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Hackers really have had their way with Sony over the past year, taking down its Playstation Network last Christmas Day and creating an international incident by exposing confidential data from Sony Pictures Entertainment in response to The Interview comedy about a planned assassination on North Korea's leader. Some say all this is karmic payback for what's become known as a seminal moment in malware history: Sony BMG sneaking rootkits into music CDs 10 years ago in the name of digital rights management. "In a sense, it was the first thing Sony did that made hackers love to hate them," says Bruce Schneier, CTO for incident response platform provider Resilient Systems in Cambridge, Mass.
Mikko Hypponen, chief research officer at F-Secure, the Helsinki-based security company that was an early critic of Sony's actions, adds: "Because of stunts like the music rootkit and suing Playstation jailbreakers and emulator makers, Sony is an easy company to hate for many. I guess one lesson here is that you really don't want to make yourself a target.
[...] Noted tech activist Cory Doctorow, writing for Boing Boing earlier this month, explains that some vendors had their reasons for not exposing the Sony rootkit right away. "Russinovich was not the first researcher to discover the Sony Rootkit, just the first researcher to blow the whistle on it. The other researchers were advised by their lawyers that any report on the rootkit would violate section 1201 of the DMCA, a 1998 law that prohibits removing 'copyright protection' software. The gap between discovery and reporting gave the infection a long time to spread."
[...] The non-profit Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) has been calling attention to the Sony BMG rootkit's 10th anniversary, urging the masses to "Make some noise and write about this fiasco" involving DRM. The FSFE, seeing DRM as an anti-competitive practice, refers to the words behind the acronym as digital restriction management rather than the more common digital rights management. In a blog post on FSFE's website, the group states: "Despite the fallout of Sony's rootkit experiment, 10 years later restrictions on users' personal property are more prevalent than ever. Restrictions are commonly found in legitimately purchased ebooks, video game hardware, and all manner of proprietary software. It has even found ways into our cars and coffee machines."
We remember the rootkit:
Historical posts below by Bruce Schneier, blog posts which contain a vast resource of information shared by his open community in which anyone can post - more technical and polite than most discussion forums!
November 1: Sony Secretly Installs Rootkit on Computers
November 11: More on Sony's DRM Rootkit
November 15: Still More on Sony's DRM Rootkit
November 17: Sony's DRM Rootkit: The Real Story
November 21: The Sony Rootkit Saga Continues
Old Slashdot stories on the topic:
October 31: Sony DRM Installs a Rootkit?
November 7: Sony Rootkit Phones Home
November 10: California Class Action Suit Sony Over Rootkit DRM
New Slashdot Story: Revisiting the Infamous Sony BMG Rootkit Scandal 10 Years Later
[Editor's Note: Check the Original Submission for additional links.]
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Runaway1956 on Sunday November 01 2015, @12:21PM
Any corporation that has committed such outrageous offenses against their customers should be out of business. Notice, I did not use the word "crimes", but "offenses". It seems that people like being abused, because they keep going back for more. Ultimately, Sony profits. Yeah, they lost some here and there, but the people continue to do business with them.
What is wrong with us? Sony should have gone bankrupt as a result of all of this, assets snapped up by other companies.
People are so disappointing. They stand in line to be abused, by Sony, the bankers, government, and dozens of other corporations.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by SrLnclt on Sunday November 01 2015, @12:40PM
I haven't bought a Sony product in a decade, and have no intention to do so any time soon. I'm guessing I'm not the only one here.
Unfortunately the general population is stupid when it comes to things like this.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by digitalaudiorock on Sunday November 01 2015, @03:52PM
Hell...I refuse to even own a blu ray player made by anyone. It's a godless anti-consumer format born out of Sony's massive conflict of interest and stuffed up the public's ass. I'll have no part of it.
It's hard to imagine that at one time, Sony was the one fighting a battle with the recording industry regarding their bullshit copy protection concerns over DAT tape recorders.
(Score: 2) by Justin Case on Sunday November 01 2015, @04:47PM
I haven't bought a Sony product in a decade
Same here. Problem is, in the last decade we've seen several other companies striving for, though not equaling, Sony's level of abomination. Where do you draw the line?
And why aren't people from Sony in jail over this!!!
It is abundantly clear from this and other events that the law has no legitimacy, and you are morally right to do whatever the fuck you please, as long as you don't hurt those who haven't harmed you.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Myrddin Wyllt on Sunday November 01 2015, @11:57PM
I also began boycotting Sony products after the Rootkit thing, although that probably didn't cost them a lot of business (maybe a lost PS3 sale, and a couple of CDs).
The main thing I took away from it was an appreciation of just how bad a company Microsoft were - I had used Windows as my main operating system since my first PC in the mid nineties, and although I was a bit underwhelmed with XP, I liked W2K and was essentially a happy little microsoftee.
When the Root Kit story broke, I was expecting a wrathful storm to issue from Mount Redmond, damning Sony to the seventh circle of Hell for their despicable behavior. Instead we got nothing, not even a patch for ages. I hit the internets to find out why MS was being so weak in their response, and found an eye-opening amount of stuff about what sort of company they were (that's where I first came across slashdot). It may sound obvious to all of us now, but I was just a mainstream computer user and didn't even realise that people had real issues with Microsoft at the time.
I had already bought 'Linux for Dummies' a couple of years earlier and installed the included Red Hat 7 as a dual boot with W2K, but just as something to play with. Within a month I was running Slackware (10.1 I think), and Windows was relegated to 'use it when you have to' status - when they dropped support for W2K it got wiped completely, and I've never looked back.
I still consider the exposure of the Sony Root Kit to be the point when I started taking free / open source software and open standards seriously, just because it illustrated how messed up the alternatives were.
(Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Sunday November 01 2015, @01:28PM
There is hope. Recall an even earlier incident, Turbo Tax software screwing with sector 0 of your hard drive. At worst, your computer would not be able to boot up again, and the partition information was overwritten, making file recovery painful. They put our data at risk, to protect their precious software from the dirty rotten pirates among us. To them, their right to defend themselves from piracy was more important than our data. Customers abandoned Turbo Tax in droves, jumped to Tax Cut. Turbo Tax tried to weather the storm for about a month, but soon issued a patch to remove that feature, and has never dared try a stunt like that since.
And, Sony was pushed into replacing all their malicious CDs. Notice that they also have never dared try a root kit again. That's good enough for me. Recalls are expensive, and having to do one is a fairly effective punishment, so much so that sometimes corporations often try to cover the problem up and weasel out of them, like GM did over their ignition switches. VW is hurting too since the exposure of their diesel emissions cheating. Their business is way down. So, yeah, there is hope.
(Score: 5, Informative) by physicsmajor on Sunday November 01 2015, @04:00PM
Not good enough. Not even close. See, their fines and costs of replacement/settlement were laughable. From a corporate perspective, they still made money.
The lesson wasn't punitive. It was the barest slap on the hand, amounting to "well, let's not get caught next time." It needed to be "these fuckers got absolutely destroyed, nobody better every try shit like that again."
(Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Monday November 02 2015, @02:06PM
What is the goal here? Ideally, we want corporations, and people, to behave responsibly, and, more, to want to behave responsibly, even when no one is looking. Then we don't have to spend as much effort constantly looking over their shoulders. Making them afraid of punishment, and being harsh to make it stick feels good, maybe, but is not a good foundation to build trust.
If Sony, or anyone else, should try such a stupid stunt again, then, yes, let's punish them harder. And, yes, there are serial offenders out there who have kept right on bending and trampling upon the rules despite threats and punishments. Microsoft leaps to mind as one of those. For this particular offense however, I really do think Sony has learned their lesson.
For the greater offenses they have committed, which is the entire propaganda and terror campaign the RIAA (of which Sony BMG is a member and MS is as good as a member) has been pushing for decades now, they ought to face false advertising, racketeering, corruption, and bribery charges, and be convicted, and the responsible individuals jailed. I would prefer that we go that route, rather than use one or two of their many offenses as excuse to beat them up. Makes it clearer to everyone what the real issue is. They seem to really believe their own propaganda. There's hardly a DRM scheme or copyright extension or expansion that they don't like-- with the notable exception of copyrights that make it harder for them to take whatever they want, such as copyleft. Copyright is for us little people to obey, not the big bad RIAA. I don't know what it will take to break them and their attitude, the whole ownership society notion, this destructive backwards clinging to a broken business model. A revolution, perhaps? Time will do it, but I don't want to wait decades. They're fighting an unwinnable war, the War on Piracy. Despite the hopelessness of the fight, they have managed to hurt a number of innocent, ordinary people. When they have been rendered powerless, their monies cut off, then maybe no one will listen to them and their fake moralizing any more, and they will have no choice but to quit fighting. Harsh punishment won't do the job, it will take a shift in public attitudes.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by edIII on Sunday November 01 2015, @06:03PM
Good enough for you? Seriously? Why? A pittance of money from the recall was sufficient punishment?
Dude, you sound like a corporate apologist saying that finances made them see what was wrong and what was right, and that's a perfectly acceptable substitution for regulators, handcuffs, and prison sentences.
Corporations are not people, and some *people* from Sony over 10 years ago knowingly, and actively pushed malware onto consumer systems. Were it anyone else , the government would have made an example and put them in prison.
What do you think would have happened to you?
Hope my butt. As long as they continue to get away with no prison sentences, and no loss of profits that impact their golden parachutes, you will see zero change. The myth that the market corrects anything is exactly that. A myth.
I don't hope. I actively seek and support the complete and utter destruction of the Sony empire, the scattering of their assets and IP to the wind, and dolling every executives lips up with rosy red lipstick and throwing in them in prison where they can service their new exclusive customer: Prison Husband.
I needed to print pictures yesterday for a funeral and had no time. I spent time and money I didn't have just so I didn't use the Sony picture station at Kinko's IIRC, and went to Wallgreen's instead. Never bought a single thing for BluRay.
I have no hope for justice, and that's about all we can do, which is boycott Sony. Sounds like you forgave them because they have shiny product you wanted? That's what today reminds me of. It doesn't matter how cool the product or service is from Sony, you don't negotiate and support terrorists.
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 02 2015, @02:25AM
While you were at Walgreens, I hope you picked up some Preparation H to deal with your butthurt.
(Score: 5, Informative) by art guerrilla on Sunday November 01 2015, @02:18PM
easy peasy japanesy:
korporations are in the saddle, and the devil take the hindmost ! ! !
in amerika, it was at least pretended for a while, that korporations had to observe several basic tenets:
1. they were of limited duration
2. they had a specific purpose
3. AND said purpose had to directly benefit The People, NOT JUST STOCKHOLDERS...
NONE of those apply any longer, AND in fact and in practice, korporations are SUPERIOR 'PEOPLE' to people...
compared to 'real' people, they live infinitely long, are vastly more wealthy, wield unmatched power, and are amoral organizations with no accountability...
what could possibly go wrong ? ? ?
(except total destruction of civil society and the planet, but other than those trifles, we enriched some folks...)
(Score: 2) by Justin Case on Sunday November 01 2015, @04:58PM
I agree with you, but whenever you are hating on corporations, remember it is governments that allow them to exist, so there's guilt enough to go around.
We need:
* Death penalty for corporations
* The corporate structure cannot shield the people in charge from liability for their actions
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 01 2015, @07:16PM
That's a bit too harsh given the number of innocent people (ie: The lower level peeps) that get shafted.
I'd rather see more risk to the shareholders themselves, since ultimately that is the only reason the corporations act the way they do - to maximize profits for those shareholders, since those shareholders can and do sue/apply pressure/etc whenever they see the corporation acting in such a way that doesn't maximize their profits. Do you play fair, or do you attempt some anti-competitive practice that will earn you billions but at the risk of a 100 million dollar fine if caught? Obviously you act anticompetitively simply because the gains far outweigh the penalty. It happens -every- time.
If a corporation is found to have acted illegally,such as this, then the only appropriate fine should be to equate or exceed any estimated gains they've made in the process. (Something that NEVER happens)
Sure, the first time or two a company is caught with their pants down doing this it'll hurt pretty bad. After all, they were expecting a slap on the wrist. But after that corporations will start to clean up their own act over time simply because the profits will no longer be there. (Actually they'd probably commit economic suicide by wasting all profits in lawsuits trying to fight the fine, but I'm assuming at least a spec of sanity out of them.)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 02 2015, @07:41AM
- AUC approves $56 million TransAlta market manipulation settlement (PDF) [auc.ab.ca]
I hope to see more of the same in the coming years/decades.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 01 2015, @10:43PM
Blame the people buying Sony insurance? ;)
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/28/business/global/sonys-bread-and-butter-its-not-electronics.html?_r=0 [nytimes.com]
Sony is best known as a consumer electronics company, making PlayStation game consoles and televisions. And it loses money on almost every gadget it sells.
Sony has made money making Hollywood movies and selling music. That profitable part of the business is what Daniel S. Loeb, an American investor and manager of the hedge fund Third Point, wants Sony to spin off to raise cash to resuscitate its electronics business.
But as Mr. Loeb pressures Sony executives to do more to revive the company’s ailing electronics arm, some analysts are asking, Why bother?
Sony, it is suggested, might be better off just selling insurance.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 02 2015, @05:09PM
Sony's Music and movie arm sabotaged the electronics arm. It may be that people are avoiding Sony products.
Every time I find out somebody has a PS3, I explain how Sony screwed them over by removing "Other OS" functionality and PS2 backward compatibility (so Sony can just resell the older game you already have on disk).
It was like 5 years before I bought a CD without the "Compact Disc; Digital Audio" logo. Apparently, while the logo was still present on the actual media, nobody (other than cheap CDs sold for like $2 (public domain FTW)) actually puts that logo on the actual packaging anymore.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 03 2015, @08:09PM
That's only if its still running on its original firmware. With custom firmware, you get back OtherOS and PS2 compatibility, making it well worth purchasing a second-hand PS3 running OFW 3.55 or earlier.