News 

The Department of Homeland Security's Border and Transportation Security Directorate warning followed the discovery last year that Sony BMG employed two different types of digital rights management (DRM) on music CDS sold in the US and both installed rootkit software on PCs that made them vulnerable.

'We need to think about how that situation could have been avoided in the first place,' said

ADVERTISEMENT

Jonathan Frenkel at the RSA computer security conference. 'Legislation or regulation may not be appropriate in all cases, but it may be warranted in some circumstances.'

Department of Homeland Security (DHS) officials met with Sony BMG after the security breach was discovered and delivered what Frenkel described as a 'forceful' message to the record company.

Although it has no power to implement new rules the DHS is said to have the ears of legislators.

Sony has begun compensating customers who inadvertently installed the rootkit by inserting the affected CDs into PCs. However the swathes of bad publicity that it received over the whole affair have not deterred others. F-Secure reports that German DVD of the Mr & Mrs Smith movie starring Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie contains the Settec Alpha-DISC system that installs a user-mode rootkit.