIDITY rather than to malice - but things are clearly getting out of hand since the digital WingNuttery Act was passed, and the WhatheverOnThoseBadPeople, that is the current cult obsession duh jure for why we can not live without this 'anti-piracy skank'.

I guess I am also getting cranky, because back in the day, when the only english language radio broadcast was on Ham Radio, or Secure Channels, it was a fine art to spin up a 'radio disk jocky' tape on reel-to-reel... and that continued on through the cassette tape age... So we're talking about defending the American Way Of Life Here.... Peace, Prosperity, and Traditional Family Values... Ok, so I grew up in a 'back to nature' culture, with nuclear weapons, so they may not be quite everyone's 'traditional family values'....

It was always good news when someone got a tape from back in the world about what was the contemporary american music culture...

[khansemporium.livejournal.com]

Hrm, yes. I can see where the worship of those 8-track halycon days comes in handy. I can go back to having torrid daydreams about David or Sean Cassidy, for instance.

Now that's livin' at the price!

[drieuxster.livejournal.com]

uh, ain't that covered under the crimes against humanities stuff that we are trying to free the world from such evil doing evil doers....

Ok, SONY SHOULD DO WHAT EVER! TO STOP THE CASSIDY HORROR, the patridge family (http://www.cmongethappy.com/), well, now, uh that uh.... hum... Ok, if we have to trade, I'll Give UP the partridge family if that is the only way to stop the downward spiral that was the CASSIDY HORROR.... But this does mean that we get to keep the animals, the doors, the dead, and all of the Traditional Family Values music.... Free and Untainted by the evils of modern anti-piracy apostasy....

And to be frank, 8-tracks were a part of the Apostacy of Evil Doing Evil Doers unwilling to do thing with reel to reels like Jesus Would Have Done It.... Kids, these days, no respect for Tradition.....

[khansemporium.livejournal.com]

Have you ever considered switching to decaf?

target too close switching to decaf????

[drieuxster.livejournal.com]

try to remember that the nation is now 'more at war than ever before' - except of course, when it is inconvenient for the anti-anti-war types to get up off their faces and into the game... So it's so important to remember all of the important things when fighting against the forces of evil and total fully on IkkyYukkyPoohperIsms....

I mean, you wouldn't want those Satanic Evil Al-Qaeda Gay HomoZeXual Zombie Pirate Cyborg Piloted Iraqi Flying Saucers to Return and Impose Excessive Governmental Regulation On the Free Market that Won the Cold War, like they did when they attacked on 09/11/2001? Now Do YOU?

[dagbrown.livejournal.com]

Well, I don't quite remember the bits where I said "Fuck the system! Down with the Man! Pirate CDs! YEAH!" but—er, suuuure.

You certainly have an opinion there.

[drieuxster.livejournal.com]

my apology, if my writing read to you as if you were doing a full on sixties revival thing. While I sorta like that Idea, in one sense of 'nostalgia' - as a person who was engaged in 'entrepreneurship sans excessive governmental regulation of the market place' back in the day,
that is totally different than 'theft' - which is central to piracy.

I was just being cranky that it's one thing to deal with trying to prevent piracy - but the problem is NOT the simple college kids and GI's in the Field that this sort of BATTLE AX approach of installing rootKits, et al.... If folks want to deal with piracy, go after the Pirates. This with the root kit is, well, like leaving handgrenades around in the product packaging, just in case majikally it would blow up the bad person...