Microsoft Reader Format Cracked

Anonymous Coward writes "Pocket PC Addict has a cool story about how some guy named Dan Jackson is distributing an unfortunately named program that will remove the security from Microsoft Reader ebooks. Once the security is removed, it then allows the book to be converted to html, text or any other format."

Comments

Code can be downloaded here

[itsnotme]

You can download the code from his homepage here: http://members.lycos.co.uk/hostintheshell/clit.zip

And obviously his homepage is: http://members.lycos.co.uk/hostintheshell

Re:The Name

[0x0d0a]

It's not Free software. The guy didn't hand out the source (which is a shame, or else Linux folks could be reading eBooks right now).

Sites starting to get lagged..

[irc.goatse.cx troll]

I doubt this site will make it till morning, so just incase..

Microsoft Reader format CRACKED!
Date: Monday, December 30 @ 22:19:50 EST
Topic: Breaking News!

Frustrated by the tight security and lack of interoperability of Microsoft Reader eBooks, a programmer named Dan Jackson obtained the source code for a command-line program called Convert Lit and made it available to the public. Convert Lit or "Clit.exe" is a command line utility that can downgrade the DRM5 security to DRM1. From there, the formerly encrypted Lit book can be converted to HTML, text, or any other format.

In a blatently open move, Mr. Jackson announced via his website a willingness to improve upon the original code of his program (that is reportedly less than 1 month old), in addition to providing more capabilities to the program itself. "I wish to provide an all-in-one solution for the recovery of data in the MS Reader .lit file format. If there is interest, I am also open to creating a .dll to make it possible for others to implement a LIT conversion utility from their ebook applications."

Other Internet hackers have already captured this code and provided a Windows 9x front-end that illiminates the need to know and understand command-line functions. This addition is called cuntlits.exe and contains nude buttons and offensive language.

Pocket PC Addict obtained independent verification that these utilities do in fact remove the encryption and security from Microsoft Reader books.

It remains to be seen what kind of impact an already hesitant eBook market. By removing the security of the Reader books, formerly encrypted eBooks can be traded and downloaded free of charge on the Internet.

Re:where to get ebooks?

[joch1]

Guttenberg Project - All free and out of copyright

lit was cracked a long time ago

[Anonymous Coward]

There's been a Windows macro floating around for a long time that converts lit to text. It basically sends window events to the MS Reader program to scroll through the e-book, and more windows events to dump the text to Wordpad. It's just a few dozen lines long and isn't much of a jump in sophistication over taking screen shots. Face it Microsoft, as long as the book content is displayed on the screen where people can see it, there's no way to stop it from getting captured.

Re:lit was cracked a long time ago

[Unordained]

isn't that where microsoft moves from the secure-audio-channel system to a secure-video-channel, with the hope you won't be able to extract the video back out of the video card itself ... and instead have to take a video camera to the screen, the way you'd take a tape recorder to your audio-out?
yes, it's always accessible. but they'll hope to make it hard to copy -- for example, don't use functions that allow copy-pasting (just draw to a canvas, such that you have to do the screenshot thing) then modify the text so ocr software can't make it out (antialias a bit, change the colors randomly ... do what some sites are doing now to prevent scripts from creating accounts -- put broken text on even more broken backgrounds with filters applied so only the human eye can really tell what's there ...) this would at least prevent plain-text/html renderings of the original text, and force you to distribute images ... which won't work any better with text-to-speech or other plugin/filter/layers you might want between you and your book.
it's actually much easier for them to render text readable to the human eye but not to software than for them to make music that can be even remotely enjoyed whilst not being recordable ...

source code?

[Ashish Kulkarni]

I doubt that the source code has been made available to "Dan Jackson". Relveant quote from the post original program's author made on the newsgroup:

Please note that right now this is VERY alpha. It's the first release. It also is available only as a binary, for Windows console. I wrote a GUI in ASM, but porting it to WINAPI is a pain in the arse... I won't bang on about it, but it's pathetic that it's easier to code in ASM than C on the Windows platform. The original was written under *NIX --- but I'm not willing to distribute the source just yet, for a variety of reasons.

There WILL be a polished GUI, as well as a source release in the future. I am unable to post here anonymously (and hence using a public library system and some vulnerable machines for this post) so, updates will probably NOT be announced here, unless someone is willing to play proxy for me.

Re:The Name

[Rogerborg]

Runs fine using wine. I dunno if it works, but it runs. Better if we had the source though, given that the author describes himself as "lazy" in the usage. ;-)

Re:where to get ebooks?

[Anonymous Coward]

The Online Books Page

Over 10,000 online books free to the public.

Re:Okay, great. But...

[Rogerborg]

Hey, I know a guy that bought - sorry, I mean licensed - a bunch of eBooks. Then he bought a new handheld, and found out that he couldn't transfer the license, so he'd effectively paid for a bunch of scrambled bits. For those who don't know, that's how eBooks work, they're licensed per machine. If you upgrade devices (or your device breaks), you lose the right to read.

Believe me, he won't be buying - sorry, licensing - any more, even with this thing available.

Re:Familiar

[Sparr0]

live in a democracy? not me, I live in a republic (USA)

Too Late - It's on Freenet!! :)

[Corrado]

According to this Usenet post it's available on freenet with a key of KSK@MSReader_Converter.zip. I knew freenet would come in handy someday. :)

NOT SO FAST!

[mcgroarty]

Two very important things to consider about this program:

1) This program will only remove the protection when run from a machine that has license to convert the book. Somebody's got to buy the book first.

2) While the program removes the protection so that others can open it, it does not remove the purchaser information. If you share an unprotected file, you're pointing a finger at the purchaser.

I'm not sure how to feel about the program. Part of me would love to grab and sample more books. I buy a lot of ebooks and I've been burned on a good many which turned out to be pure and utter crap. Being able to sample would probably up my buying just like downloadable MP3s have. But, on the flip side, I don't know that everyone operates the same way.

Let's get one thing straight...

[Dead_Smiley]

Let's get one thing straight once and for all. The United States is not a democacy. It is a Republic. In a democacy, everyone gets to vote. In the United States, everyone gets to vote for a representative to vote for them.

Argue all you will. Thoses are the facts.

V. Probably illegal

[dackroyd]

From the UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988:

(2) The person issuing the copies to the public has the same rights against a person who, knowing or having reason to believe that it will be used to make infringing copies--

(a) makes, imports, sells or lets for hire, offers or exposes for sale or hire, or advertises for sale or hire, any device or means specifically designed or adapted to circumvent the form of copy-protection employed, or

(b) publishes information intended to enable or assist persons to circumvent that form of copy-protection,

as a copyright owner has in respect of an infringement of copyright.

And seeing as the UK has no provision for fair use with regards to space shifting copyrighted material, then this guy could be pretty boned if he's sued.

What the program actually does (yes, I tried it)

[Reziac]

The program format-shifts .LIT files by UNPACKING them to a series of nicely formatted HTML files, complete with TOC and any images as JPGs. If you look at the .LIT with a hex viewer, you can see that the underlying structure is just compressed HTML -- there is even a readable listing of the original files used to make the .LIT file.

Does CLIT need to break any encryption to do this unpacking? I don't know about that -- anyone with technical info care to step in?

Point being -- the end result is just format shifting from .LIT to HMTL (everything in the .LIT is preserved, including all attributions). The real question should be, to what degree is this covered by "fair use"?? How does this differ from a format-shifted copy for personal use, frex from CD to audio cassette??

It IS open source

[Fuzion]

I don't know which pages you guys are looking at but at this site http://members.lycos.co.uk/hostintheshell/, at the very bottom there's a link to both the compiled executable and the source. And it says, "This should compile cleanly on linux and BSD, and should be easily portable. The source code is released under the GPL."

Re:I didn't have *rights* to open an eBook I bough

[ScooterBill]

Yeah, I had an eBook problem last year. Bought an eBook and then found out that it was only readable on MS Reader 2002 for the pocket PC. Well, Compaq(at the time) hadn't come up with the upgrade for the iPaq for this. So 6 months later I get the upgrade and am ready to go. Wrong! Apparently, if you don't download the eBook into your reader within a certain amount of time Amazon clears the link. Customer service finally got it to work but I could have read the book in the time I spent futzing with it.

Source code is out

[Danj2k]

Okay, I've been getting lots of emails telling me the source and binary links on the site are 404, I know this, we were having some last minute trouble with the binary. Since so many people have asked for the source code, we've put it up anyway, but please be aware that you may have trouble compiling it under Windows. In case anybody forgot the site URL, it is http://members.lycos.co.uk/hostintheshell/. Have at it.

The source code is now available

[A.OS.L.S_Bozo]

The full source code was just posted to alt.binaries.e-book this afternoon.

Message-ID: <3e123716$0$1447$272ea4a1@news.execpc.com>

From: Dan Jackson Software <djs@jacko.demon.co.uk>
Newsgroups: alt.binaries.e-book
Subject: [CLIT] Updated source code - openclit.tar.bz2 (0/1)
Reply-To: djs@jacko.demon.co.uk

Here's the updated source code that goes with the new clit.exe. This time it contains some instructions and stuff. Have fun.

I can verify that it compiles fine on

Slackware 8.1/LFS CVS (20021220) Hybrid
gcc 3.2.1
glibc 2.3.1

Here's a screenshot of it:http://ebook.ultraslack.net/screenshot.jpg
The news that the LIT format had been cracked was originally submitted to /. by
the author (incognito), myself, and others on 12/12/2002 when the author first
posted it to alt.binaries.e-book.

Of course, it didn't make the front page until somebody made a GUI front-end for it.

Anyone else not surprised?

I didn't think so.