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Intel Goes for Display Encryption
StormChaser wrote to us about a new form of encryption that Intel wants to put between the system and digital display. They are calling it High-bandwidth Digital Copy Protection, and it would encrypt each pixel as it moved from the main box to a digital display - interesting stuff.
My question is why do this at all? What's the point? Make people by all new monitors? Prevent people from tapping your video cable?
I, for one, have this neat little switch, which allows me to have 1 monitor on 3 computers. Will this new encryption thing prevent this in the future?
I guess they mightbe worried about people hooking their VCRs up to video stream and recording their DVDs, or something. It doesn't seem like it's worth trying to break something that already works. (can you imagine all the tech support problems something like this will generate?)
Can anyone think of a useful application of this sort of thing?
"Save the whales, feed the hungry, free the mallocs" -- author unknown
Gee, I know plenty of windows users who know what the "Print Screen" button does.
Yay. Yet another move to remove all consumer rights. You know, here in .au, we little people still have rights. Or at least thats what we're told.
I find it disgusting that corporations will arbitrarily coorperate with each other to put the collective consumer over a barrel. Pathetic.
Meantime, What is the supposed justification for encrypting signals i am sending to my monitor? Am i not supposed to be able to access them? Oh, whait, intel wants to be able to control who makes displays, who does not. Who makes video cards, who does not. Perhaps it might be against those in power (obviously the MPAA and RIAA in .us) ?
Doesnt that scare anyone? that they can arbitrarily shut down _my_ hardware because some norweigian pissed off a multibillion-dollar-american-corporation ? Scares me. Lots.
My 2.2c (inc GST). No Refunds.
I wonder if the motivation behind this was for the Government market. The military has been looking for a better Tempest style system for a couple of years now. The effort to design and implement this only for HDTV and Flat panels doesn't seem to have a big enough payoff, does it? I don't see the value in the commercial market, especially when the vendors will have to port the standards to accept HDCP.
More race stuff in one place,
than any one place on the net.
is at the very last moment before the information is presented to the user. This minimizes the number of places where the unencrypted data may be intercepted.
Please note that I am treating it from a purely technical aspect. I will not get into whether content copy protection should or shouldn't be implemented.
Two issues, though:
1. Why just 56 bits? the new export regulations specifically exempt encryption used for copy protection from such limitations.
2. How will this interact with compression?
Decryption is, by definition, not linear i.e. decrypt(decompress(x)) != decompress(decrypt(x)).
Here they are talking about decrypting the high bandwidth raw video data
----
Stop worrying about the risks of nuclear power and start worrying about the risks of not using nuclear power.
There's only one use for this, and that's to satisfy the RIAA/MPAA types that it is sufficiently difficult for Joe Bitshift to intercept copy-protected movies and other images and save them as an unencrypted file. There is also a desire to move toward similar encryption to audio output devices as well.
.IFO files from a DVD) that this will in the long run not be feasible.
Remember how one of the arguments in the DeCSS case is that with players which dump the data into the video card frame buffer, you can simply re-digitize the picture to create your own MPEG-1 files? Well, that's what this is all about.
It has nothing to do with "Van Eck" or "Tempest" radiation, because those read the image off of the CRT tube's electron beam.
Will drivers for this crap be avaliable for Linux, which requires GPL kernel drivers due to its design? It's possible. An important reason why CSS was cracked is that software implementations of DVD players existed, making it much easier to determine the encryption algorithm. A proper hardware implementation can keep the "secrets" out of the drivers themselves.
I do see one problem with maintaining sufficient security with this scheme, though. If you get data from an outside source (the internet, a DVD, etc.) which has to be processed before being displayed, all processing steps have to be kept in hardware where only encrypted intermediate data is available to the main CPU. I think this will be sufficiently difficult to maintain (after all, someone has to process those
Or at least let's hope so.
#naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
That's what it is - Jeff Bezos is probably in this up to his neck.
:)
Think about it. Encrypted video will put the same sort of strangle-hold on computer displays that the MPAA is trying to get via DVD encryption. Can you imagine buying your whole PC in a 'region' that will only work with monitors bought there? It goes without saying that you'll need to buy all new hardware. Sort of like the Microsoft upgrade cycle, as applied to video boards and monitors.
Then of cource, to protect their collective IP, the software will come with 'regional' keys. So you can only buy compatible software here, not there - and at a premium, since the big, bad hackers can't read your encrypted monitor from 2 miles away after they hack into the international Echelon system that doesn't exist.
So what's Bezos got to gain? Well, after people figure out how duped they've been, they'll buy little software, few monitors, and lots of books!
I'll just have to wait for the encryption-enabled keyboards and mice, so nobody can tap my input either. Then I'll learn to speak Navaho.
-- What you do today will cost you a day of your life.
Now imagine if the decryption is in the hardware - you would need to physicaly connect to the sound card just after the decrypt is performed. This is out of script kiddy league
That is the purpose of this - copyright protection to the screen (Audio can't be far away !!)- the only way to record it is using the camcorder or hacking the hardware !!
Hmmmm.... Picture genetic implants at birth in your eyes and ears !! As you grow older you get new keys to what you can see - only when you are of legal drinking age can you see Beer ads or Bar signs on the street. Can't jump the fence at Disney - my eyes don't have a key to decrypt what I see. Man gotta stop smokin that stuff... hahah
Have you read the article? It clearly states "The High-bandwidth Digital Copy Protection (HDCP) approach encrypts each pixel as it moves from a personal computer or set-top box to digital displays" Displays such as digital flat panels don't convert to a recordable analog signal.
I would strongly object to anything that prevents me from recording the output from my computer. I fail to see why the link between a video card and a digital display needs to be encrypted.
HH
Yellow tigers crouched in jungles in her dark eyes.
She's just dressing, goodbye windows, tired starlings.
I've been trying to keep my /. posting addiction under control, but I have to reply here -
:-)
Why are you in favor of this encryption "as long as the quality isn't affected"? Normally, engineers create products on silicon that solve problems - you buy these products because you have one of these problems and are looking to solve it. Okay, maybe Quake 3 doesn't qualify as a "problem" per se, but I think this is still a pretty valid generalization.
Now, an engineering team and large company add cost to your components to implement on-the-fly encryption of your video signal. Does this help solve the problems you originally bought your machine for? No. Are you paying more money for a limitation on what *you* can do with *your* hardware that *you* paid for? You bet. Not only a limitation on your rights, but other companies rights. Suddenly, there could be a DVD-like licensing fee to design and sell a monitor. Want to hack around on your monitor/video adapter in the privacy of your own home? You're probably SOL. It'd be great if the standard would be open, but from what I've seen out of Intel, I don't see that happening. Please correct me if I'm wrong - I'll be happy.
43rd Law of Computing: Anything that can go wr
The main use of this kind of technology would be copy protection. Let's say that the DVD encryption standard is improved to the point that it is unbreakable (hah!), and the only way to watch DVD's is with a legitimately licensed DVD decoder.
In order for you to watch this DVD, at some point the bits have to be decrypted and put onto the screen in front of you. MPAA and co. are scared that if you're clever enough pirate, you'd find a way to grab those bits between the decrypt and the display.
This is a pretty reasonable concern if you're an agressive paranoid about copy protection. Assuming the bad guy has a good MP3 decoder, grabbing the bits off of a digital display output for an LCD monitor would give you an extremely high quality reproduction of a movie. With standardization of digital display outputs, there's a potential for someone to legally build and sell a "black box" device for this purpose.
Thus, the need to encrypt all the way to the LCD monitor. If the decrypt happens inside the monitor, it's much, much more difficult to grab the clean bits.
Because the holders of the display encryption technology copywrites would only license it to authorized monitor manufacturers, there'd be no legitimate, legal devices on the market which could bypass it. There's no "standard" interface through which the clear signal runs, so getting around the encryption would require reverse engineering of specific monitor designs, and you'd end up with something that only worked for a specific monitor model.
I wonder when we'll see standards for encryption of audio signals all the way out to the speakers...
For once, the US Gov't's own stupid laws can work for us. If they'd intelligently removed the arbitrary 56-bit limit, then we'd have a much tougher beast to deal with. However, consider this:
The keyspace is only 2^56 in size - the same size as RC5-56. Remember, that algorithm that distributed.net killed a year or so ago? Now, Moore's Law (and Tom'sHardwareGuide) say that our collective computing power has increased by a few hundred percent since the start of that contest.
So, let's launch a new contest, then, except this time we'll have:
In any case, it should only be a few months until we could have the decryption keyspace entirely mapped.
Now, is that sweet irony, or what? God bless our Congress!
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
Imagine that Sony wants to sell a movie on DVD. They want you to be able to watch the movie only on your monitor and not be able to copy it for a friend. They sell you a DVD/movie encrypted for your monitor only. When you play the DVD, your computer sends the encrypted data to your monitor which decrypts it, letting you watch the movie. If you copy the DVD and give it to a friend, it won't work on his monitor. Voila, copy protection.
Another application would be Pay Per View (PPV). Assume that you want to watch a movie on PPV. If PPV just sent you the movie over the internet, you could copy it and give it to all your friends. However, if PPV encrypts the movie so that only your monitor could decode it then you can still watch the movie, but if you give a copy to your friends, they can't watch it.
As in all copy protection schemes, there is a way to defeat the copy protection. For example, you could hack your monitor to extract the decryption key. However, hardware hacking is complicated and difficult. Sure a few people will have the time and effort to hack there monitors, but most people will just pay for the movie.
Without taking a position on the ethics/morals of copy protection, I think this is the best copy protection scheme anyone has yet proposed. Once companies start making these kinds of monitors/TVs content producers such as Sony, Paramount, etc. will start producing encrypted movies that can only be displayed by these monitors. If you buy a non-compliant monitor/TV then you can't watch the new movies. If you are anti-copy protection this is something to worry about.
Pretty much the only flaw I can see in this system is a few brave hackers can extract the decryption key from their own monitors. Then they can buy/rent DVDs or movies and anonymously post the decrypted content to the Internet. Then everyone can grab copies of the decrypted content to play on regular monitors.
Anyway, I've probably rambled long enough. However, I think this is an important or scary development in copy protection (depending on your point of view). Hopefully I've helped illuminate some of the important issues. By the way, for those people interested in copy protection of movies/DVD I wrote a brief summary about some of the important ideas about a year and a half ago. The paper is at http://www.csua.berkeley.edu/~emin/writings/warp.h tml.
-Emin Martinian
It seems to me that this spec will die for several reasons. Unless it encrypts all video data exported from the PC, weather it be Monitor, RCA Out, S-Video, etc, it is useles for copy protection. But if they DO begin this encrytion, it will HAVE to be backwards compatable with ALL current Monitors, RCA jacks, etc, or else the vendors won't support it. (Imagine Phillips suddely saying "Anyone who buys our new PH-9000 must also buy an Intel-encryption compatable video card." Yeah, that would go over well...
Don't sweat it, this whole spec won't work
DeCSS was the first salvo in what looks like a battle to the death between strict copyright enforcement and the open-source movement.
The reason there aren't (and will never officially be) any software DVD players on Linux is because the Linux kernel is open-source, and thus not guaranteed to be trusted. With Windows, an evil pirate cannot recompile the kernel to snoop on a process, defeat anti-debugging measures or redirect output to a file. With Linux, if a process has something you want to get out of it, you can always get it, at most by hacking a few extra features into the kernel. This is also why Liquid Audio and such do not and will not support Linux.
The copyright barons are pushing for end-to-end encryption. One end (DVD drives) is implemented. The other end (video/sound cards) is coming. Needless to say, open-source drivers would defeat the purpose, and the copyright barons would spend billions on fighting them. As for binary-only drivers, the GPL forbids them.
So it's shaping up into a fight to the death between Linux and copyright control mechanisms. If Linux becomes massively popular before these systems are implemented and popularised, they will not catch on. However, if the copyright barons can get them out the door soon, they will be a blunt instrument against Linux on the desktop. After all, the GPL itself will lock Linux out of being able to access new "copyright-enhanced" hardware. And you can be sure Microsoft will be more than happy to hammer the point home.
(New York, New York-AP) The World Wide Web ('Web') today returned to its roots as a text-only medium after Intel's new Display Encryption took effect. Millions of websites were unable to display screen shots of their new products, as well as Open Source projects attempting to garner support for their programs.
Surprisingly, there was minimal backlash. The first hot spot was from QoS bandwidth ISP providers who suddenly discovered that all high-price accounts were cancelled in favor of 56k modem access again. The other was from within the Billion dollar WWW Sex industry, many of whom were busy running their collections through jpg->ascii converters.
"This is tight, dude!" a 3 year veteran of AOL from Manhatten exclaimed. "Now all my websites load several times quicker!"
Not everyone is pleased, however.
Microsoft, new champion for the working people, has promised to add Encrypted Screen Shot decryption to their new version of Internet Explorer 2000. They're currently evaluating Open Source licenses for the add-on. Taking a page from Sun's License, the M$PL basically states that anyone on a Windows 2000 machine running Internet Explorer 2000 is able to use the code. They feel the code is safe as it is actually source code for the MS Back Orifice II program, but when run through a proprietary Windows 2000-only converter, will suddenly decrypt screen shots.
this is soooo cool!! becuase between my box and my monitor sit a whole quag of midget hackers. they've all spliced into my monitor cable, and capture all the unencrypted video signals. damn the little buggers!! they're too quick to catch, and too smart to trace.
At least its great that Intel is headed in the right direction. I mean, we all have this same problem, don't we??
Traditionally it has been like this:
:-P
DATA --> UNCOMPRESS --> DISPLAY
Now they want it like this:
DATA --> UNCOMPRESS --> DECRYPT --> DISPLAY
As any fool would tell you, this would mean the data has to be compressed from an *encrypted* video source. Compression works best if the content is regular as opposed to random, which is exactly what an encrypted source would give you. IOW, i doubt a full-length Matrix will fit on a DVD.
The best place, as been mentioned many times before in slashdot and advised by RSA would be to compress *and then* encrypt, which would be:
DATA --> DECRYPT --> UNCOMPRESS --> DISPLAY
My guess, in the final draft it would end up like this:
DATA --> DECRYPT --> UNCOMPRESS -->
---> ENCRYPT2 --> DECRYPT2 ---> DISPLAY
They'll never do that you say? Mark my words. These people already invested resources and demoed a unit encrypting uncompressed pixel-by-pixel. To throw away their work would make them look bad. It would take a lot out of them not push this technology even if it is costly on the technology end.
Then again, what do I know.
Hasdi
Yes. this has been widely demonstrated in academia and other experiments. Two good sources are The Complete, Unofficial TEMPEST Information Page by Joel McNamara, and Ross Anderson's Soft Tempest pages. The latter is particularly mindbending and everyone on /. should give it a read....
--
Xenu loves you!
There was no mention of this for personal computers, just for computers. Given the fiasco over readable numbers in the P3, this would be a fiasco for Intel. For personal uses, this is rather silly.
Now, a previous poster mentioned military uses. Military installations and overseas embassies, spy rings, etc., might have a need for this.
IIRC, you can read an image off a CRT from up to 2 miles away, right? I don't think that this applies for Digital systems like HDTVs and flat screens, right?
While home users aren't interested in security, our government might be. I don't know, is it possible to read the signal off a monitor cable? I would think so. From a distance, I don't know. However, for overseas operations, it is possible to tap the cable (in an embassy with a well placed spy).
Additionally, for classified documents, there might be a desire to prevent them from being copied. Imagine a locked system (no external network connection, no floppy, no modem, etc) with VERY classified stuff. If someone wants to copy these documents, say, and fly to another country with them, they currently could plug a recording device in and view them. This would prevent that.
While conceivably they could take photos, this would be easier to prevent and catch. Additionally, it probably isn't too difficult to develop a screen that really can't be caught on film. I'm sure there is a way to play with the signal to screw with that chemical process.
My guess is that this is NOT a was to make existing video cards and flat screens obsolete, my guess is that this is a system to win a juicy government contract. Even if the increased security is insignificant, it may win a government contract.
Alex
Wow, the idea of occular implants came to me too.
Closely followed by an image of Tipper Gore masturbating at the very thought of finally being able to protect the children of America from all the smut out there on the internet.
Imagine cochlear implants, keyed just so that they cut out briefly when they decode a 'naughty' word.
Imagine, keys that enable you to view porno only being available when you turn 18... For a fee.. A porno tax. And filing an application for the keys puts you into an FBI database of potential trench-coat mafia members.
Imagine that after a vegetarian gets elected to a higher office, (or better yet, appointed to the Purina board of directors) you are no longer allowed to enjoy the taste of bloody meat.
Where's a brilliant sci-fi writter when you need him to write another techno-dystopian novel? Hey Katz! Why don't you write something useful for a change?
-- What you do today will cost you a day of your life.
They want to encrypt it to prevent you from recording it.
The real purpose of the DMCA is to eliminate the fair use provisions of copyright law by technological means.
Fair use doctrine says that you can record a video broadcast, so you can watch it later, or skip the commercials.
The purpose of this technology is to ensure that there is no place in the video chain where the video signal is available in an unencrypted code, so there is no place where you can insert a VCR.
The DMCA will make it illegal to bypass the video encryption, so no one will be able to legally manufacture an HDTV video recorder without the permission of the encryption cartel, and you can be sure that all "authorized" recorders include content management codes, so that you can only record when the broadcaster turns on the record-enable bits.
- John
O hell, they are going for the full ticket in controlling information. There is no other purpose for that than this, 'cos TEMPEST is not going to be blocked by that. They want to control it, and they want it badly.
Ok, I'm going to say something trying to understand the other side of the coin:
Artist, and by extension, companies that distribute works of art, are used to have a certain amount of control over their work. There are many reasons for that, and most have nothing to do with a future edition of the gestapo.
For instance, the control over who is listening your music is important because you don't want it to get 'burnt out' too quickly. It is part of the job to see where you play, where you publish, when, and on what scale, what pricing it has, etc.
I'm saying that this is a traditional way of doing it and that there are lots of people more than used to do things this way. I'm NOT making a judgement about the circumstance.
A lot of the effect that a work of art produces in its audience would be lost if that control is gone. This one is not quite obvious unless you realize that a good portion of the art part of the business is about comunication, not about fullfilling your needs as a consumer. So even if you take away the money aspect out of the equation, there might be reasons to copy-protect a given material. YMMV, but I also think it is a legitimate decission to try to make money, even shiploads of it, out of your work of art.
So the reasons behind copy protection will not stop existing soon. I'm sure that we can expect the conflict to escalate further and further, and puting the open surce concept in complete oposition to copyright might result in something we don't want.
So please think a little bit.
It is a most unhelpful circumstance in this discusion that art and technical/scientifical knowledge end up in the same lot. They don't have the same function in society and thus should not be legislated in the same way.
Cheers,
rmstar.
This is just one of many ways that huge corporations which embrace closed standards can get rid of linux. We were all afraid that MS would mount (no pun) some sort of campaign to defeat linux.. perhaps even releasing their own version, but with decisions like this they won't have to.
If linux isn't compatible with ANY of the hardware on the market due to closed standards such as these, who will want to run it? How could it possibly survive?
It gets worse.
With Microsoft about to spend millions this year (like 150) on MSN advertising to crush AOL, and AOL already having 10's of millions of users AND the infrastructure for high speed connectivity to boot (cable companies, etc..), are the days of the smaller non-proprietary ISP's numbered? And if they die out will too linux? Sure, we might see an AOL port to linux, but MSN seems unlikely (and I don't want EITHER). So what good is the next killer desktop OS without THE killer app, THE NET?
And it seems to me there's little we can do about any of this.
Ignore Alien Orders
It's not just computers, either. It's for TV sets, too. The plan is for the interface between the cable TV box and the receiver to become IEEE-1394 with decryption in the monitor. Thought you could record digital TV? Not for much longer.
It's not just decryption, either. There's a watermarking and revocation feature, so that if unencrypted pirated content is played on a compliant monitor, something will happen that will make the viewer very unhappy. That's part of the backup system, so that even if you crack the encryption, you can't play the content on uncracked hardware. The watermarked data is a low-bandwidth, highly redundant signal hidden in the video, so it's really hard to remove. It might even survive copying with a camcorder.
It's not just content, either. There's the "handshaking", so approved boxes won't talk to unapproved boxes. So you can't have any "unapproved" boxes connected to your system, or maybe on your LAN. Ultimately, either you have a system that's 100% protected against copying, or you have a custom-built standalone cracked system that can play cracked content in a nonstandard way.
Bottom line: if this technology had been in place earlier, it would have prevented the creation of the cable TV, VCR, and video rental, industries. It may kill the Internet audio and independent set-top-box (Tivo, Replay, WebTV) industries. It may stop user-programmable computers from doing anything with commercial content. Especially ones running open-source systems.
I really doubt that preventing piracy is their only or even real goal here. First of all, since this scheme won't do a thing to prevent big copy-houses from pirating, it can't prevent the vast majority of piracy or kill off their illegitimate competition.
The real goal here seems to be the removal of fair use rights from consumers. The movie and music industry leaders must be some kind of evil geniuses. Since they can't have fair use rights completely removed through legislation, and they can't remove them through technology, they were able (with the DMCA) to combine the legal and technological approaches to effectively end fair use. This puts them in a position to make more money through various pricing schemes and pay-per-play style charges. If the customer cannot legally exert any control over the content that he has purchased, then he will be forced to pay more or go without.
Since this flat-out violates the original intent of copyright, it should be illegal. Unfortunately, the original intent is not much defense against the billions of dollars that the movie and music industries can throw at the government. They have effectively been granted monopoly rights to content for longer than any of us will likely be alive, and consumers will receive no benefit from them having this absolute control over the content, even after the sale. We've been sold out by our government. Plain and simple.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer