Posted on 11/21/2005 8:24:30 AM PST by steve-b
Sony's controversial DRM technology - which installs rootkit-style software when users play Sony BMG CDs on Windows PCs - can be defeated easily with nothing more than a piece of masking tape, security researchers have discovered.
Sony BMG has endured a public-relations and legal nightmare after it emerged digital rights management (DRM) software installed on some of its music CDs (First4Internet XCP program) created a handy means for hackers to hide malware from anti-virus scanning programs....
(Excerpt) Read more at theregister.co.uk ...
"Gaffer Tape Defeats Sony DRM Rootkit"
I love stuff like this. I once attended a presentation by a group who spent millions developing a new defense technology. They were not happy when I demonstrated their technology could be defeated by an 8 inch piece of aluminum foil.
"After more than five years of trying, the recording industry has not yet demonstrated a workable DRM scheme for music CDs," Gartner concludes. It reckons the music industry will abandon attempts to encumber CDs with DRM software and refocus its efforts on pushing legislation to require that DRM technology be integrated into PCs."
Whaaa haaa haaa haaa haaa!!!!
Yeh, like that will stop the hackers!
These people are so clueless.
(40+ years of music telling everyone that society's rules don't matter - and now they want everyone to be nice and keep all their rules. Hah!)
I hate DRM - it sucks bigtime. You can't even burn stuff that you paid for unless you maintain a membership all the time.
ping a ling...
LOL
That would've been something to see if you just got up on the dias and wordlessly made your demonstration. Then took a bow.
Sounds like the old magic marker solution for earlier generations of DRM.
That's gonna be one heck of an unbalanced CD.
That's gonna be one heck of an unbalanced CD.
I've stuck labels on CDs. It works if it's symmetrical. IOW two pieces of tape on the edge, 180° apart, would be better and balanced
If the sole function of the tape is to make a portion of the disk unreadable, a Sharpie would do the job without unbalancing the CD. The tape makes no sense.
They have to be using tape for a reason, instead of a sharpie. BTW A sharpie was used on CDs to defeat a Sony stab at DRM a few years ago
Soooo....put an equal sized piece of tape on the opposite side, on the top of the disk where it won't interfere with the laser.
Of course, since music disks only play at 1X anyway, balance typically isn't all that much of an issue. It only becomes a problem if you try to rip the CD and let it spin up to 50X or more.
I'm not believing this until I see it. Just the thickness of tape is likely to damage the reader.
And what's the point if you aren't ripping?
Incidently, I do some backstage work on theater productions. Gaffer's tape is not duct tape. There's a huge difference, and you don't buy gaffer's tape at the local Home Depot.
Here it's called opaque tape.
________________
Sony's latest problems with its rootkit XCP software, the law and, last but not least, the angry public, are already a very well known subject. However, something that is less known, but nevertheless, very interesting, is that Sony's famous "anti-piracy protection" is actually useless, because somebody with a little technical knowledge (and pirates are, generally, quite tech-savy) can very easily go around these defences.
Actually, a very respectable research company, namely Gartner, posted a very interesting article on this subject, saying that "he user simply applies a fingernail-sized piece of opaque tape to the outer edge of the disc, rendering 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. Moreover, even without the tape, common CD-copying programs readily duplicate the copy-protected disc in its entirety".
So, practically, it has all been in vain. The XCP solution doesn't really protect the CDs' content, all it does is place the users' computers at risk. And actually, this is a classical case of a company "shooting intself in the foot", so to speak, or, better yet, shooting its own public image. Because Sony has done nothing with this system but loose a lot of money and public confidence.
As for the subject of anti-piracy measures, the research company Gartner has a rather sad conclusion:
"After more than five years of trying, the recording industry has not yet demonstrated a workable DRM scheme for music CDs. Gartner believes that it will never achieve this goal as long as CDs must be playable by stand-alone CD players. The industry may now refocus its attention on seeking legislation requiring the PC industry to include DRM technology in its products. Gartner believes the industry would be better-served by efforts to develop solutions that use DRM as an accounting/tracking tool, rather than as a lock."
That's the Aflac duck!!
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