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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.
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
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.