U.S. District Judge Marilyn Hall Patel has issued a permanent injunction that bars RealNetworks from selling RealDVD, the DVD-copying software that Hollywood claimed in a lawsuit violated copyright law.

Say goodbye to Facet, the RealDVD player that would have copied DVDs and stored about 70 digital copies. Under Real’s new agreement with the studios, Facet is dead.
(Credit: Greg Sandoval/CNET)

Real and the Motion Picture Association of America reached a settlement, according to statements issued by both companies, that called for Real to stop selling RealDVD or any similar products and to pay $4.5 million to reimburse the studios for legal fees.

“We are gratified by the successful conclusion of this important matter,” said Daniel Mandil, the MPAA’s general counsel. “Judge Patel’s rulings and this settlement affirm what we have said from the very start of this litigation: it is illegal to bypass the copyright protections built into DVDs designed to protect movies against theft.”

It appears that Real, the maker of the RealPlayer and other media software, has suffered total defeat in the court battle with the MPAA, the trade group representing the six largest Hollywood film studios, which began in 2008.

The MPAA filed suit to stop the sale of RealDVD, a software that hands users the ability to copy and store films to a hard drive.

From the outset of Real’s struggle, the company appeared to be on shaky ground. Real argued that consumers possessed the right to backup their DVDs, just as they have a right to make a copy of their songs for personal use. Real told the court the company was just trying to offer consumers the means to do that and that they had a fair use right to do that.

“The message this sends is if you get into the business of enabling consumers to do with DVDs what they’ve long done with CDs, you’ll get sued out of the business.”
–Fred von Lohmann, EFF attorney

But after hearing initial arguments from Real and the studios, Patel quickly slapped a preliminary injunction that prevented sales of RealDVD. Things went down hill from there.

Fred von Lohmann, senior staff attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a group that advocates for tech companies and Internet users, defended Real’s pursuit of the case. He said Real could have provided real benefit to consumers, if not with RealDVD, then eventually with a DVD player that would have incorporated some of the software’s copying abilities. Real was working on a player, codenamed Facet, which would have created copies of DVDs and stored more than 70 films on its hard drive.

“(Real’s testimony) made it clear that Real was out to deliver to consumers a product that people wanted to see,” von Lohmann said. “I think the message this sends is if you get into the business of enabling consumers to do with DVDs what they’ve long done with CDs, you’ll get sued out of the business. I think that’s bad news for consumers. What that means is that if you want to create a digital back-up of your movies, you have to pay for that a second time on iTunes.”

Judging from statements made by Real previously, pursuing the case will end up costing it well over $10 million. This is part of Rob Glaser’s legacy.

Glaser founded the company and oversaw operations as CEO for a decade before being eased out by Real’s board last year. He remains at the company as chairman.

He led Real to a huge court victory against Microsoft after accusing the company of illegally using its Windows monopoly to hurt digital media rivals. Since then, critics have accused Glaser of being too focused on trying to litigate Real into becoming a successful company.

While interest in streaming media skyrocketed, an area that Real should have dominated, the company under Glaser’s leadership sat on the sidelines.

Security firm says the attacks may not have been nearly as sophisticated as some thought

Computerworld -  Contrary to popular assumptions, the recent cyberattacks against Google and more than 30 other high-tech companies were carried out by relatively unsophisticated attackers using outdated botnet tools, according to Damballa Inc., an Atlanta-based security firm.

The company, which offers a range of botnet protection services, released a report Tuesday based on what it said was a detailed analysis of the data surrounding the attacks, the malware that was used and the command-and-control topologies used by the perpetrators.

It reveals that the threat can “best be classified as just another common botnet attack and one that is more amateur than average,” the Damballa report noted. “The attack is most notable not for its advanced use of an Internet Explorer 6 Zero-Day exploit, but rather for its unsophisticated design and a pedigree that points to a fast-learning but nevertheless amateur criminal botnet team,” the report said.

Google in December disclosed that it had been the victim of a targeted cyberattack designed to steal intellectual property, e-mail and other data from the company. It said the attacks appeared to originate from China and also affected many other high-tech companies.

In an e-mailed comment, a Google spokesman said that Damballa does not have any firsthand knowledge of Google’s investigation of the attacks. “Beyond that, we are not going to comment on our ongoing investigation. We stand behind our original statement,” he said.

The attacks, dubbed Operation Aurora after the botnet that was used to launch them, were described by Google and many in the industry as being particularly sophisticated and state-sponsored. Some called it a classic example of a new category of Advanced Persistent Threats (APT) facing many commercial enterprises.

According to Damballa, however, the actual attack data suggests otherwise. The Dynamic DNS (DDNS) command-and-control system that was used to control the Aurora botnet for instance, is “old school” and is rarely used today by professional criminal botnet operators. The reliance on a DDNS command-and-control infrastructure suggests that those behind the Google attacks were “new and amateur botnet operators,” Damballa said.

The malware tool most commonly associated with the Aurora botnet is also a relatively unsophisticated Trojan Horse program called Trojan.Hydraq, said Gunter Ollmann, vice president of research at Damballa. In addition to Hydraq, the attackers also employed a variety of other malware tools on the Aurora botnet, many of which were unsophisticated and based on old obfuscation and evasion techniques, Ollmann said.

Compared to malware tools such as Conficker, the malware that was used in the Google attacks was “orders of magnitude” less potent, he said.

What the data shows is that the Google attacks were most likely carried out by relatively inexperienced attackers who were experimenting with different attack tools and techniques, Olmmann said. The fact that they were relying on DDNS itself is a major giveaway, he said. Botnets that use DDNS services are relatively easily for law enforcement authorities to shut down, which is why most professional botnet operators don’t use them anymore.

“At the end of the day, what is pretty important to understand is, if this type of an unsophisticated attack was successful against these types of organizations, professional botnet operators have a much better chance of breaking in,” he said.

The data also suggests that the attacks may not have been as targeted as Google and others might have assumed them to be, according to Damballa. The Aurora attacks appear to have first originated in July 2009 from mainland China. According to Damballa, a university in China and a Chinese collocation facility were critical “early incubators” of the infection.

By the time Google first discovered it had been attacked, computers in at least seven other countries had been similarly affected by the same botnet. And by Jan. 12, when Google publicly disclosed the attacks, computers in as many as 22 other countries had also been compromised.

One security researcher at the RSA Security Conference said that the sophisticated part of the attack was not really the botnet itself or the malware — it was the social engineering used to target victims and the way criminals traversed a victim’s networks.

Alex Stamos, a partner with Isec Partners Inc., said that the cybercriminals escalated privileges on the Windows network, accessed Active Directory servers and cracked database passwords — then using that information to steal data. Because all antivirus companies are now detecting the Aurora code, “the malware is gone,” Stamos said. “These guys are never going to use that malware again.”

By Jaikumar Vijayan

Analysis: But Google playing politics in the network neutrality debate is clear to many

Computerworld – Nothing is simple when Google is involved, as the company’s “Think Big With a Gig” experimental fiber-optic network announcement today once again makes evident.

Google Inc.‘s plan to provide fiber-to-the-home connections at 1Gbit/sec. speeds — that’s 100 times what most American broadband users now get — will have consumers salivating, but some experts say it’s unlikely that Google will ever become a network carrier that regularly installs and maintains fiber connections.

Instead, the announcement appears to be Google’s way of prodding federal regulators and broadband service providers like AT&T, Verizon and cable companies to do more to expand their broadband push.

The goal Google ultimately has in mind, some believe, is to make sure that networks with fat pipes are available soon, so consumers and businesses can use more bandwidth-intensive Google applications.

Mike Jude, an analyst at Stratecast, a division of research firm Frost & Sullivan, said Google’s announcement seems “more like a ploy” directed at pushing for network neutrality in data networks, so those networks will be regulated in ways that will enable Google, end users and other application companies to openly use the networks owned and operated by traditional carriers.

Julius Genachowski, the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, today welcomed Google’s broadband test announcement and said in a statement that the FCC’s own National Broadband Plan “will build upon such private-sector initiative.”

But Jude and others said there was reason to be suspicious about Google’s announcement. “Google’s ulterior motives are to use the broadband network, not necessarily build the network,” Jude said in an interview. “Google’s in the business of building big data centers, not networks. They have no experience building networks, honestly.”

“It’s a clever attempt, since Google is very interested in broadband,” he added. If Google is serious about offering 1Gbit/sec. networks, the immediate impact would be to get cable providers to beef up data rates, he said.

Phillip Redman, an analyst at Gartner Inc., interpreted Google’s announcement mainly as a means of furthering its long push for network neutrality.

“The whole Net neutrality battle scares Google,” Redman said. “They could come out as big losers. This announcement puts Google in competition with carriers… and is a cannon shot over the U.S. telecom providers that screams, ‘If I can’t join you, I’m going to try and best you at your game.’”

Added Jack Gold, principal analyst at J.Gold Associates: “I don’t think Google really wants to be a carrier and build out fiber everywhere.” Noting that Google could piggyback on plentiful dark, or unused, fiber in the ground, he said, “I think Google is trying to pressure the cable companies to get better at providing high-speed networks, which many of them are not doing all that well.”

Jude said that Google’s announcement, while “fairly vague,” could benefit the company in one very practical way, since it urged towns and other local governments to come forward if they are interested in being part of a Google fiber-optic network test. Presumably, the municipalities that agreed to participate would offer rights of way for digging trenches where fiber would be laid.

“Asking communities to step up and indicate their interest is actually good politics, since finding a community willing to do that is difficult,” Jude said. “How many people want their back yards trenched up to put in fiber optics?”

The fiber test, even if it never results in Google’s hiring a contractor to install a productive fiber network, could also help Google find out what communities and individuals are willing to pay to get 1Gbit/sec. connectivity to their homes.

“They are gauging user interest,” Jude explained. Pointing out that the announcement discussed 1Gbit/sec. services, he said “those would be premium services for the well-heeled who are willing to pay for it.”

At speeds of 1Gbit/sec., Google said, a user could download a movie in five minutes, and, indeed, a fiber-optic connection to every home “means that the sky is the limit for any rational application,” Jude said.

With so much bandwidth capacity, fiber-optic cable is used in big corporate backbones to support cloud computing infrastructures and other demanding systems.

Google’s fiber-optic network test is a clear reminder of the amount of influence the Internet search giant wields in the communications and technology market. “Google’s backing the Android OS was similar to this fiber announcement,” Jude said. “Taking Android first to T-Mobile [with the G1 smartphone] brought a huge amount of pressure on wireless carriers to open up their networks,” he said.

Likewise, no one is underestimating the impact Google will have with a fiber-optic test project, even if doesn’t eventually lead to Google becoming a true network carrier. The company’s name is already synonymous with search, and it today owns a 64% share of the search market.

But with the recent unveilings of the Google-branded Nexus One smartphone, its Chrome OS operating system, the Chrome browser and its Wave social collaboration tools, the company has moved pretty far afield from its search origins.

Computerworld‘s Sharon Gaudin contributed to this report.