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Apple's iTunes DRM Cracked?
joekra writes "The author of DeCSS is back in the spotlight with a new application called QTFairUse. The new application attempts to convert DRM'd AACs to non-DRM'd AACs on Windows machines. MacRumors has done some limited testing on it and has found it doesn't yet work as advertised... but they do offer a look into how it works."
I read the comments on MacRumours, and basically this program is not an Apple DRM crack but a hack for QuickTime (windows version) which dumps the decrypted AAC stream to disk before it is sent to the AAC. This is done by patching QuickTime and writing the data in memory to disk. It is easy for Apple to change QuickTime to make this app useless, but it is nevertheless an interesting approach.
That said, it is certainly possible to reverse-engineer the decryption routine in QuickTime instead of hacking the application itself. It is just a matter of time.
Hopefully this doesn't have any negative impact for the end users. It's always sad when the generic end user gets screwed because someone decided to hack/crack a product to give them additional functionality.
DRM in iTunes is changed. Please repurchase all of your old songs. Seriously, the DRM with Apple's music wasn't that bad. Why make it so that they have to change things around? Remember iTunes Music Sharing? You use to be able to stream from any computer to any computer. Since people didn't use it for personal use, they forced it to only work on the same subnet (thereby not allowing users at work to access music from their home machine). I wouldn't say Apple is perfect, but they're more on our side than Microsoft is.
I have no
By breaking the means the industry hopes to use to make their business viable you are only going to force them to cancel future projects which make music and other media easy for consumers to buy. Not everything can be free. Do you expect to get paid for a days work? And if Apple is forced to end their service because everyone just steals the music, then what will be left with? I will tell you. Microsoft will push a DRM-based protection scheme which is based on hardware and locks out non-Windows users.
Stop screwing these companies!
Brennan Stehling - http://brennan.offwhite.net/blog/
There are plenty of programs out there that will capture your computer's audio output. WireTap for example is a free Mac utility from Amrbosia that does this. You can also burn your music to audio CD and re-rip it as an MP3. I don't see why this is a big deal. Apple's DRM is fair and people who buy songs from iTunes already have the opportunity of using something like KaZaA but have chosen not to. This isn't going to make any exclusive content available on KaZaA or anything. Reading the description I think the whole point is just to try to humiliate Apple and the music industry. If thats the case its a bad thing, because Apple is FINALLY turning the music industry around on digital music.
Apple has been pretty liberal with their protected aac files compared to some other digital music retailers. Play on up to 3 computers, burn to cd, play on iPod. I've bought about 250-300 songs from iTMS and have never been inconvenienced by their DRM. Do you think their DRM being cracked might change any of this? I can just imagine the RIAA trying to use this as an excuse to implement some sort of draconian measures. For years now people have been screaming for fair online digital distribution. We finally get something that works well and is fair on both sides and some jackass cracks it. I sort of feel like next time the RIAA dupes some ignorant senator into introducing some insane bill that completely infringes on our rights we're not going to have a leg to stand on. Apple gave people what they asked for, then got shit on. What does everyone else think?
Yep. That his lawyer need only reach for his notes for applicable case history should Apple- or anyone else for that matter- choose to try him again.
Please help metamoderate.
On a Mac, try this:
.. ..
#open itunes
#begin playing music
netstat | grep 3689
#look for multiple connections to the same computer, that's his address
#on the right and yours on the left
setenv him HISADDR
setenv me MYADDR
#en1 = wireless, en0 = wired
sudo tcpdump -i en1 -s 0 -w itunes.log src $me and dst $him
#begin playing each of the songs you want (only need to play a second or two)
#don't close itunes!
#hit ctrl-c in terminal with tcpdump running, it should say it captured some number of pkts
strings itunes.log | egrep "(GET.*update)|(GET.*databases)|Validation" > songs
#songs now has a list of magic cookies, each alternating line is the file or the password
grep GET songs > get ; grep DAAP songs > daap ; wc get daap
#the first two lines of first column should be the same (tested under iTunes 4.1.0)
paste get daap | egrep "GET.*items/" | sed "s|.*GET|./get_one|" > get_all
cat > get_one
#then type these next two lines, hit return, and hit ctrl-d
wget --header="Client-DAAP-Access-Index: 1" \
--header="Client-DAAP-Validation: $4" "http://$him:3689$1"
chmod +x get_one get_all
./get_all
#close itunes
#now to rename the songs to have sensible extensions
mkdir tmp
mv *mp3*session* *m4a*session* tmp
cd tmp
ls | grep session > old
tr '?=' '\t\t' < old > new0
cut -f1 new0 > new
cut -f2 new0 | sed "s|session-id|mv|" > new1
paste new1 old new > fix_all
chmod +x fix_all
./fix_all
rm old new new0 new1 fix_all
mv *.mp3 *.m4a
cd
rmdir tmp
#after loading into itunes, can use one of several applescripts to rename the filenames from 454.mp3
#some of the scripts rename *.m4a to *.mp3 - then the songs don't play. to rename them back
#move the *.mp3 AAC files to their own directory, then
ls *.mp3 | sed 's/\\/\\\\/g' | sed 's/\$/\\\$/g' | sed 's/"/\\"/g' |\
sed 's/`/\\`/g' > files
cat files | sed 's/^/mv "/' | sed 's/\.mp3/.mp3" "/' > old
cat files | sed 's/\.mp3/.m4a"/' > new
paste "-d\0" old new > fix_all
chmod +x fix_all
./fix_all
rm files old new fix_all
With great power comes great fan noise.
I don't get it. You can burn your own CD from the QT files you buy from the iTunes store right? And after they are on CD you can make MP3s of them and do what you will, no DRM associated with them.
So, beyond the rather adolescent desire to hack the encryption, what problem does this solve? There's just no reason. Once they're on CD it's as if you bought them at the store.
It's just ego.
I'm curious.. did he do this for a similar reason as the one he claims he created DeCSS for - namely to play back DVDs on Linux ?
:)
I can't seem to find it in any of the articles, nor in his blog.
If there is no similar reason, does that mean that the reason of DeCSS's existence should be reviewed ?
Was 'hollywood' right, and he really just wanted digital dumps of the movies, just as - seemingly - he just wants a non-AAC'd digital dump of the music here ?
Not inciting a discussion on whether people should be allowed to do this in the first place - that's a whole other discussion
The _very_ nice thing about Apple is that this stuff doesn't matter too much. It would be simple to convert all those AAC's into something else (be it mp3, AIFF, or even a higher AAC and back down) to get rid of the DRM. It's called a fence, you can jump it or you can respect it. Unlike most schemes that require complicated check in and out Apple had the guts and financial sense to do something that will satisfy both sides. It will be interesting to see if the notorious Apple legal will go after this. From what I remember they didn't bust down on people that extended the iTunes music sharing beyond the LAN.
Is there anything better than clicking through Microsoft ads on Slashdot?
(posted anyonymously for the usual reasons)
Another way to do this is with the Compressor program (by Apple) included with Final Cut Pro. Just drag the DRM'd AAC file into Compressor, choose AAC from the menu, and watch as it transcodes to unencrypted AAC. You can convert that to MP3 from iTunes if you want, or write up a little AppleScript to automate it. The only downside is that you lose the metadata tags (you could probably decode that format and write an application to convert them to IDv3 tags), but it works pretty well.
Note: I'm posting this not because of any hatred for Apple, but because I like to be able to listen to my music on my SliMP3 and this is the only way to do so besides burning and ripping from a CD.
No, people, this is NOT a good thing! Can't people figure out when there's a good thing happening, that they should sit the hell down and let it be? Think about it. Apple's DRM was pretty easy to break, just write the songs to CD and rip them back, without DRM. But the RIAA will use this as an excuse to put more and more DRM, more and more legislation. They'll say, "Well, whatever the computer industry puts out, hackers break it, so we need more legislation." And the Senate, House, and Bush will sign anything into law! Come on people, this is a bad THING!
t's also noteworthy that similar code has been circulating quietly for quite some time on the Mac side. Anyone with even moderate knowledge of the QuickTime APIs could implement code to do this with minimal effort. It's trivial. I myself have written code that re-encodes the protected AAC's to MP3 so that I can play them on an old Rio that I still use sometimes.
No! No! No!
You don't think this is interesting because you do not understand what it does.
The Mac tools/code you talk of takes Protected AAC, decodes it to raw Audio (PCM/AIFF) and then Reencodes it.
This takes Protected AAC to Unprotected AAC. No transcoding (no loss of quality) involved.
I don't think that computers remove the profit from producing music, just from distributing it. As long as there's a demand for music, artists can sell it for some price and make a living from it. But with iTMS, Amazon's recommended lists, fan bulletin boards, and so on, there's no need any more for a massive information and distribution network like the RIAA. People can find what they like and hear about other music from people with related tastes, and they can do this on their own. I think that's probably the biggest threat to the RIAA: informed consumers.
But I guess as long as they have money and are able to buy politicians, they'll stick around.
the coolest club on
Because if you're intent on pirating commercially, you'll just buy the CD in the first place. What's $12 for a CD if you're intending on ripping off the thing and selling it illegally?
This is kind of a tempest in a teapot, really.
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you