Slashdot Mirror
MS DRM Version 2 - Cracked
As the title says: Microsoft Digital Rights Management Version 2 has been cracked. The Register has the story, including a link to a downloadable zip file which contains source code, explanation and a small DOS utility. Grab it while you can. You can also read the explanation directly here, and you can also find it with Google.
in the immortal words of someone who's name escapes me:
"Information wants to be free."
There's a lot of bored but bright minds out there, and putting mountains up in their way just BEGS them to be climbed. As the old adage goes, Why do people climb mountains? well, there's actually 2 reasons, 1) because they're there.. 2) they're in the way of where you're trying to go..
*yawn* nice try MS, better luck next time eh?
What I don't get is why not use some proven technologies to get this done right? secure key-based encryption, rotating key servers, etc?
Its not like ANY protection scheme that I can think off hasn't been broken. So far, it looks like nothing will ever not be broken.
Corps: 0, Hackers:...shit, I lost count.
SealBeater
-- Its survival of the fittest...and we got the fucking guns!!!
You know, the antics of the music industry (and the kind of thing that MS is kowtowing to with their DRM scheme) really pisses me off, but also convinces me that there will eventually come something to replace them both.
:) (hacker used in "coder" definition) Keep up the good work and keep fighting the good fight.
But, know what? It's their property. If they want to fuck up their distribution channels, fuck em. I can do without "so-called" modern music anyway. I go see live bands locally, get lit, and have a great time and I didn't need to buy a fucking copy-protected by the DMCA CD or cassette or anything. These guys are out there trying to make a living, maybe you should check em out. And if you catch them after the show, you might can convince them that they should distribute their songs on CD's for cheap and ask them (ask them) about how they feel about MP3's and music-sharing in general. Of course, they might not agree with you (or myself), but they have that *right* to do so.
So, I encourage, nay I *challenge* each and every one of you who would boycott MS or the RIAA to pick up a local newspaper and see what's going on in y our town this weekend. Chances are, there's a band or two actually worth checking out, and hey, it's not like you're going to meet chicks sitting behind your monitor.
Oh, and on-topic: Rock on Beale! I'm encouraged to see that grassroots hactivism coming alive!
If you were me, you'd be good lookin'. - six string samurai
This is good news. Why? XP is just about to be shipped into retail stores. MSFT can't really do much about it now unless they release some Windows update - which is unlikely to catch 56k'ers attention much.
I'd rather have a bowl of coco-pops.
There are other countries other than the States, if you haven't noticed yet. Several of them, like Sweden, doesn't even make software algorithms patentable. So, if this was made outside the US, it might be perfectly legal.
War is one of the most horrible things a human can be exposed to. And one of the worlds largest industries.
MS digital rights management scheme cracked
.WMA audio files.
By Thomas C Greene in Washington
Posted: 19/10/2001 at 09:19 GMT
An anonymous coder named 'Beale Screamer' claims to have broken the Version-2 Microsoft digital rights management (DRM) scheme, and has produced the source code and a DOS utility to un-protect
The author's zipped file contains a lengthy description of the MS DRM weaknesses, a philosophical tract explaining why he thinks it necessary to crack, the source code, and the command-line utility.
The alias Beale Screamer, incidentally, derives from the lines of 'Howard Beale' in the movie 'Network', we're told. "Just yell to the publishers 'I'm mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore!'"
The motive here is said to be an assertion of fair use and a check against the abuse of copyright for purposes of consumer extortion.
A DRM scheme "used to give the consumer more possibilities than existed before," Screamer tells us. "I think the idea of limited time, full-length previews, or time-limited Internet-based rentals is excellent. If DRM was only used for this, in order to give us more options than we previously had, I would not have taken the effort to break the scheme. What is bad is the use of DRM to restrict the traditional form of music sale. When I buy a piece of music (not rent it, and not preview it), I expect (and demand!) my traditional fair use rights to the material. I should be able to take that content, copy it onto all my computers at home, my laptop, my portable MP3 player....basically anything I use to listen to the music that I have purchased."
Well said; a tremendous amount of thought and effort has obviously gone into all this, and we have to wonder who this crusader is. A university connection seems all but certain. We've got a few feelers out, and hope very much that he'll submit to an interview soon.
This from the "readme" that comes with the zip:
Not only can MS revoke the certs used, it looks like they can also screw your system if you use tricks like this....
WARNING!!!!! I have just learned that the new Microsoft Media Player EULA includes a clause that says they can *automatically* modify the software on your system, without any confirmation from you required! In other words, they can disable your software, or force an upgrade so that FreeMe won't work, just because they feel like it. Be careful out there!
And the people shall be oppressed, every one by another, and every one by his neighbour Isaiah 3:5
A Microsoft security hole?
Anonymous M$ exec1: We're hacked? Again?
M$ techie: No, we're not hacked. The MDRM v2 is hacked. We... (is interrupted)
Anonymous M$ exec2: We're hacked! Didn't the hacker read our last bulletin on that? It's wrong to post exploits we don't know about. It's almost against the law! Or rather, it should be!
Anonymous M$ exec1:Good idea. I'll give our lawyers a call! I'm sure its in the DCMA somewhere. Thats why we invented it, remember?
/Smuffe
... He's got a real pair of clangers for doing this and releasing it! I really hope he stays anonymous.
He's done a very thourough job of reverse-engineering too. Read his README file, very interesting... some quotes:
"One very important effect of this scheme is that Microsoft fully controls who gets to write modules that interact with the basic Microsoft media modules. Without a certified public key (and the corresponding private key) it is impossible to write a compatible DLL that interfaces with their code. Since Microsoft controls the issuing of certified public keys, they also have complete control over who is allowed to make compatible and competing products. Microsoft's reputation for being generous to competitors is well-known, so this effectively gives Microsoft a technically guaranteed monopoly power."
And his 'Messages' at the bottom:
"Microsoft: You guys have put together a pretty good piece of software. Really. The only real technical flaw is that licenses can't be examined for their restrictions once they are obtained. My real beef is with the media publishers' use of this software, not the technology itself. However, it's easy to see where software bloat and inefficiency comes from when this code is examined: every main DLL has a separate copy of the elliptic curve and other basic crypto routines, and parameters passed back and forth between modules are encrypted giving unnecessary overhead, not to mention all the checks of the code integrity, checks for a debugger running, code encryption and decryption. Perhaps you felt this was necessary for the "security through obscurity" aspect, but I've got to tell you that this really doesn't make a bit of difference. Make lean and mean code, because the obscurity doesn't work as well as you think it does.
Justice Department: Maybe this should really be addressed to the state officials, since it looks like the current U.S. administration doesn't care too much about monopoly powers being abused. But for whoever is interested, there is a very serious anti-competitive measure in this software. In particular, for various modules of the software to be used, you must supply a certified public key for communication. Guess who controls the certification of public keys? Microsoft. So if someone wants to make a competing product, which integrates well with the Windows OS, you will need to get Microsoft's permission and obtain a certificate from them. I don't know what their policy is on this, so don't know if this power will be abused or not. However, it has the potential for being a weapon Microsoft can use to knock out any competition to their products."
Well said.
It's Stewart Brand, and it's one of the most abused quote of our time.
t bF .html
http://www.anu.edu.au/people/Roger.Clarke/II/IW
This is just like the deCSS hack - a good piece of work exposing a flawed implementation of a rights management scheme.
.wma files on Linux - the decoder still requires the MS dll to get the keys out for you.
However, at the moment two little differences are apparent:
1. This doesn't allow you to decode
2. The author has remained anonymous! No DMCA prosecutions here, assuming she has covered her tracks properly.
When are MS, Sony and others going to learn that any sort of system like this will be broken? They should take a tip from the gaming industry.
I was excited to get a sony mp3 player as a gift last year. Until I realized that it used a proprietary format, atrac3. It will only allow me to load a particular piece of music 4 times. I've even loaded the music I make on it, but I am still subjected to this limitation. HELLO, it's my music, I made it,I own the copyright.
Digital Rights Management is there only to help support the massive amount of proffit that the recording industry is used to making. Well, I have a message for these people: The days of the $20 CD are long gone. Charge a fair amount of money for your product, and people will buy it. If you continue sticking it to the customer, they will break your systems and get it for free. Evolve or die. It's that simple.
http://www.assasins.net
DRM usually relies on Encryption. Encryption itself has always depended on evolution. The idea that algorythms that need a system at least several orders more powerful than the one required to encrypt the data to break the data (without the key). DRM is a logistical nightmere, as it requires being able to run on last years hardware and next years regardless of the system invented next year.
Secondly, effective DRM requires a central authority and encryption method which the media available locally will nearly always exceed the bandwidth. (HDTV today, UHDTV tomarrow...all on 1 ghz? probably not)
Here's a mirror to the .zip file. Hope it helps.
This is the place where you write something that will make you seem like a complete idiot.
the following: is fair use a birth right or simply a result of the sale
contract?
If it's the latter, there's nothing we can do but informing people and
refusing to buy products with fscked up sale contracts (limiting fair use).
Maybe fair use is nothing more than a tradition and something we've grown
used to. And not "right", by all means. Is the limitation in copyright
(which it is) written in the books of law?
This ONLY applies to version 2. The vast majority of protected fiels are protected with version 1. This code DOES NOT crack version 1 files, so it's not a good deal of use yet. I suspect that by the time v2 is in wide use, MS will have done something to stop this (see my other post about how MS can modify your software if you break the EULA)
Of course, Linux users don't even have to worry about this.
And the people shall be oppressed, every one by another, and every one by his neighbour Isaiah 3:5
Would it be possible for someone to use this work to create a fix for these people?
What a wonderfully timed response to Microsoft's recent complaint about releasing sample code!
PPINZ you ask? Philosophy Paper In The Zip. Pretty good read, if you ask me. An Excerpt- Making a copy of an item doesn't in any way remove that item from the original possessor, so "theft" is clearly an inaccurate terminology. However, the publishers' insistence on using that word, and the public's acceptance of it, means that a much more negative light is cast on an action that, while wrong, is nowhere near the severity of a true "theft." After reading this I feel I owe the world an apology. Dear World. I am profoundly sorry for 'stealing' all that music. I am not a selfish person, but apparently I am an ignorant one. Here, all this time I thought I was copying all that music, not moving it. And to think, all those songs I have on my hard drive are no longer held by the publishers and radio stations. I was beginning to wonder if the worlds tastes were suddenly changing, as all I heard were boy bands and implanted teenage girls on the radio. Now, I come to find, that I am the reason for this trend. All the good songs are on my hard drive, and this is all the publishers had left. They even went to the extent of "manufacturing" artists to compensate for all those I have stolen from them. For this as well, I apologize. I know this music sucks, and nobody should have to listen to it, but in my ignorance I thought the old standbys would remain, even if I downloaded them. And to think of the moral implications of downloading the music of deceased artists. Never again will these songs be heard! I will be burning all of these songs to CDR and mailing them to the RIAA, so that we may have the beautiful music of our culture again. Sorry O-town, I have a feeling you'll be the first to go.
I apparently forgot that sig != uptime...
Except, as Dmitry Sklyarov learnt, if you write something outside the US, but it's available to those inside the US, and you travel to the US-- you'll be nabbed in a heartbeat.
plan your vacations carefully, until we get that law struck from the books.
To me, fair use rights aren't a big concern. If you can see it or hear it, you can get an adequate sample for fair use with a cheap camera or audio recorder. You don't need perfect digital video samples to make your point for a review.
The larger issue here is this desperate attempt to cling to a ridiculously outdated and inefficient method of securing profit in return for desirable intellectual production.
Put in simple terms, DRM hurts our economy. Very, very badly.
Economic growth comes from improvements of efficiency, clearing out the dead wood and finding a use for it elsewhere. Following the analogy, DRM is better systems of stakes and cables holding the dead wood from being carted off.
There is a whole ridiculous, unproductive structure built around milking every penny out of copyrighted works. This is justified essentially by accusing every citizen of the stupidest kind of miserliness, unwilling to give a dime to make they're favorite movie studio make another next year, but willing to pay a dollar as long as you don't let them into the theater otherwise.
Yes, there are people out there like that, but I don't believe they're the majority for a second!
The tools are out there, and could be supported and working everywhere in weeks if people want them to be. Don't like the details of that system? Propose another. It's not rocket science: donation doesn't need real-time verification, so it's an easy problem, as long as we agree on some system.
Once people get in the habit of freely parting with their pocket change for things that they'd gladly pay much more for, copyright will be a ridiculous anachronism, and we can finally get on with reaping the benefits of the information age.
>I hate to say it, but it's illegal according to the DCMA, to reverse engineer and distribute the code. But,
>since I don't give a fuck about the DCMA, I'll be downloading too.
In the US, yes... the Reg resides in the UK and the EU "Council Directive 91/250/EEC of 14 May 1991 on the legal protection of computer programs" states the following:
Article 6 Decompilation
1. The authorization of the rightholder shall not be required where reproduction of the code and translation of its form within the meaning of Article 4 (a) and (b) are indispensable to obtain the information necessary to achieve the interoperability of an independently created computer program with other programs...
By putting it on its own server Reg is pretty much trolling Microsofts legal department. Way to go!
JK
Get the zip at http://www.club-foot.co.uk/booty/657.zip (90-ish Kb download).
Microsoft has decided to use the non-alphanumeric character '*'
instead of '/', and '!' instead of '+' in some places, and in other
places they replace '/' with '@' and '!' with '%'. This means that
any software dealing with these strings cannot use a standard Base64
decoder, but must use a custom-build decoder.
I'll put this in the same folder as DeCSS. I wonder how much money it cost to develop MSdrm? All that cash...wasted.Buahahahaha
D
The first, last, and only tech news site on the net
You have a good point about the suggestion to grab the DRM cracking utilities, though I disagree with your sentiments that violating MicroSoft's copyright is somehow justifiable. Microsoft's engineers worked hard to create an effective system for helping large corporations control their copyrights and here some anonymous hacker has broken all of their hard work and rendered the fruits of their money and efforts worthless, all in a single package that you can download here. Slashdotters, you should be ashamed that you are being encouraged to download this file and HeUnique should be ashamed for suggesting that people grab this file.
Cries of "fair use" do not render valid laws and copyrights obsolete. Just because DRM is easily circumvented is no excuse to ignore Microsoft's intellectual property.
STOP MISUSING APOSTROPHES, YOU MORONS!!!
I really like the quote he/she makes on the Philosophy paper:
:-)
"One final quote from Vaidhyanathan, this time talking directly about
the DMCA:
This law has one major provision that upends more than 200 years
of democratic copyright law. It forbids the "cracking" of
electronic gates that protect works - even those portions of works
that might be in the public domain or subject to fair use. It puts
the power to regulate copying in the hands of engineers and the
companies that employ them.
"
As it happens, this is an "autoemployed" engineer using the power that the U.S.A. laws have given engineers to regulate the use of this copirighted material, in this case allowing access to it
Ironic...
When his defense asked, "Which computer has Jon Johansen trespassed upon?" the answer was: "His own."
Would that more coders/hacktavists/1337 h@X0rs were so informed, and so capable of forming a cogent argument that Joe Q. Public might actually understand. Congrats for a piece of good software, and BRAVO for an excellent posistion paper.
I can only hope that someone in the mainstream media picks up on this aspect... in a perfect world, the NY Times would publish it as an Op-Ed column.
AHHHHHHH! I'm burning with goodness again!
- Reakk, Sluggy Freelance
When you decide to surrender, approach
Microsoft forces with your hands in
the air. Sling your keyboard across your
back muzzle towards the ground. Remove
your ethernet cable and expel any disks.
Doing this is your only chance of survival.
I cracked the thing the first time I used it. I don't know about other versions but with Windows Media Player 8, the first time you start copying a CD to WMA it'll ask you if you want to use the Digital Rights Management and explains what the whole thing is. I simply answered NO.
Sometimes you people are too complicated.
Fair use is a valid law. 17 USC 107.
The DMCA that bars you from exercising it by hiding the work you own behind anything encrypted, is law, but it is not valid- it is bought, overbroad, and unconstitutional. I'm only waiting for the day when it will be recognized as such by the judiciary.
Cries of fair use do not render copyright obsolete, fair use coexists with copyright. Fair use does not coexist with sledgehammer-like copyright enforcement tactics, as fair use is the first thing to get trampled on.
Since the reg seems pretty clogged, here's a copy of the zip.
shut up man
I think that it would be appropriate to queue up:
FRANKIE YANKOVIC - BEER BARREL POLKA.WMA
Roll out the barrel... We'll have a barrel of fun...
Life is the leading cause of death in America.
Register is handling its slasdotting with grace... but not perfectly. Here's a mirror of the zipfile. It contains an EXE and several C src files.
http://www.furinkan.net/mirror/657.zip
The next Slashdot story will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and slashdot the links early!
"We've got a few feelers out, and hope very much that he'll submit to an interview soon."
I sincerely hope they don't find him, because if they do, how easy would it be for microsofts $$$?
I am very impressed with this efford, keep up the good work and for the love of god please don't make us wear "free Beale Screamer" t-shits....
Fighting for peace is like fucking for virginity
It never ceases to amaze me that people who produce programs the primary use of which is piracy (e.g. RAR, CDRWin, ACE, NewsBin, et al) insist on trying to not only collect shareware fees but include intrusive copy protections as well. And they're shocked, shocked I say, that the programs get cracked. Rather amusing, really.
CEE5210S The signal SIGHUP was received.
Before you mod me down for been flaimbait, please read... Let say I am part of an up and comming pop band, and manage to put together enough money to release a limited set of CD's to the masses. We would have to pay Rec. Studio costs, cd replication, shiping, marketing, etc etc. Now, I would find it would piss me off should within the first days of release, the my track ended up on Gnutella, available for download by anyone for nothing.... But, what pisses me off even more, is that DRM wasn't invented to protect the rights of bands, but rather the profits of the record companies. What there should be is a format of music, that 'pseudorandom' noise can be added to at the time of recording, by whoever decides to record it. The music would still be listenable, but be of poor quality. - The pseudo-noise, can be removed by entering a key, that is purchased from the band (for a few $ at most). At this point, however, not only will the sound file become clear, but a id that is tied to keycode will be added to the sound file (This would be 'noise', but hopefully inaudiable to none but the most sensitive ears. It would be mathematically difficult to decide what is keycode, and what is ID. Should 'in the clear' music be found on gnutella, then the author can trace who purchased the code, via the ID, and take relevent legal action against them. This is how shareware works at the moment, Eg, I Download some 'cripple' ware, and should I like it, I pay the author for it, after all, they deserve it. I am usually unwilling to share the unlocked program with others as if my unlocked program ended up on a warzes site, and author finds out, (from the registration info) then I could well be in deep trouble! I am sure that this must be possible, and it will give a huge finantial gain to the people who make good music, rather than the record lables who skim the profits off other peoples work.
This kid we had interning with us for a few months. Said using MS Visual C++'s built in RSA encyrption schemes was "too hard" so he thought he could go and write "something better" in 3 hours. :)
I'm just gonna stick with Windows 98 First Edition for now hehehehe
In case of fire, do not use elevator. Use water!
I've got a mirror up and running containing both the The Register article and the zip file.
rc6.org mirror
In God We Trust, Others We Monitor
The notion that "information wants to be free" is a rather interesting case study of anthropomorphism gone horribly wrong. Information doesn't want anything. Truth, the facts, raw data, none of them want anything. They're just sentences, numbers, claims, opinions, ideas. Unless you're willing to extend the definition of a meme to the extreme, they're hardly capable of even Darwinian ambition.
But people often want information -- want it to be free, or secure, or copyrighted, or burned, or locked away for the greater good. People want the latest news, the biased studies, the most accurate statistics. They want each other's secrets, their inventions, their inspirations, their dirty laundry . They want to be the first in the know, the winner in the argument, the smartest in the class. They want to be told what to think, to make others think like themselves, and to be the first with a new idea.
People in the Western world are conditioned to believe that with a little applied brain power, they can be anything they want. So they insist that information should be free, despite omnipresent evidence to the contrary. They ignore the fact that library books cost ten cents per day late, that a reliable Internet connection costs fifteen dollars a month, and that university tuition costs four thousand dollars a year.
Knowledge is power. The right kind of information is all that's needed to upend governments, bankrupt companies, exile citizens, and execute prisoners. It can turn a housewife into a millionaire, a CEO into an inmate, and a celebrity into a punch line. A poor man will kill for money, but a rich man will kill for secrecy. The patent office is filled with millions upon millions of facts which are worth anywhere from pennies to princedoms to the right people.
Information doesn't want to be anything. Information just is, which makes it an asset, which makes it vulnerable to the economic laws of supply and demand. So if your information is about Linux, it's probably worth nothing at all, save your reputation as a programmer. But if your information is about, say, Microsoft Office... in that case, it's worth whatever Bill Gates can get you to pay.
will employ Microsoft to create a DRM solution for text
You're a little behind the times.
MS has had a "DRM"-ed ebook reader (their own proprietary format, of course) for quite some time.
And yes, it's already been cracked - not by exploiting any weakness (if anybody bothered to look) in the method itself, but by accessing Windows' debugging API (which gives full access to the data segments after the text has been decrypted.)
http://lookingglass.akardam.net/mirrored/msdrmv2-r emtool/
r emtool/
For link-wary: http://lookingglass.akardam.net/mirrored/msdrmv2-
Does anyone think this is useful? Yes, M$ has the right to sell whatever fucked up version of protected audio there is, and publishers have the right to *ATTEMPT* to market this crap. We have the right to refuse to buy it, and show them it won't sell. But what purpose does this crack have? Yes, I guess it shows that besides not being popular, it's also no secure... but won't people just use this to go rip protected .WMA files now?
Hmm, I guess actually this ties in pretty closely with some points announced in microsoft's argument against "full-disclosure". Some would argue unless this stuff is widely deployed (the crack that is), then the music publishers won't ever beleieve it's been "broken", since theoretically breaking something doesnt pose much of a financial risk.
But you still have the equivelent of the "script-kiddy" mentality at work here. How many people do you think are downloading this right now, so they can go get the latest Christina Aguilera album online, then crack it and "release" it to their l33t w4rez group? *sigh*
The thing is that before a peice of software can be used, music be listened to, etc it MUST be decrypted. You can have all the stong crypto you like, it has to be in an unencrypted format before it's usable. Ok well this means that all the components necessary to decrypt it and make it usable must be included. You can mess around and obfuscate all you like, in the end your software still has to be able to decrypt the program so it can be run, and that means the hackers can trace through your code and find out what you are doing and how to do it themselves.
.exe and gives it to you. The only difference between it and the real SafeDisc is that SafeDisc unwraps the program to memory and runs ut each time, these crackers unwrap it and write it to disc, so you can use it whenever you like without copyprotection.
This is how all the SafeDisc unwrappers and the like work. They get all their info from the very files SafeDisc uses, extracts the necessary info, and then unwraps the
The reason why encryption is normally secure is it assumes two trusted parites. If I send something encrypted to you, it is assumed that you have the necessary means to decrypt it and that is what I want you to do. For example suppose you and I regularly encrypt our stuff with a semetric encryption algroithm like Blowfish. We both have a key that we use to talk to eachother. We both know this key, but nobody else does. In that way we can lock the data so that only we are able to unlock it. Well this only works because I WANT you to be able to decrypt the data. Well with copy protection the idea is they DON'T want you to be able to see the data, so they encrypt it. Problem is, your processor needs it decrypted. That means they HAVE to give you the key to decrypt it. They can hide it and obfuscate it, but it has to be there, otherwise it doesn't do any good. Well, that means you can find it, and use it to unlock the data they sent you.
DRM stands for Doesn't Really Matter?
(ya, ya, Digital Rights Management... wait a sec, People have Rights, how the #$%^&* do digits/bits/code get Rights?)
Ok, wait just a fscking minute here, a brief recap for those who missed it:
1) Court says "Code is not free speech", correct?
2) Code, on paper (analog), or compiled or not is in 'digital' form, is still not free speech. (yes/no?)
3) if code is not free speech, and free speech is a *human* right, someone explain to me how the phrase/buzzword "Digital Rights" came to be accepted.
Apologies for the lateral thinking and leaps of logic. Sorta like "here, look at the shiny object in my left hand...smack with the right".
When it comes to the "Battle of the Bits" 'we' are winning, but in the arena (no, not q3 arena) of Law and Language, 'we' are losing (or loosing as the incorrect/common use goes).
Two outta 3 ain't bad, but we only got the one win, arugh.
IMOFWIW.
Moose
Have you read the moderator guidelines? Well, have you, PUNK? (and I want a Karma: Gnarly option)
I don't consider the pathetic fallacy (describing a phenomenon as if the objects involved were humans acting it out) to be a fallacy at all, but a useful metaphorical device.
"Water seeks its level." - no, sufficient quantities of water tend to be arranged by the force of gravity over time such that its open surface is roughly equidistant from the center of gravity
"Opposite electrical charges are attracted to each other." - no, there is a force on any two objects of opposite electrical charge each toward the other
"Information wants to be free." - no, it is difficult for one party to limit the distribution of information to only those parties it approves of
The common quotes are shorter and more digestable, literal truth is not relevant compared to effective communication.
On the other hand, the literal expressions are more likely to be left alone by those who don't understand them.
Let me ask one question...
You have a DRM technology that is OBVIOUSLY crackable (as all are), and a stupid industry that has just decided that they should use this technology, but hasn't yet implemented it in many places yet.
Do you:
A) crack it NOW and therefore allow the industry to quickly switch to a "better" scheme because it's not implemented yet
-or-
B) wait until it's in use everywhere and THEN crack it once it's too late for them to switch back?
What do you think would have happened if CSS was cracked after the first 2 DVDs were released? They would have changed the scheme really quickly.
HAVE PATIENCE. WAIT until THEY CANNOT SWITCH BACK, and then hack to your hearts desire.
Argh. This just puts more ammo in the pockets of the industries to give us MORE RESTRICTIONS instead of a stupid scheme that doesn't really hamper things a lot and can be cracked AFTER they commit.
Argh. Sorry needed to vent.
If God gave us curiosity
Enjoy!
http://whirlpool.net.au/mirror/freeme.zip
Simon
Computers are useless: they can only give you answers. -- Pablo Picasso
The problem is that the major premises have gone away. The internet allows easy promotion and distribution. The cost of decent caliber recording equipment has come down and many independent sound studios exist that cater to home-town artists. MP3s and Ogg Vorbis reduces the manufacturing requirements to a computer and compression software. If a CD is requested, the cost to burn a CD is less than a couple of dollars, including the shipping.
The music industry as we have known it is based on premises that no longer are based in real world technical or logistical limitations. They realize that the only way to continue their existance is to artificially constrain access to their product. If they do not, they will continue to lose potential business to the artists who choose to publish themselves and to the businesses who cater to them.
The US constitution grants patents and copyrights to promote science and the useful arts. If they are using copyright law to limit the spread of good music by closing down distribution and manufacturing channels that are more efficient than their own methods, then they are doing so illegaly. I don't see how it is possible to promote a useful art by constraining its difusion.
science is a religion
Well as I'm working on stuff based around the MS DRM platform right now (look just shut up ok?), I was interested to see if it would work. From the comments here it looks like no-one tried it yet.
Guess what. It doesn't work. At all. I generated a whole bunch of protected files, with varying license rules, and it couldn't work with any of them.
Still, the technical documentation was a nice read.
It's bound to be cracked at some stage, this just isn't it. Even microsoft themselves say that there are ways to get around it, unfuck for example.
Read it all - Microsoft used SHA-1, Eliptical Curve Encryption, a bastardized version of Base64 encoding, and I think even the kitchen sink to try and keep this from being reversed. They encrypted the comms between DLLs (!) to prevent anyone from being able to get anything from the calls going back and forth must have added a ton of overhead with all of this encryption. They even move the location of the key pairs on each machine that this junk is installed upon in order to prevent the keys from being easily extracted. Kripes, Microsoft went so far as to build in the capability to REVOKE the keys if they were ever published - this hack must be killing them :-)
:-)
All of that would've worked except that the code that actually USES the keys has to know where they're located and THAT code's location is static (lol). The author simply used THAT code to pull the keys for the decryption - I love it. I'll bet some poor schmuck MSFT techie is smacking his head going "Dammit!" right about now.
I'm not sure how Microsoft could've stopped this - obviously their bulletproof EULA didn't work (lol). At some point in the code something has to know how to pull the needed keys and I cannot imagine how they would've been able to shift the code that does the calling in every copy of Windows - something has to be static somewhere or at least the code to find the location does
Since Microsoft used code to detect debuggers I have to wonder how he did this - hacked the debugger too? Hack the code to stop the detection of the debugger? Or decompile the code in some fashion and step through it? (shiver)
If this was the creation of a single individual or even a team it's damned impressive! I hope that The Reg gets it's wish for some sort of an interview granted and that this person or team of persons releases more insightful cracks. This was pretty sweet IMO, my hat's off to this effort!
Build it, Drive it, Improve it! Hybridz.org
> Don't worry. Some people, for whatever reason, use the male form all
> the time.
Several years ago, I took a class from Halmos (Yes, *that* Halmos, though I did
n't realize who he was at the time. It set in years later when a graduate class
stopped cold at a mention of taking his class).
Anyway, in the middle of his first lecture, he suddenly went on a detour about l
anguage, adjectives, and the like. He noted that some languages have the male a
nd female gender, some have male, female, and neutral, and that some have a pron
oun for uknown gender. And I quote rather directly, "English is one of those la
nguages. The pronoun is 'he'. So you will excuse me if I do not say 'he or she
'."
He then proceed mid-sentence on set theory.
In the enlish language, "he" does not imply gender unless the context shows othe
rwise. It is used for both the male and unknown pronoun. "She," on the other h
and, does indicate gender.
So for those of you wondering why some of us always use "he" in the unknown or g
eneral case, it could very well be because we're speaking English, rather than e
ngaging in an Orwellian campaign to change the way people think by modifying the
language.
hawk
Microsoft didn't use their own crypto. Read Technical - they used DES, RC4, SHA-1, and ECC, all tried and tested algorithms, although we don't know about their implimentations.
The only 'innovations' they had were a bad MAC algorithm and a broken BASE64 implimentation.
That said, it doesn't matter what crypto they use. It's being implimented on so-called "trusted" software, on an untrusted OS using untrusted hardware in an untrusted environment, with key material in the same location as the ciphertext. A recipe for disaster.
OTOH, s/crypto/cryptosystems, and you're makin' sense. The closed culture (i.e. "you customer, me sales") isn't suited to cryptosystem or cipher design.
Even Microsoft doesn't trust Microsoft for protocol design - which is why they used Kerberos.
Hello there Beale Screamer. I just want to take this opportunity to congratulate you on your recent work, which was great. Keep up the good work, and stay low.
eloj bows.
Belief is the currency of delusion.
Monty Python, the Argument Sketch. We're going round and round without accomplishing much.
Devices that are equipped with microphones only record mp3 in monoaural at low bitrate. Nokia phones, as covered here earlier, only allow files to transfer off the device in DRM protected format, even if you imported them in mp3, and you are the owner of the file.
Minidisc suffers the same problem, where you can digitally import the file, but only export it via analogue even if you're the owner and creator of the file.
It's not so much that they refuse to allow you to record it, but that once you've recorded it, it's recorded with lousy quality even though the device is capable of better, or that the device refuses export of the file.
Here we are arguing about devices and the useless measures that artificially limit their capabilities, when the focus is the bad legislation and heavy handed lawyer threats that have inspired these limits on the devices. We're talking about the tool used in a hypothetical crime rather than talking about the badly written law that defines the crime.
I agree that there are no existing video cameras that recognize copyrighted material when I point the camera at a television, but don't rule out that such a thing could exist in the future. If we strike out against the bad legislation that inspires this, technologists won't have to spend time divising such recording equipment.
Have you read the draft of the SSSCA, that legislates all digital devices must have digital rights management incorporated?
Information doesn't want to be free.
Information doesn't want anything.
People don't want to be free.
People don't want anything.
They are just bags of fluid, with chemicals moving around in the brain. Ascribing a motivation like 'want' is unwarranted.
What is your point? This is a poetic statement, a metaphor, not a scientific equation.
http://www.geocities.com/placebic/2001-10-19-wmacr ack.html
Speak truth to power.
But:
* 2001-10-18 23:08:39 Microsoft Digital Rights Management broken? (articles,news) (rejected)
Yeah, I'm the person who spotted this on sci.crypt and got it mirrored on www.cryptome.org.
If Slashdot would have published my story last night then they'd have been breaking the news rather than chasing after the register. Sigh.
"Mary had a crypto key, she kept it in escrow, and everything that Mary said, the Feds were sure to know."
Windows Media Player will not be the only device using this format. If this were to catch on you'll start seeing standalone devices that'll read these files too.
And files already on CDs cannot be replaced, but all future releases can.
If God gave us curiosity
In the spirit of "make sure it says online", I've made yet one more mirror at http://dtype.org/available/657.zip.
---
Drew Streib, dtype.org
Oh, wait, I don't have any! Oh well.
sulli
RTFJ.
I'm not sure just how well it's going to work, but I've put up a copy of the zipfile on my own FTP server. My server seems to works some of the time...hope this helps people who can't get through.
Dan Aris
Fun. Free. Online. RPG. BattleMaster.
The question of whether or not a EULA applies to people who haven't agreed to it has been controversial. Until now, the only way to test it was to get sued by a EULA-enforcer.
This clause, should Microsoft exercise it, though, can perhaps cause a situation to arise where EULAs can be tested with Microsoft being a defendant and the user being the plaintiff. Here's how...
Microsoft probably wouldn't have put that clause into their EULA, unless they thought they needed it to cover their asses. i.e. if they didn't legally secure that right, then automatically modifying files on your system might be a form of computer trespass or something like that.
So, what somebody could do, is not agree to the EULA, wait to see if Microsoft attacks their system, and then if MS does, sue 'em (or even try to get criminal charges files against them) for computer trespass or whatever applies. Then MS would be put into the interesting position of having to prove (defensively) that they had an agreement from the user, without them actually having any evidence (e.g. signed contracts).
What I think is interesting about this is that most EULA arguments are about the users' rights, where the defender (user) is trying to show that they did not give up a right that they would normally have. In this case, the defender (MS) would be trying to show that they have a right that they would normally not have.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
Fair use is a valid law. 17 USC 107.
...
Cries of fair use do not render copyright obsolete, fair use coexists with copyright. Fair use does not coexist with sledgehammer-like copyright enforcement tactics, as fair use is the first thing to get trampled on.
you're missing the point, dude
He's being sarcastic. Saying that its illegal to Download this file.
He's linking to the file as many times as is possible in order to get the point across that while the post he wrote says he discourages cracking MS DRM, he clearly is advocating that is ok to download the file.
see?
its a joke
~z
sig?
Geez, I always thought that the Titanic sank because it plowed into an iceberg...8)
Seriously, tho', it's considered that capping the compartments would have been rather less effective than simply building the dividing walls between the compartments higher than deck E, as the hole extended across five compartments and as they filled, they spilled over into the next compartment (as you pointed out). It's estimated that if the walls had been built right up to deck B (the "deck" on top of the forecastle was deck C) the ship could have been ripped along half its length and still been saveable.
Just an historical note.
Virg
Think of it this way...
We are helping put food on the table of the hundreds of people that Microsoft Employs to develop and improve encryption in Windows. Okay. There are probably only two people. But my point still stands. They still have work to do!
Ok, I havent downloaded the zip file yet but how many bytes of perl did it take this time?
[alk]
Must be XP only then. Certainly doesn't work under Win2k, and I've DRMed clean test files and issued clean licenses for them. It doesn't even get the key IDs right for me
The 657.zip I downloaded (91KB) is corrupt according to the ZIP utility built into Windows Explorer and won't open.
Might be time to get Winzip. I know the Windows Explorer isn't that great with ZIP files, but haven't had a reason to change until now.'
By the way, I'm using Windows XP and it rocks - you should all try it out sometime.
Your objection indicates youor motive is simply to steal commercialized pop culture/music.
... which is the moral high ground here?
... what purpose?
Where does my objection state that? You're reading too much into things.
The motive of the coder is stated in the files she wrote, summarized by me as to *prevent* this from "implementing it yet"
I said nothing about morals.
People have been saying that they want to be able to use their music everywhere... The laws and technologies that they are implementing will prevent this from happening and give us restricted (and less) functionality for a higher price while stuffing the RIAA's pockets some more.
Everybody has been expressing their disapproval of everything that the RIAA is doing. By cracking this now you are only adding fuel to their fire, not ours.
Oh, I forgot, you don't have morals. Grow up.
Ohh veiled insults coming from an anonymous coward. I said nothing to insult you, and you stoop to insults for
As you put it, grow up yourself.
If God gave us curiosity
Not just M$s legal dept, but the RIAA and the government lakeys that they bought and paid for to get the DMCA through, as the Reg does t-shirts I hope they do one that says "I downloaded a crack for M$ DRM from The Reg so I can exercise my fair use rights. What have you done?"
Any sufficiently advanced man is indistinguishable from God
And you've read the source code, satisfying yourself that your 'unprotected' files will not expire at some future time and revert to 'protected'? Obligating you to re-release them under the now-current form of WMA?
I ran across this ad while surfing the net, today. No, not on the Onion. It was on a serious news site.
::Colz Grigor
--
That's one definition of property.
Another definition is this: My property is the set of physical items whose physical location I control. It's my apartment because I control who and what is allowed inside it. It's my computer because I control where it is.
This definition does not include so-called intellectual or industrial property, which is very much an anomaly in terms of property law. There are lots of aspects of property that just don't apply to copyright.
For example, in two hundred years, my forks will still be property, assuming that they're still around. They might be my property (or my estate's :), or they might be somebody else's. However, my copyright in this post will have expired (along with me :)...
my old sig used to be funny, but then slashcode ate it and now it's not funny anymore