RIAA Attacked: The SQL

The Recording Industry of America's (RIAA) Web site was attacked -- again -- over the weekend. According to numerous breaking news stories, it seems a lack of proper security controls enabled some to take parts of the site down, and tweak its pages. Get serious.It looks like a plain vanilla SQL injection vulnerability was publicized on the social news network site Reddit, and the attacking escalated from there.

The RIAA.org Web site appears fully functioning now, but that probably won't last too long if history is any indication. During the past five years the site has reportedly been defaced and has undergone several denial-of-service attacks. Things got really sticky a few years ago when Sen. Orin Hatch proposed to give the entertainment industry the right to attack systems used by illegal file swappers.

How about a search warrant?

Other than a laugh, these more recent hacks aren't going to push their argument against the RIAA, its lawsuits, or the demise of DRM any further.

Energy would be better placed by hounding Congress to improve the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) and boycotting the purchase of DRM-enabled music files and CDs. Speaking of DRMed music files, they're already starting their fade into oblivion.

Nearly every, if not every, major record label already is starting to release DRM-free files. In fact, defacing Web sites is about as petty as trying to sue your customer-base to save a dying business model.

Speaking of petty: Why won't the RIAA spring for the occasional server assessment?