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JVC Announces Technology To Prevent Software Copying
An anonymous reader writes: "JVC and Hudson soft Co. of Japan have created a technology that they claim to have tested on 200 CD-ROM devices that prevents users from copying software CDs. They plan to have special encryption keys hidden in software and which are pressed onto CD-ROMs and which can not be read with ordinary procedures. They claim that the location, length and number of embedded keys can vary making it more difficult to hack."
Nothing. Didn't you know that copy prevention isn't there to stop pirates, it's there to annoy legit users :)
... what about my right to make a backup copy of my software? Nobody's ever described a CD as durable.
But how does this differ from the keys on a dvd you have to circumvent when you rip them? I dont think any company can possibly safegaurd their software with a system that is up against millions of users....eventually there will be a way to get past it.
In college, really poor, need a flatscreen.
sounds like it is designed not to allow a cd-cd copy.
Why can't I just rip an image, or at least open the cd and copy the files to my hard drive?
Why can't I patch the program after the above not to decrypt?
I seem to remember that DeCSS came about cause of these "no one will ever get our keys" security.
What about older CD drives?
Why do people think that it is possible to make bits uncopyable? Have we not been over this before? Has this changed since the last time we went over it? I am not even going to bother reading the article for this 'technology.' A design for digital copy protection is like a design for a perpetual motion machine - It may be interesting to look at, but you know from the start it is impossible to build.
Mayor Quimby: Now that prohibition is over, how long will it take you to flood with town with booze?
Homer: No thanks, I'm out of that business.
Fat Tony(leaning in): About 6 minutes.
Finally, math books without any of that base 6 crap in them.
Why not make CD copies have this instead of the original source discs?
For example, making backups of your software or music files. At least then you can guarantee copies of the original you own and prevent multi-generational copies of copies.
I would think both the software barons and the customer would find this win-win.
They plan to have special encryption keys hidden in software and which are pressed onto CD Roms and which can not be read with ordinary procedures.
:-)
So how long will it take to come up with "unordinary prodedures".
If I can read the contents of the disk, I can write it to another disk. If I can't read it (with my existing hardware and software) then it's broken.
Besides, how many warez d00ds are actively swapping copied CDs, anyway? Isn't it all ISO images in these days of broadband?
--
E_NOSIG
DVDs have a similar copy-protection scheme. The CSS decryption keys are located on sectors of the DVD that are unwritable in the DVD-R (or +R, or RAM, etc.) media formats. So, if you copy a CSSed DVD, you get an encrypted copy with no accompanying keys.
So, a hacker group would have to gerry-rig a CD burner that could write to these "unwritable" areas of the CD-R, so that keys could be copied along with the encrypted software. Very difficult thing to do.
Frankly, I'm surprised something like this hasn't been tried already.
Whenever I see these claims of "better, stronger, faster" anti-copying schemes, I wonder if these guys are noticing that the counter-anti-copiers develop new tactics faster than a bacterium can split in two.
What would this scenario look like if we translated it into WarCraft 3?:
"I AM THE MIGHTY THRALL! SEE THE INPENETRABLE WALL OF TURRETS THAT SURROUND MY BASE! I AM INVINCIBLE! NO-ONE WOULD DARE... HEY! STOP THAT! NOOOO!! PLEASE!! STOP!! ARRRRRGGGH!"
I've got a bad attitude and karma to burn. Go ahead. Mod me down.
This reminds me of the 3D Studio Max hardware dongle issue. To protect the software from piracy, the authors of 3DS Max had the program check for a dongle on the serial port of the computer. The dongle would return a unique key requested by the program, depending on the activity you were doing in the program at the time. The thought was with all the combinations that the dongle/software combo could possibly have, it would be impossible to emulate with software, thus keeping 3DS secure.
What happened?? 3DS was one of the fastest-cracked pieces of software I've ever seen. Instead of trying to emulate the dongle, crackers simply went through the program and removed all the calls to the dongle! 3DS was circulating around the internet in less than a week after it's official commercial release, paired with a fully-functional crack.
I expect this technology to be no different. People won't try to copy the original, they will figure out a way to get around the checking mechanism, then copy the cracked version. As the saying goes, where there is a will, there is a way.
... I'm gonna start scanning my CD's. Eventually the DPI will be enough to make it work.
This is actualy a system to prevent users from BUYING CDs.
Sent from my ASR33 using ASCII
Ok, if anybody here knows more than what the article says -- presumably, the key will be accessible through direct-level calls to the CD-ROM to read specific tracks; what is to prevent the user from either intercepting these calls or monitoring usage of the CD-ROM, in order to determine where the keys are placed on the CD? I imagine an API implementation like WINE would be able to intercept these calls, with parameters, to find the specific locations.
But, I assume, this has been thought of by JVC. Why wouldn't it work?
Well, at work we make backup copies of our software then store the master copies in a safe place, that way we can send the copies out with our techs so if they get scratched and stuff it's no big deal.
Fair use is a nice thing, and it actually saves us money because we don't have to buy new copies when one gets scratched.
There are only 10 kinds of people in this world... those who understand binary and those who don't
They claim that the location, length and number of embedded keys can vary making it more difficult to hack.
"more difficult" != copy protection.
The copy protection arms race has continued unabated for what, 20+ years now?
No matter what they build, it will be circumvented. If a human can design it, another human can dismantle it.
It's sad, really, watching these companies dump millions of dollars into useless protection schemes while watching their profits and stock values shrink day by day.
Look -- it's not the pirates that are hurting your businesses. They have always existed and will continue to exist.
It's your stubborn unwillingness to admit that you cannot recoup every single penny from every single installation of your software throughout the world.
"The Root encryption deserves to be called fourth-generation encryption. It is different from existing, so-called third-generation encryption, [in that] the encryption keys can not be located easily," said a spokesman for Hudson Soft.
Translation: "The encryption can't be beaten by current software. Consumers will have to upgrade to the next version of their CD-copying software to beat this."
Yeah, these ideas are all great right up until the point that the key has to be loaded into memory to decrypt the content on the cd (into memory).
People will just use Softice to either get the key (since it will be an app key, not a unique one), or to just get the decrypted data. (and replace the decrypt routines with a load from raw file routine).
This is a classic example of people not understanding the trusted client problem, namely that you can't trust the PC as a client, ever!
There's no mystical energy field that controls my destiny. It's all a lot of simple tricks and nonsense.
Me: So you've got this new CD that can't be copied, but I guess it sounds as good as a regular CD, right?
Them: Yes, thats right, just as good as a regular CD, but you can't read it without our special proprietary hardware/software that knows how to decrypt the special key and read the music. Its safe that way. And if they break it, we can change the key and update the players.
Me: So I can't use the equipment I know and love to listen to your music?
Them: Well, no, but our music...
Me: Hey look over there, music that doesn't make me jump through hoops. Bye.
Them: wait...
Don't moderate flamebait as Troll. Know the difference or you will be Meta-moderated.
My friend is coming over with Mario Bros., Spare Change, Pinball Contruction Set, and Archon II. I'm going to trade him Appleworks, and Leather Goddess of Phobos for those.
Oh, wait. That was twenty years ago.
You have the right to make a backup - if you can. They have no obligation to make it possible for you to.
-- your Web browser is Ronald Reagan
This is not Copy Protection, because it doesn't protect your "copy" at all, and in fact they're trying to mislead you into believing that making a copy is forbidden. There is nothing at all wrong with copying a music CD. Your purchase price INCLUDES the right to make a copy.
Please begin to call this by it's proper term.. Copy Prevention .
Companies like Sony, JVC, and others who are implementing these technologies want to take back the right you've paid for at the register, to make a legal copy of the music you've bought. These companies are taking your rights away, not giving you more rights.
If you want to retain the rights to the music you've already purchased, don't support companies who support or develop technologies like this. This includes going to see movies in the theaters that are sponsored by Sony Pictures and other companies who back or support these restrictive technologies. This is not a joke. Let them realize that their "decrease in revenue" is not because of piracy, but because people are getting annoyed with this stuff, and are boycotting the company's products (not to mention this economy thing these companies seem to ignore in their marketing reports on how piracy has quintupled in the past year).
Once people start using the right terms en-masse, awareness is sure to increase along with it.
Copy Prevention , not Copy Protection . Just remember that.
If they vary on different copies of the same CD, it's trivially easy to run diff and isolate them. If they're the same across all copies of the same CD, they're a bit harder to find, but someone finding them can distribute a patch for the disk image to disables them. There should be a map to where the keys are, and if that's hidden, its address needs to be kept somewhere. Do they plan to rewrite the codes that handles this for each CD, so that its fingerprint can't be simply found and the rest unravelled?
"with their freedom lost all virtue lose" - Milton
I've seen lots of posts that start with "sigh -- data is data and if i can read it, i can copy it".
These people assume that the busses will always be interceptable, which is not true. MS and other hardware vendores are hard at work at their secure OS which would effectively halt any attempts to read anything but encrypted bits. From what I've read, I feel the secure platform is a reality and will very easily stop cracking/hacking dead in it's tracks.
However, maybe when pirating is 100% eliminated, microsoft windows XP will cost $30 and not $300.
https://www.accountkiller.com/removal-requested
Frankly, I'm surprised something like this hasn't been tried already.
JVC isn't the only company doing this.
I've got reliable sources that say that SONY is damned close on similar technology.
And the nice folks at Smarte Solutions have a whole suite of products coming online for just this sort of thing.
I'm not sure how easily this will be broken, truthfully. The software can be configured to all sorts of different levels, and the encryption can be linked to unique hardware identifiers and such. I'm no expert, but there are some that believe that this could be very tough.
- I pay for your flight to my city.
- You come equipped with lots of cash, which you show me before we begin for verification.
- I show you to a workstation equipped with VB6 as well as VB.NET for your convenience. You are not allowed to use any materials you brought with you - this is a "from scratch" project.
- You sit down and I then start the timer.
- If in 5 minutes you have produced a close approximation of WinZip, including create/update capabilities for all archive types that it supports, Explorer right-click menu integration for easy extraction, ability to span disks, UUEncode support, and ability to view files and zip comments, I will give you $2000. If you've failed, you give me $4000.
- Since I know you will fail, I will make it more interesting. Depending on your confidence level at the end of 5 minutes, I will let you extend the timer to 10 minutes. If you win, you get $4000, but fail again, and owe me $8000.
- With some begging, I may extend the contest to 11 minutes, but you'd need to agree to tattoo "I will not badmouth quality shareware" somewhere on your body in an at least 12pt font.
Let me know your thoughts please.Please subscribe to see the more insightful version of th
I think it will go the other way: without the threat of people being able to get Windows for free, the price will go UP, because without warez it's either pay for it or do without. But so long as it's possible to warez a software title, major retail publishers have to consider the price point at which the average consumer will buy, vs. a point beyond which they see the item's pricing as a ripoff and would rather steal it.
And this growing presumption that the consumer is the ENEMY is self-defeating. Look what happened with the price of WinXP (with its activation sca^Hheme) -- it retails for roughly double the price of previous versions. And an awful lot of people who'd bought legit copies of all versions before XP, said "if that's the way they're going to treat us, I'll just warez the damned thing and serves 'em right."
If software publishers want this to become the prevailing attitude, hey, go ahead, protect away!
Not to mention that the risk of breakage in some situations (LAN parties, technicians' use such as someone mentioned above, etc.) and the unwillingness of some publishers to provide replacement media, are now incentives to break the protection if only so you can make a legit backup.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
Noting but time. The software developer can make it hard to figure our how to modify the software.
For example, back in the late 80's, Deluxe Music Contruction Set for the Mac was a pain to crack, because most of the code was encrypted, so disassemblers, even great ones like MacNosy, were not too useful. The decryption key was derived from a checksum of the code that loaded and decrypted the encrypted code segments, and since the 68k did not have hardware breakpoints, setting a breakpoint in a debugger involved writing a breakpoint instruction into memory, which changed the checksum, which borked the decryption.
The loader/decrypter also took steps to kill any debuggers that were running, so that you could not just hit the interrupt button after the program was decrypted and dump memory.
They didn't quite cover everything....there was a place you could put a breakpoint that was outside the range of memory that was checksummed, but was executed after the key had been derived, so crackers got in...but it was clear that with a bit more effort, they could have delayed cracking for a lot longer.
Remember that the software developer doesn't have to make their program uncrackable. They just have to make it so time consuming as to not be worth the effort.
Mr. Lincoln said it better:
The laws (being used against the people) are unfair. I want to rip my Matrix Revisited DVD to my computer so that I can test 'greenscreen compositing' using footage the DVD contains. This is for educational purposes as it directly pertains to my job as an animator. The laws that used to allow me to do this have changed. All this because the *AA is unwilling to change their business plans for fear that they'd only make a fair profit instead of an extortionary profit.
Remember that the software developer doesn't have to make their program uncrackable. They just have to make it so time consuming as to not be worth the effort
Um, no. The more challenging it is, the more people will target it. The really good cracker groups get tired of generating keygens and hacking winzip for the 10,000th time, so they really savor the opportunity to go after challenging targets.
Like playing a game of chess with a good opponent that you have to work on, as opposed to a weak opponent that's boring to play...
"Nothing strengthens authority so much as silence." - Charles de Gaulle
CDs containing commercial software have a key written in a special area of the disc, which is designated "read-only." Through legislation or industry standards, it is enforced that no CD-RW available to consumers can be permitted to write to that area of a disc, but they can all read it just fine.
Ignoring the problem of legacy hardware and legal issues (who gets the privilege of owning a CD-writer that can write to the special area?), how would this scheme be cracked?
My deviantArt site
Ghandi & King weere advocates of civil disobedance, that is of publicaly violating a law as a protest against it's unfairness. They were not scoffalaws that refused to obey laws because they saw a financal advantage in ignoring them. (Something I can't say about many of the posters to this forum)
Quemadmodum gladius neminem occidit, occidentis telum est
Remember when you had to use Copy ][ plus to copy 5 1/4" floppies on an Apple ][?
Remember when you brought copyrighted software that had purposeful holes punched into a diskette? Those holes emulated bad sectors and if you copied that data of the disk to another disk the sectors when be reordered. The new disk didn't have any bad sectors so it just tried to save space and compact the sectors. The pirated software would read the reordered sectors and go into a nasty recursive loop.
It took about 1-2 months for hackers on BBS's and FidoNet to find ways to create programs that locked out corisponding sectors and created new security sectors on the floppies.
How long do you think it will take for the internet community to find a similar loop hole on CD's?
You say things that offend me and I can deal with it. Can you?
Wager time. I'm betting...
One week before researchers have produced code that can completely compromise all of the copy protection.
One point five weeks before the elite technical community can get over the annoyances.
Two weeks before software pirates can make copies without skipping a beat.
Eight months of legitimate users being annoyed before the tech is pulled.
Sprinkle random DMCA arrests and intimidation.
Well, at least in Switzerland they can't legally prevent you from copying software. I'd be amazed if other countries didn't have a similar law.
Rough tanslation of Swiss copyright law, article 24/2:
"Whoever has the right to use a computer program may make backup copies thereof. This privilege cannot be revoked by contract."
Awesome, huh? So we can just blast through any copy prevention legally, I guess.