Extended Copy Protection

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XCP redirects here. For other uses, see XCP (disambiguation).
XCP-Aurora
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XCP-Aurora

Extended Copy Protection (XCP) is a software package developed by the British company First 4 Internet and sold as a copy protection or digital rights management (DRM) scheme for compact discs. It was used on some CDs distributed by Sony BMG and sparked the 2005 Sony BMG CD copy protection scandal; in that context it is also known as the Sony rootkit.

Security researchers beginning with Mark Russinovich in October 2005 have described the program as functionally identical to a rootkit: a software program used by computer hackers to conceal unauthorised activities on a computer system. Russinovich broke the story on his Sysinternals blog, where it gained attention from the media and other researchers. The publicity, which grew to include a civil lawsuit and criminal investigations, soon forced Sony to discontinue use of the copy protection system.

While Sony eventually recalled the CDs that contained the XCP system, the web-based uninstaller was investigated by noted security researchers Ed Felten and J. Alex Halderman, who discovered that the ActiveX component used for removing the software exposed users to far more significant security risks, including arbitrary code execution from any site on the internet.

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[edit] Description

The version of this software used in Sony CDs is the one marketed as "XCP-Aurora". The first time a user attempts to play such a CD on a Windows system, a program will be installed after a dialog box prompts the user to agree to a license agreement. It will then remain resident in the user's system, intercepting all accesses of the CD drive to prevent any media player or ripper software other than the one included with XCP-Aurora from accessing the music tracks of the Sony CD. No obvious way to uninstall the program is provided. Attempting to remove the software by deleting the associated files manually will render the CD drive inoperable due to registry settings that the program has altered.

The included player software will play the songs and allow only a limited degree of other actions such as burning the music onto a certain number of other CDs or loading it onto certain supported devices such as a few portable music players. The popular iPod, sold by Sony competitor Apple Computer, is not supported.

XCP conceals itself from the user by installing a patch to the Windows operating system. This patch stops ordinary system tools from displaying processes, registry entries, or files whose names begin with $sys$. Other XCP components include "Plug and Play Device Manager", which continuously monitors all other programs being run on the computer.

[edit] Security research

In the period that XCP has been publicly known, security researchers have been quick to analyze it and publish their findings. Many of these findings have been highly critical of Sony and First 4 Internet. Specifically, the software has been found to conceal its activity in the manner of a rootkit (a common computer criminal's toolkit for hiding evidence); and moreover has been found to expose users to follow-on harm from viruses and trojans.

XCP's cloaking technique, which makes all processes with names starting with $sys$ invisible, can be used by other malware "piggybacking" on it to ensure that it, too, is hidden from the user's view. The first malicious trojan to use this technique was discovered on November 10, 2005 according to a report by the BitDefender antivirus company.

Follow-up research by Edward Felten and J. Alex Halderman has shown that the Web-based uninstaller Sony later offered for the software contains its own critical security problems. [1] The software installs an ActiveX component which allows any Web site to run software on the user's computer without restriction. This component is used by First 4 Internet's Web site to download and run the uninstaller, but it remains active afterward -- allowing any Web site the user visits to take over the computer.

Since it is specific to Microsoft Windows, XCP has no effect on all other operating systems such as Linux, BSD, Solaris, SkyOS or Mac OS X, meaning that users of those systems do not suffer the potential harm of this software, and they also are not impeded from "ripping" (or copying) the normal music tracks on the CD. (Some discs involved in the Sony scandal contained a competing technology, MediaMax from SunnComm, which attempts to install a kernel extension on Mac OS X. However, due to the permissions of Mac OS X, there were no widespread infections among Mac users.)

[edit] Antivirus industry response

Shortly after independent researchers broke the story, security software vendors followed up, releasing detailed descriptions of the components of XCP — as well as software to remove the $sys$* cloaking component of it. On the other hand, no software has yet been released to remove the CD-ROM filter driver component. Computer Associates, makers of the PestPatrol anti-spyware software, characterize the XCP software as both a trojan horse and a root kit[2]:

XCP.Sony.Rootkit installs a DRM executable as a Windows service, but misleadingly names this service "Plug and Play Device Manager", employing a technique commonly used by malware authors to fool everyday users into believing this is a part of Windows. Approximately every 1.5 seconds this service queries the primary executables associated with all processes running on the machine, resulting in nearly continuous read attempts on the hard drive. This has been shown to shorten the drive's lifespan.

Furthermore, XCP.Sony.Rootkit installs a device driver, specifically a CD-ROM filter driver, which intercepts calls to the CD-ROM drive. If any process other than the included Music Player (player.exe) attempts to read the audio section of the CD, the filter driver inserts seemingly random noise into the returned data making the music unlistenable.

XCP.Sony.Rootkit loads a system filter driver which intercepts all calls for process, directory or registry listings, even those unrelated to the Sony BMG application. This rootkit driver modifies what information is visible to the operating system in order to cloak the Sony BMG software. This is commonly referred to as rootkit technology. Furthermore, the rootkit does not only affect XCP.Sony.Rootkit's files. This rootkit hides every file, process, or registry key beginning with $sys$. This represents a vulnerability, which has already been exploited to hide World of Warcraft RING0 hacks as of the time of this writing, and could potentially hide an attacker's files and processes once access to an infected system had been gained.

Computer Associates anti-spyware product PestPatrol will now detect and remove the Sony software.[3] The Microsoft Anti-Malware Engineering Team has announced that the next version of Windows Defender will identify the Sony XCP product's cloaking component as malware and remove it.

The somewhat slow and incomplete response of some antivirus companies has, however, been questioned by Bruce Schneier "information security expert" at Counterpane and author of security bible Secrets and Lies. In an article for Wired News, Mr Schneier asks, "What happens when the creators of malware collude with the very companies we hire to protect us from that malware?" His answer is to use Linux and know what you are doing. [4]

[edit] Impact of XCP

Beginning as early as August 2005, Windows users reported crashes related to a program called aries.sys, while inexplicably being unable to find the file on their computers. [5] Said file is now known to be part of XCP. Call for Help host Leo Laporte said that he had experienced a rise in reports of "missing" CD-ROM drives, a symptom of unsuccessful attempts to remove XCP. [6]

Security researcher Dan Kaminsky used DNS cache analysis to determine that 568,000 networks worldwide may contain at least one XCP-infected computer. Kaminsky's technique uses the fact that DNS nameservers cache recently-fetched results, and that XCP "phones home" to a specific hostname. By finding DNS servers that carry that hostname in cache, Kaminsky was able to approximate the number of networks affected. [7] After the release of the data, Kaminsky learned that an as-yet undetermined number of "Enhanced CD's" without the rootkit also phone home to the same address that rootkit-affected discs use, so infection rates are still under active investigation.

[edit] XCP flaw

According to analyst firm Gartner, XCP suffers from the same flaw in implementing DRM as any DRM technology current or future that tries to apply DRM to audio CDs designed to be played on stand-alone CD players. According to Gartner, because the installation of XCP or any DRM software relies on the CD being multi-session, the application of a piece of opaque tape to the outer edge of the disk renders the data track of the CD unreadable, causing the PC to treat the disc as an ordinary single-session music CD.

[edit] Legal concerns

There is much speculation to what extent the actions taken by this software are a violation of various laws against unauthorized tampering with computers, or laws regarding invasion of privacy by "spyware", and how they subject Sony and First 4 Internet to legal liability. The States of California, New York, and Texas, as well as Italy, have already taken legal action against both companies and more class action lawsuits are likely. However, the mere act of attempting to view or remove this software in order to determine or prevent its alteration of Windows would hypothetically constitute a civil or criminal offense under certain anti-circumvention legislation such as the controversial Digital Millennium Copyright Act in the USA.


EFF's Fred von Lohmann also heavily criticised[8] the XCD EULA, is shown for acceptance before the software installation, naming it the legalese rootkit.

[edit] GPL and LGPL violations

Researcher Sebastian Porst[9], Matti Nikki[10] and a number of software experts have published evidence that the XCP software infringes on the copyright of the LAME mp3 encoder, mpglib[11], FAAC[12] id3lib[13] (ID3 tag reading and writing), mpg123 and the VLC media player[14].

Princeton researcher Alex Halderman discovered[15] that on nearly every XCP CD, code which uses a modified version from Jon Johansen's DRMS software which allows to open Apple Computer's FairPlay DRM is included. He found the code to be inactive, but fully functional as he could use it to insert songs into Fairplay. DRMS and mpg123 are licensed under the GNU General Public License (GPL). The other software found, like LAME is licensed under the Lesser General Public License (LGPL), also as free software. If the claims are correct, then Sony/BMG was distributing copyrighted material in violation of the author's rights.

Jon Johansen wrote in his blog[16] that after talking with a lawyer, he thinks that he cannot sue. However, there are opinions that the legal advice that he has got is wrong[17]. The LAME developers have put an open letter[18] to Sony/BMG online.

Copyright violations which Sony could be accused[19] of include:

  • No "prominent notices" for including of GPL and LGPL software.
  • Statically linking GPL code into the program but not providing the source code of the whole program under GPL.
  • Statically linking LGPL code but not providing the source of the LGPL parts and the binary code of the non-LGPL parts to allow relinking with updated LGPL code.
  • Placing restrictions on the use of the code outside of what GPL/LGPL allow, e.g. not “licensing at no charge to all third parties” under the LGPL and GPL.

Sony already provides[20] a version of id3lib's source code on its web site, but unrelated to XCP. Assuming the above is right, if Sony refuses to provide the program source code under the GPL and LGPL, anybody who received such CD and therefore has the right to get the full source under GPL should be able to bring legal action and demand that they do so.

[edit] Sony's response

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On a National Public Radio program, Thomas Hesse, President of Sony BMG's global digital business division asked "Most people, I think, don't even know what a rootkit is, so why should they care about it?"[21] He explained that "The software is designed to protect our CDs from unauthorized copying and ripping."

Sony also contends that the "component is not malicious and does not compromise security," but "to alleviate any concerns that users may have about the program posing potential security vulnerabilities, this update has been released to enable users to remove [the root kit] component from their computers."

A patch [22] to remove the cloaking of the software has been released; this patch does not completely remove XCP, but disables its technique of hiding itself from view.

First 4 Internet reports that any upcoming versions of XCP will not use the same techniques.

An uninstaller for XCP-Aurora is now available from the Sony-BMG web site [23]. An analysis of this uninstaller has been published by Mark Russinovich — who initially uncovered XCP — entitled "More on Sony: Dangerous Decloaking Patch, EULAs and Phoning Home" [24]. Obtaining the uninstaller requires one to use a specific browser (Microsoft Internet Explorer) and to fill out an online form with their email address, receive an email, install the patch, fill out a second online form, and then they will receive a link to the uninstaller. The link is personalized, and will not work for multiple uninstalls. Furthermore, Sony's Privacy Policy[25] states that this address can be used for promotions, or given to affiliates or "reputable third-parties who may contact you directly".

It has also been reported that the uninstaller might have security problems which would allow remote code execution[26]. Sony's uninstall page will attempt to install an ActiveX control when it is displayed in Internet Explorer. This ActiveX control is marked "Safe for scripting," which means that any web page can utilize the control and its methods. Some of the methods provided by this control are dangerous, as they may allow an attacker to download and execute arbitrary code.

As of November 11, 2005, Sony has announced they will suspend manufacturing CDs using the XCP system:

"As a precautionary measure, Sony BMG is temporarily suspending the manufacture of CDs containing XCP technology," it said in a statement.

"We also intend to re-examine all aspects of our content protection initiative to be sure that it continues to meet our goals of security and ease of consumer use," Sony BMG added.

This followed comments by Stewart Baker, the Department of Homeland Security's assistant secretary for policy, in which he took DRM manufacturers to task, as reported in the Washington Post:

In a remark clearly aimed directly at Sony and other labels, Stewart continued: "It's very important to remember that it's your intellectual property — it's not your computer. And in the pursuit of protection of intellectual property, it's important not to defeat or undermine the security measures that people need to adopt in these days.

According to the New York Times[27], Sony BMG said "about 4.7 million CDs containing the software had been shipped, and about 2.1 million had been sold." 52 albums were distributed by Sony-BMG that contained XCP.[28]

On November 14, 2005, Sony announced it is recalling the affected CDs and plans to offer exchanges to consumers who purchased the discs. [29]

Exchange your XCP CDs free of charge

SonyBMG is providing a free UPS service[30] for consumers who have XCP titles to return the CDs to SonyBMG in exchange for a new CD that is DRM-free and does not contain XCP.

[edit] Albums with XCP

Full article: List of compact discs sold with XCP
See also: http://cp.sonybmg.com/xcp/english/titles.html

The Electronic Frontier Foundation published its original list of 19 titles on November 9, 2005[31]. On November 15, 2005 The Register published an article saying there may be as many as 47 titles. Sony BMG says there are 52 XCP CDs.[32]

Amazon says it's treating the XCP CDs as defective merchandise and will offer a refund with shipping, as long as the customer specifies the request. [33]

[edit] See also

[edit] References

[edit] External links

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