a blog*on*nymity ID TRAIL MIX by Jeremy Clark

In one unintentional way, Sony’s decision to secure a series of audio CDs with a very nasty piece of digital rights management (DRM) last fall was a partial victory for anti-DRM activists. This misstep on Sony’s part effectively catapulted a niche topic of concern to international attention and into the collective consciousness of the informed public where it lingered for a week or two, and then slipped into the chambers of recent history. The mainstream coverage largely focused, and rightly so, on how Sony’s DRM compromised the security, anonymity, and control of those who unwittingly inserted one of these audio CDs into their Windows machine. The DRM installed as rootkit — a technique that allows software to run invisibly on a system. Worst still, the DRM did not merely install itself as a rootkit; it created an open mechanism to allow itself to run invisibly, and by extension any other piece of properly constructed software. In other words, it left an open security hole for malware to slip through and become invisible to the majority of anti-virus and anti-spyware utilities protecting our systems. Once installed, the DRM will phone home each time the CD is inserted, and no method for uninstalling the DRM was originally offered.

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