Sony BMG’s Fair: Rootkit Reaches All States

By Michael Santo
Contributing Writer, RealTechNews

Dan Kaminsky, a security reseacher, released information about the number and location of PCs which have been affected by Sony DRM software at the ShmooCon hacker conference last weekend. He worked out numbers and locations of “victim” PCs (or rather networks that have victim PCs) by collating information on communication between the software and Sony.

Florida seems to have the highest number, with 12,588 networks detected that are hosting computers with the digital rights management software installed, according to his research. California and Massachusetts also exhibit high rates of infection, although the numbers are only an estimate, as each network could host any number of computers with the Sony software installed.

“Sony has a rootkit. The rootkit phones home. Phoning home requires a DNS query. DNS queries are cached. Caches are externally testable provided you have a list of all the name servers out there,” Kaminsky said in a November blog posting. Source: ZDNet

We Say: Sony is, it appears, an equal opportunity vulnerability provider. I would hope the owners of these PCs would take advantage of Sony’s settlement offer and eliminate the software from their PCs as well as receive their DRM-free CDs.