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.
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
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?
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...
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
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."
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.
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!
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!
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.
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.
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
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
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."