As I suspected: The scope of the problem that Sony BMG has created with its retarded DRM solution is truly enormous! According to a Wired News article, there are likely to be “[more] than half a million networks, including military and government sites, were likely infected by copy restriction software distributed by Sony on a handful of its CDs, according to a statistical analysis of domain servers conducted by a well-respected security researcher and confirmed by independent experts on Tuesday.”
Note that that is more than half a million networks! Assuming an average of, say, five compromised PCs per network that’s 2.5 million PCs! But it gets worse: Let’s say there’s an average of 20 PCs per network that means that any malware that can exploit the security holes in the DRM system will effectively have an target popualtion of 50 million PCs for whatever exploits they choose to use. So, waht if 10% of those PCs are not adequately protected? There will be 5 million compromised PCs. And if it costs $200 to fix a compromised PC that’s a total cost of something like $1 billion!
If all 500,000 networks sue for losses in excess of $5,000 then further assuming that the compensation and fines and legal costs to Sony are, say, $100,000 per network then Sony could be looking at bill of around $500 billion dollars!
Should Sony executives go to jail over this? You bet!
