Fergie's Tech Blog

The Real Story of the Sony DRM Rootkit

Bruce Schneier brings up some interesting points in a Wired article published this morning:

What do you think of your antivirus company, the one that didn't notice Sony's rootkit as it infected half a million computers? And this isn't one of those lightning-fast internet worms; this one has been spreading since mid-2004. Because it spread through infected CDs, not through internet connections, they didn't notice? This is exactly the kind of thing we're paying those companies to detect -- especially because the rootkit was phoning home.

But much worse than not detecting it before Russinovich's discovery was the deafening silence that followed. When a new piece of malware is found, security companies fall over themselves to clean our computers and inoculate our networks. Not in this case.

McAfee didn't add detection code until Nov. 9, and as of Nov. 15 it doesn't remove the rootkit, only the cloaking device. The company admits on its web page that this is a lousy compromise. "McAfee detects, removes and prevents reinstallation of XCP." That's the cloaking code. "Please note that removal will not impair the copyright-protection mechanisms installed from the CD. There have been reports of system crashes possibly resulting from uninstalling XCP." Thanks for the warning.

Symantec's response to the rootkit has, to put it kindly, evolved. At first the company didn't consider XCP malware at all. It wasn't until Nov. 11 that Symantec posted a tool to remove the cloaking. As of Nov. 15, it is still wishy-washy about it, explaining that "this rootkit was designed to hide a legitimate application, but it can be used to hide other objects, including malicious software."

The only thing that makes this rootkit legitimate is that a multinational corporation put it on your computer, not a criminal organization.

You might expect Microsoft to be the first company to condemn this rootkit. After all, XCP corrupts Windows' internals in a pretty nasty way. It's the sort of behavior that could easily lead to system crashes -- crashes that customers would blame on Microsoft. But it wasn't until Nov. 13, when public pressure was just too great to ignore, that Microsoft announced it would update its security tools to detect and remove the cloaking portion of the rootkit.

Perhaps the only security company that deserves praise is F-Secure, the first and the loudest critic of Sony's actions. And Sysinternals, of course, which hosts Russinovich's blog and brought this to light.

posted by Fergie @ 11/17/2005 08:30:00 AM