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DVD-Jon Breaks iTunes Encryption For Linux Users

Posted by timothy on from the this-too-shall-pass dept.

McGruff writes "The Register has a story regarding DVD-Jon's new hobby, iTunes DRM. According to the story DRMed iTunes AAC files can now be played under Linux via VidioLAN Client thanks to some handywork by Jon. '"When you run the VideoLAN Client under Windows it will write the user key to a file. The user key is system independent and can thus be used by the GNU/Linux version of VLC," he explains.' Personally, this just means I will buy even more iTunes." (We mentioned in November Johansen's efforts to negate the iTunes restrictions on Windows.)

5 of 584 comments (clear)

  1. Key exchange ? by Jesrad · · Score: 5, Interesting

    How long before people start exchanging their keys ? Now that the key can be had and used under virtually any platform, in an easily copied or transmitted file format, the copy-protection is effectively cracked.

    --
    Maybe we deserve this world ?
  2. This is a wonderful breakthrough by lynxuser · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I am quite excited about this. VLC has always been my media player of choice, now the ability to play AAC DRM files in it just ups its ante.

    While booting to Windows is a slight disappointment, I am sure DVD-Jon will remove that step ASAP.

    --
    I read Slashdot in Lynx, I am a real geek.
  3. What does this guy do for a living? by cacheMan · · Score: 5, Interesting

    What do any of these people do with free time to break encryption schemes, contribute to oss, and build robotic girlfriends? I'm serious, how do you earn a living and still have time to do things like this?

  4. iTunes on Linux by ZWarrior · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Somehow I think that this is an example of the way software restrictions will continue.

    Programmers will code the security so that the app only works one way, and some user will break it s it works elsewhere as well.

    We need to have more thought put into coding so that apps will work more platforms, and also be aware that it is envitable (sp?) that somebody will crack it.

    I broke a lot of digital clocks as a kid because I wanted to know what made them tick! I still got new ones, and broke them as well.

    --
    Here I come to save the da... *thud*
    I gotta get me a shorter cape.
  5. Sounds cumbersome for swapping by Bakafish · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Not that I would advocate such use. But this requires the key to be distributed with each file. Keep in mind that said key is *known* by apple, and directly tied to your account, it isn't something I would recommend sending out into the wild. On the other hand, using it on your own equipment to get around that creepy three machine registration limit seems like a good thing. If anything ever happened to Apple and your registered machine bit the dust, being able to back up a valid copy of your key seems like a good thing.

    The thing is that AFAIK VLC isn't set up to manage multiple key+file pairs. So it is useful for *your* library, but not various files downloaded off the net. For that reason, I doubt they will go after him.

    My question is, how does the iPod decrypt the file without a key? Or is it simply using the parent boxes key? It seems to me that if that's the case it should be trivial to recover the key from an iPod directly, no PC required (Just a Mac :-)