P2P-Zone - Sony's rootkit DRM is also spyware

Mark Russinovich, the SysInternals guy who revealed Sony's rootkit to the world, has kept digging deeper into Sony's DRM. Now he has been able to verify that Sony's DRM also has a call-home feature which secretly reports back to Sony every time a DRM-protected CD is played in a computer, allowing Sony to track precisely which CDs are being played in which IP numbers. In other words, the DRM software was not only designed to take root level control of the computer - it was also designed to serve as well-cloaked spyware.

From Mark's blog:

Quote:

EULAs and Disclosure: Sony’s Player Phones Home

There’s more to the story than rootkits, however, and that’s where I think Sony is missing the point. As I’ve pointed out in press interviews related to the post, the EULA does not disclose the software’s use of cloaking or the fact that it comes with no uninstall facility. An end user is not only installing software when they agree to the EULA, they are losing control of part of the computer, which has both reliability and security implications. There's no way to ensure that you have up-to-date security patches for software you don't know you have and there's no way to remove, update or even identify hidden software that's crashing your computer.

The EULA also makes no reference to any “phone home” behavior, and Sony executives are claiming that the software never contacts Sony and that no information is communicated that could track user behavior. However, a user asserted in a comment on the previous post that they monitored the Sony CD Player network interactions and that it establishes a connection with Sony’s site and sends the site an ID associated with the CD.

I decided to investigate so I downloaded a free network tracing tool, Ethereal, to a computer on which the player was installed and captured network traffic during the Player’s startup. A quick look through the trace log confirmed the users comment: the Player does send an ID to a Sony web site. This screenshot shows the command that the Player sends, which is a request to an address registered to Sony for information related to ID 668, which is presumably the CD's ID:

In response the Sony web site reports the last time a particular file was updated:

I dug a little deeper and it appears the Player is automatically checking to see if there are updates for the album art and lyrics for the album it’s displaying. This behavior would be welcome under most circumstances, but is not mentioned in the EULA, is refuted by Sony, and is not configurable in any way. I doubt Sony is doing anything with the data, but with this type of connection their servers could record each time a copy-protected CD is played and the IP address of the computer playing it.

The media has done a great job of publicizing this story, which has implications that extend beyond DRM to software EULAs and disclosure, and I hope that the awareness they’re creating will result in Congressional action. Both the software industry and consumers need laws that will clearly draw lines around acceptable behaviors.