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The Great HDCP Fiasco
Toasty16 writes "According to an article on Firingsquad, our shiny new Radeon and Geforce cards won't be able to play HDCP-encrypted content, even though they have been advertising HDCP support as a feature for a few generations. Want to watch that new Blu-ray movie on your custom built PC at full resolution? Sorry, retail graphics cards won't be able to do that; only OEM-built computers from Dell, Sony, HP and the like will have that functionality built in."
Many people saw this coming, but I never expected it to arrive so soon. If people accept this and bow to the content providers, then the DRM world is upon us.
I don't actually know anything about HDCP, but I assume it is an "end to end" system, where every component in the stream must support each other.
... and then they built the supercollider.
The content providers, hardware and software people, everyone involved would have a lot more to gain if they'd simply make things easier for people. These kinds of roadblocks will only frustrate the average consumer more. For the rest of us, they'll be bittorrent or something else.
The 'fair use' doctrine really needs to be looked at more closely.
"...Well, there's egg and bacon; egg sausage and bacon; egg and spam; egg bacon and spam; egg bacon sausage and spam..."
Now over here in the UK I we have a phrase for this sorta thing: "false advertising".
And I'm pretty sure we have laws against it too...
But when has vendor lock-in ever enhanced the propogation of a certain technology? Isn't that why Betamax wasn't adopted? Also, Sony's AC3 format comes to mind. Say hello to HDDVD
Looks like we need you again. Hope you haven't let those hacking skills get rusty.
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
What Hollywood appologist crap.
"Hollywood gave you ample they were going to rape you, and yet you didn't bend over."
Sorry, no. I'm extremely glad that companies are in direct opposition to HDCP. We'll find out, once and for all, if the computer industry needs Hollywood, or if Hollywood needs the computer industry...
It's a ridiculous restriction anyhow. It's not like DVI-capture cards are a dime a dozen (or even possible with current hardware for that matter). It's not like anyone would WANT to capture the uncompressed digital stream and waste their time recompressing that back to it's original size. It's just another insane move by Hollywood.
Stick to bittorrent, and/or standard DVDs, if they don't change their tune.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
Everything is hackable. I don't know WTF the manufacturers are thinking, this shit will be cracked as soon as somebody actually makes a board that supports it (and HD-DVD/BluRay arrive). I'm assuming they will attempt to use the DMCA against any cracks, but our friendly overseas comrades will no doubt help us out.
As a result, pirated content (with the protection removed and recoded in h.264) will run at a higher resolution on your PC than content you bought.
Anybody want to guess the effect of that on sales?
If nobody can use it, then using blue-ray without it will be the standard.
I dont see everyone going out and buying all new systems for this artifical mandatory key authorization crap.
What isnt clear, so hardware H.264 wont support DRM'ed media either? Huh?! I thought that was just mpeg4 standards.
This gives me the impression that not one custom built computer on the market can even RUN windows vista. This is not only disorenting but confusing. Perhaps Microsoft and DRM Gods believe the majority of 'hackers' that break their encryption are on custom machines and this is a quick method to lock some of them out. Furthermore, its much easier to track someone who buys a prebuilt computer than someone who buys parts and assembles them.
Either way, I agree with previous quotes that a class action lawsuit might be in place.
Is this really true? Game manufacturers cannot realistically expect much market penetration of Vista before 2007 at the earliest, and they'll probably want to satisfy the XP crowd for another couple of years and make sure their games work with the older OS too. After all, a guy with a $2000 blazing gaming PC will probably hesitate to buy a $250 Vista license just to play an MS game. Might as well buy a used XBox360 at that price.
Overall, unless MS makes some co-marketing deals with game publishers and pays them to make Vista-only games, I don't see game publishers abandoning XP that easily.
--
Mad science! Robots! Underwear! Cute girls! Full comic online! http://www.girlgeniusonline.com/
The requirement of HDCP via DVI/HDMI is also a major issue for those who bought the first few generations of HDTVs equiped with component inputs, or in some cases, DVI without HDCP support.
Cases in point, I know of several major HDTV purchases made about 2 years ago, late 2003 / early 2004. All of these were CRT or CRT projection based and have the ability to do full 1080i resolution, in fact most are currently being used with DVHS D-Theater, Dish Network HD, and XBOX360 at full 1080i, 720p or similar HD resolutions. Mostly via 3x RCA component input, but plain computer style DVI in a few cases. But since none of these TVs support HDCP, they will most likely be unable to display full HD resolution material from BluRay or HDDVD.
Many Dell 20" LCD monitor users are in the same boat. They love their sweet pivoting DVI monitors. But without HDCP support, they will never be useful as, say, a bedroom TV connected to a BluRay player or a future Comcast HD cable receiver.
HDCP is to protect the world from the pirates... who will work around this limitation somehow anyway.
It used to be that one had to buy an illegal converter/filter in order to make copies of Macrovision protected DVDs and VHS tapes. Now we're going to need to buy illegal converters/filters just to *use* our older HDTVs to their full resolution potential.
Retail video cards do not support HDCP != Retail video cards cannot support HDCP. The graphics card you own now most likely does not support it, but that doesn't mean the next one won't.
How many other people are having trouble typing HDCP? ;)
My fingers automatically type DHCP instead
--I thought I was wrong once, but I was mistaken.
Yeah, until just one person out of the millions with PCs cracks an HDCP disc and uploads it. Is there any cost:benefit*risk analysis for this copy protection that isn't produced by the DRM industry and the CYA execs who promote it?
--
make install -not war
HanDiCaP
Women are like electronics: you don't know how damaged they are until you try to turn them on.
First of all, it's not stealing, it's copyright infringment. Calling it stealing plays right into their hands. Don't do it.
Second, they don't need actual copyright infringment to occur; they just need the appearance of it, along with charts showing "lost sales" and cash for the lobbyists.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
Tell me, how's even DVD Jon supposed to circumvent encryption that's embedded in the hardware?
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
The more I hear, the more I think both of these formats are toast.
The move from tape to optical had a lot of obvious advantages for end users. By comparison, the only real advantages to either Blu-ray or HD-DVD are 1) resolution, and 2) disc capacity. That's really not much to start with.
Capacity is only particularly relevant as A) the means to provide said higher res, and B) for people using these discs for their own personal data, which won't likely be effected by all these 'protection' racketsschemes. For raw data storage, BD or HD-DVD will take off when the drives are comodity items with decent burn times, and the discs have a comparable $/GB to DVDs.
As for resolution, here's the thing: didn't I read a while back on slashdot that some study found that only 50% of US households with "Hi-def" capable TVs had their systems set up properly to view anything in hi-def, and from the sound of it most of them were oblivious?
Now tell me... if the only really notable advantage of Blu-ray or HD-DVD over normal DVDs, when it comes to renting or buying videos, is resolution... and half the population can't even tell if their systems are set up to display hi-def content... and the DRM is such that nobody who's bought 'hi-def' hardware yet is going to actually get hi-def (my understanding is that if you don't have a fully HDCP compliant system, you get a degraded image, ie, lower res)... is it just me, or is most of the population going to buy a new optical drive, rent one BD or HD-DVD, not notice anything impressive cause their system isn't set up right, and go back to DVDs cause they're cheaper rentals?
$40 will get you a DVD drive you can stick in any vaguely recent desktop computer. A stand-alone DVD player that can hook up to pretty much any TV is probably cheaper than that. A new format that offers basically nothing but higher res, and requires thousands (in the next year) or several hundreds (any time remotely soon) of dollars of upfront expense on hardware upgrades to get that one advantage, which you also have to re-purchace all your media to get... I'm just not seeing it.
Fortunately, all the companies involved have put way too much into this to let it drop that easy, so hopefully they'll stick it out long enough to produce comodity priced products for those of us who are really just interested in the higher capacity optical media.
I don't actually know anything about HDCP, but I assume it is an "end to end" system, where every component in the stream must support each other.
Until this point HDCP was just from the video output to the display device.
This new standard is basically the OS saying that in-between the protected drive and the video card, there must now be a protected path to enable the full resolution of the HD source. The video cards will still work with HDCP equipment, it's just that HD-DVD or Blu-Ray playback will not deliver full resolution on that setup.
To be brutally honest, this is horribly depressing for those of us that know better but just acceptable enough for most users (720p being a higher res source than they were used to anyway) that few outside the technical realm will really raise much of a stink. Most will live with reduced resolution output without even knowing it; full path HDCP support will be another checkbox to move people at Best Buy to look at a higher end system (video or PC).
Stuff like the broadcast flag which does affect a wide range of viewers in a very annoying way would raise a lot more ire.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
Did you ever think that if they just sold us something that works in the first place, we wouldn't have to download?
As is, in order to watch HD content on my HDTV, I would have to pirate it, or crack the copy protection in some way.
HDCP is to protect the world from the pirates... who will work around this limitation somehow anyway.
Pirates don't need to break things like HDCP or DECSS.
If you want to large scale pritate a disc, you just get the equipment to make a bit for bit copy.
HDCP, just like DECSS is all about controlling consumers.
Life is too short to proofread.
...but this will be cracked so fast that it'll be like it wasn't even protected at all. This will be an absolute priority in the minds of high IQ, anti-social parents' basement dwellers everywhere who want to take revenge on a society that puts profit ahead of human progress, and seeks to limit information in a sociopathic bid for their own, personal monetary gain. The notion that information can be controlled, packaged into little products, CDs, DVDs, Blu-Ray discs, HD-DVDs, 0s and 1s that are only accessible to those who have exchanged money with someone who wishes to make a profit rather than contribute to artistic or technological development will be defeated. In the looming new age of technological freedom created by the absolute chaos of the Internet in all its unfettered glory, only those who want to: 1) Create actual art, not created for the mere purpose of profit or 2) Advance mankind by providing new and improved tools will be able to realize their goals when it comes to publishing art or software. The newest generation of kids was raised on P2P, and they EXPECT the free flow of information, no matter how complex it is. I'd get to work on improving your open source projects, for the good of humanity, people, because we EXPECT free software. We don't agree with the notion of payment, as far as we're concerned, its all 0s and 1s. And I don't mean to demean anti-social basement dwellers. I'm in their ranks, and anti-social basement dwellers with high IQs have done more to free information from the shackles of DRM than anyone else. To my brethren: Hail thy mom for not kicking thyself out onto the streets, she has done a service to humanity!
Usually one has a couple other options when breaking encryption. For example, some unscrupulous hardware company employee could release the keys to the Internet anonymously. Or, somebody posing as a manufacturer could release them as well.
Although "bricking" is a possibility with the platform, it's unlikely to occur because potentially millions of people (voters) would be quite upset.
What's more likely is somebody caught with the "stolen" keys gets sentenced prison or worse.
Not if the player software pops up a nice friendly dialog that says, "Your graphics card does not support HDCP, and cannot play movies in High Definition. Please contact Best Buy sales staff for a replacement." I imagine that would focus most consumer's attention on the real problem.
If you're faced with the choice of buying a new graphics card & monitor to go with your new BD-ROM drive & copy of Vista (not to mention $39.95 for the movie itself), or to just download the movie instead, what would you do? I fully expect HD movie piracy to be rampant, at least until people get around to upgrading their equipment for other reasons.
OTOH, there's probably still a decent-sized market of people who'll buy a standalone HD player, plug it into their 50" non-HDCP TV & say, "Wow! HiDef!" They'll probably connect it using a $20 "digital" S-Video cable too.
Why would anyone engrave "Elbereth"?
So, they want me to "upgrade" my monitor which doesn't support HDCP, my video card which doesn't support HDCP, and my TV which doesn't support HDCP.. just so I can watch video in higher resolution?
Sorry, to my eyes DVDs look just fine.. and none of my hardware needs replacing for any other reason. If it ain't broke..
I am the maverick of Slashdot
At first I thought the studios were incredibly stupid. The only thing they'll accomplish with their asinine HDCP requirement is eliminate the market for HD content on PCs.
Then I realized it was probably intentional.
Hollywood wants their content as far from your computer as possible.
How many days will it take before someone files a class-action lawsuit?
Are you suggesting that people overseas are more free than us Americans? How the fuck can that be? Oh my world is fucking shattered.
Welcome to the America... we tell your country what to do, we own your nations workforce, we run the planet... we talk about freedom but we really just want to control all of you and our own people.
America... the great lie.
Obviously, it would be slightly more complicated than that, but I don't see any problem in principle. Of course, now MS are going to make Vista refuse to hibernate if Treacherous Computing applications are running... *rolls eyes*
Pirate Party UK
When do we see the first one for false advertising?
According to HotHardware ATI 9700 Pro was suppoused to support HDCP. And now we learn that they don't? I don't know about you, but in Finland it is illegal to market a product with false statements.
Let the law suites begin!
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
The key that you need is embedded in a chip such that you need a million-dollar laboratory to get at it.
I'm sure there are at least a few people in the world with access to that equipment.
The short version is that it will let the Powers That Be remotely revoke the privilages of any hardware with keys that are known to have been cracked.
Revoke the privileges of licensed, standards-meeting hardware, maybe.
What I see happening is someone building an emulator that essentially runs the player software in a sandbox that makes it think everything is fine and dandy. Of course, it will have to be updated fairly frequently as new releases include hardware disabling codes for the older keys, but that will be a game of catch-up that the media corporations will never win.
That is, assuming the technology succeeds commercially at all. I personally don't think it will take off, because there's no incremental upgrade path, or a particularly compelling reason to upgrade for the vast majority of the population. Sure, you could play a high-definition movie at quarter resolution on a regular TV, but what's the point? The DVD version will be much cheaper, and look just as good on that display. To get any benefit will mean buying a high-end TV, a new player, and media that costs more. Thanks, but no thanks. And I say that as technology-loving geek who owns hundreds of DVDs. My parents - who watch DVDs on TVs that are 10-20 years old - would probably laugh at the suggestion.
"...always new atoms but always doing the same dance, remembering what the dance was yesterday." -Richard Feynman
if by "lost sales" you meant "sales didn't rise as much as we expected"
I swear, those **AA companies are their own worst enemies. All the big movies are sequels, and all the new bands are variations on a theme.
They've gotten too addicted to the "blockbuster" model of business and it has been slowly failing them.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
The entire point of DRM is to forbid copying, saving, manipulating the content ... which is what a PC is for. The whole reason to jump from paper to PC was that it made it easy to save, copy, repeatedly print, and manipulate information.
If all you can do is watch on your PC, what have you got? A $2000 19" TV! Big deal; most people will be doing their watching on the new 42" in the living room with the cable-company-supplied HD DVR.
HDCP, in short, will kill any sales of PC equipment and content, save to enthusiasts like slashdotters, and to content makers - including everybody with home cameras. But nin Blu-Ray disks out of ten will be put into consumer boxes rather than PCs because the PC won't do anything special with it.
This outcome is fine, for Hollywood; they don't see "available on PC" as a big selling point for their product. They're happy to just keep their content off the platform altogether.
SuperAudio (it had some other names too) were a Sony technology for higher quality sound than CDs, basically, a DVD where all the capacity were used for high quality sound.
... which died a quiet death after a couple years.
Never took off - CDs are "good enough", nobody bothered to upgrade. No customers meant that record companies outside of Sony didn't bother releasing content on the format
The same will happen to these high definition video disks. You'll see.
If you were sold a car with brake pads, drums, and shoes but no brake line, pedal, and master cylinder and the ads read "Comes with brakes!" . . . But you couldn't use the brakes because the system is incomplete, wouldn't you have potential for a lawsuit?
In other words, what is a brake? is it the shoes, the cylinders, or is it the complete and functioning system? What does HDCP support mean? If it means a functional and useful system then the given example may be false advertising. If it means extra transisters that don't add any tangible value or real functionality, then the next generation of video cards should include extra transistors and manufacturers should advertise "Makes Coffee Too!" When you realize that it doesn't come with the hardware (carafe, filter, water heater, etc.) to make coffee, then the video card people can just say . . . ohh, that's not what we meant; however, the processor logic of a coffee maker is included.
Don't forget, there's a lot of students with easy access to multimillion dollar equipment, this is, essentially, how the xbox got hacked (a couple of the times).
This is a joke. I am joking. Joke joke joke.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
What I dont get is how is this possible from the cryptographic point of view. The contents of the disk is encrypted with a key, which has to be only done once, otherwise you would need to duplicate the contents on the disk as many times as you have keys. So, the way I understand it, there is a master key somewhere here, which is then doubly encrypted via a set of device/vendor unique keys. Once you crack one of those, you get the master key for all the HD disks produced so far. All the goons can do is to change the master key for all future releases and then invalidate the particular device/vendor key. But that does not get them all their previous contents back, only locks the new products, until another device key gets cracked and the new master is out. Rinse, repeat.
The only way I can see this working for the goons is to demand that each device continuously downloads new keys from their center, and have a unique per-device keys + unique per disk keys. I.e. each disk having its own key, so that a break of one will not affect any other. But this means that no consumer device can ever work off-line.
I am sure that this is the long term plan, but I do see a number of opportunities to at least run interference and foul things up for them in the short term. That is of course not a solution, but something to keep in mind as a part of a strategy, as driving their costs into stratosphere can only help.
There's no way I can go out and pay for a HD drive, a new monitor and then watch retail purchases HD content.
It's going to be downloading rips for me it would seem.
*shrugs*
I remember stumping up for a DVD decoder card back in the day - seemed a fair wad of cash, but I did like the picture. Basically it would seem the cost of entry to the new HD DRM future is going to be astronomical - nobody is going to bother...
For the average joe who watches movies on say a player in the lounge, a desktop and a laptop when out and about - exactly how much is it going to cost to upgrade from DVD to HD? How much do they possibly think I'm going to pay extra to replace my equipment that currently meets most of the specs with NEW - JUST TO GET ROUND THEIR F'IN DRM *slams head into desk* That's it - I'm sitting the next gen out.
Turn and face Canada, to your right is lots of water, on the other side of the water is a little island where Harry Potter lives.
No, I'm well aware that J.K. Rowling lives in Great Britain (although I'm not sure which particular kingdom).
However, that's irrelevant. All creative works originating in other countries are Public Domain too; it's only international treaties which extend [the U.S.'s, not whatever other country's] copyright terms to them.
In other words, J.K Rowling only gets the same privilage of lease as a native author, and that's only because her country negotiated a bargain with us for it.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
They'll probably connect it using a $20 "digital" S-Video cable too.
That's why I bought the $189.95 digital enhanced S-Video broadband cable with gold connectors and OO-gauge double-shielded oxygen free wire for my 50" hi-def set. (According to the package, unlike normal cables, this one prevents the common waveguide harmonic interference that shears the digital encoding algorithm of the cable's colorspace.)
I got mine for a pretty big discount -- for this kind of performance you would probably end up paying more like $240, but for some reason the salesman was in a really good mood the day that I came in. He even threw in an extended warranty on the cable for half price -- a $69.95 value!
There's no point in dropping $6K on a tv if you don't have a good digital cable between it and the VCR.
Does anyone have an idea as to how hard it would be to break the encryption scheme being placed on the next gen technology?
From what I've previously read in the HDCP Wikipedia article it seemed like HDCP was already as good as cracked anyway - big vulnerabilities in the design of the protocol _and_ hardware available which strips the HDCP protection out of the data stream.
I think this is the case for pretty much any DRM system - they are putting a decryption system in the hands of the public and _someone_ is going to have the inclination and technical ability to crack it. And once you've rolled out a DRM system it's going to be pretty hard to change it... "oh, that 2000ukp TV you bought a year ago? Yeah, you're going to have to buy a new one coz the DRM protocols have all changed"
Of course the content providers are doing their level best to make cracking the DRM illegal, but even then I still expect cracks to be written and published (possibly anonymously) and what are they going to do about it? Arrest anyone found playing a blu-ray disc they _own_ on hardware they _own_ for their _own_ entertainment? I don't think so.
http://blog.nexusuk.org
Maybe Stallman is pretty smart to insist that DRM not be a part of GPL III after all. Do we really want to go down this path with Linux? A firm stand now might (I did say might) send the industry a wake up call that not everyone will accept intentionally crippled hardware.
Tired of all the isms, don't exploit people as an employer, or a government, mmmmK?
The Rebels have infringed upon our Death Star plans, Lord Vader!
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
Most folks with (any, not necessarily geeky) skills don't like to work/live on the fringes of the law... unless they think they are fighting an immoral law.
It's better to be the foot on the boot than the face on the pavement. ~~ tkx Kadin2048
"Discabled"? or maybe even "Differently Cabled"? Or are you intellectually crippled?
it's a blue bright blue Saturday hey hey
They have more than one king now?
"Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all other countries because you were born in it." -- GBS
No thanks, I'll just wait for the pirated version.
Vista won't be out until the end of the year. So I don't see the problem. This new standard is not going to be supported by anything else than vista. Aside from a bunch of tweakers, the only way people will get Vista is by buying a new PC. That's why nvidia and ati are not bothering to put useless hardware on their current boards. I'm sure that if there is any market demand for this standard, there will be some compatible hardware by the time Vista launches.
Of course the big question is weather this standard will work at all. If you take a step back and look at what the industry is doing, you see a lot of vertical stacks of technology with none of them well positioned for long term success. IMHO neither blue ray or hddvd is going to have any long term relevance. The HDCP standard will add to this problem since it will complicate and slow adoption of the new technology. That in turn means lower demand for HD content.
If you look at the long term, the only relevant distribution channel for any digital content is online distribution. Once the industry decides that online distribution is the way forward, the whole mess of vertical technology will more or less automatically ensure that any technology which restricts market share will be extemely unpopular with consumers and, ironically, content distributers. Why sell onlince content to only 1% of the market with compliant hardware when you can sell to 100% of the market with good enough hardware?
The first company who gets this right will make lots of money real fast.
Jilles
<plagiarise victim="self">
The average eye with 20/20 vision is capable of resolving one minute of arc, a sixtieth of a degree. This equates to roughly 300 dpi, when viewed at a distance of one foot. Let's say the average distance from a couch to a TV is 7 to 10 feet. At 7 feet, you can resolve 300/7 = 43 dpi, at 10 feet it's 30 dpi.
So in order to fully resolve a 720p picture (1469 pixels diagonally) at 7 feet, the TV would have to be at least 34 inches diagonally to make out all the detail. At 10 feet you'd need a rather large 50 incher. For true 1080p, even at 7 feet, anything under 50 inches and you're missing out - and at 10 feet you'd have to get a whopping 74 inch TV! At 10 feet, you need a 30" screen even to make out plain old standard-definition DVDs properly.
</plagiarise>
So unless you've got a particularly large TV or a particularly small loungeroom - or a projector - you may find investing in a high-definition TV to be entirely pointless. You simply can't see the extra detail. Of course, watching high-def movies on a computer monitor is different; we sit much closer to them, say around 18 inches away. At that distance, you'd want a 200 dpi screen (at 24", that's an impressive 4183 x 2353). Or you could get one of these - except it doesn't support HDCP...
Why would anyone engrave "Elbereth"?
Currently DVDs are 720 x 576 (PAL), which is good enough for me, at least for the next 5 to 10 years.
... DVD was a natural replacement and solved all of those issues.
VHS degraded over time, was awkward to use, bulky, hard to navigate exactly, low resolution
Unless you have a 60" TV and can see the DVD encoding blocks and resolution. This is a niche market though - most people (especially in the UK and Europe) simply do not have massive TVs.
So unless DVDs suddenly start shipping with poor encoding, thus trying to make HiDef discs look better in comparison, no one is going to care. I'm going to buy £20 BluRays - I only watch most films a couple of times anyway - rental seems a better option even for DVDs, TV series are worth buying, but they're less likely to be in HD anyway, or not as worthy of HD. High BluRay prices will simply mean less sales to consumers of content, and more rentals.
A good film that's worth owning is like a good book. It doesn't need the resolution to be good, it's all about the content, the acting, the story. As long as the DVD is looked after, it's all that 90% of people will need. With clever filters DVD resolution can be upscaled very nicely as well, so it will look good on most HDTVs, as long as the DVD player is decent (+ progressive output). If you can afford a HDTV, then spare a bit more for a decent player, eh?
Exactly. These companies pushing all of these DRM schemes have got the technical people in a fuss because of libertarian platitudes, when they know just as well as anyone else that it won't prevent piracy. It's the hardware stupid. They keep pushing this stuff in order to SELL MORE HARDWARE. And if they manage to push a PARTICULAR brand of DRM, then they've LOCKED YOU INTO the whole line of THEIR products, or their PARTNERS' PRODUCTS. Once you decide you just have to have the Matrix Trilogy on Blu-Ray to play on your 100" plasma HDTV, then you've just lined the pockets of a particular group of people within the hardware world. And even if another manufacturer wants to jump onto that bandwagon, and sell compatible hardware, they're going to have to pay the first group a HEFTY fee to do so. Ultimately, it's about VENDOR LOCK-IN. I don't think these people care a whit about your STUPID "PIRACY." Vote with your dollars accordingly.
Acts 17:28, "For in Him we live, and move, and have our being."
I'm not certain on this point, but the RAM may be encrypted. However even if the RAM is not encrypted, they have a new DRM enforcing EFI system and new a "compartment" system for the RAM, which means that you cannot read the RAM. If any of the ever RAM gets saved to disk, it will *only* be saved in an encrypted mode.
And even if you do get the software from RAM, it doesn't matter. The keys you need do not exist in RAM. That's right - the decryption keys do not exist in the software. Each Trusted Computing chip has a unique key locked inside, and it uses that key and the hash of the software to generate an encryption/decryption key for the content. If you change even a single line of the software, the Trust chip gets a different hash for the software and then gfenerates a completely different - and useless - key.
ciphertext+cleartext, attack is made much simpler: proceed to recover keys
As others have noted, having ciphertext+cleartext does not help you recover an AES key. What they didn't mention was that it also does not help you recover RSA keys either. And of course Trusted Computing is built on AES and RSA.
I have studied the Technical Specifications for Trusted Computing and compiling a list of potential attacks against it. Trusted Computing is extremely nasty. It is unlikely that there will be ANY strictly software attacks capable of fully cracking the system open. The only likely attack modes will fall into one of the following catagories:
(1) Very limited software attacks that will be restricted to getting into a single flawed application and the data linked to that app. Such an opening will most likely also be extremely time-restricted, as they have the capability of locking out a program and forcing you to patch your software to close the hole before you will be permitted to access the data any more.
(2) Ugly hardware attacks. You can completely break the system open with the right hardware attack, but you pretty much have to pay for genuine DRM-compliant hardware and you have to physically extract the unique key out of a boobytrapped self destructing microchip. You must buy another genuine peice of hardware and do a seperate physical key extration for each "liberated" computer you want to make. If you attempt to rip one key and clone it into multiple computers or into multiple devices they will immediately spot that duplicatyed key and place it on a revokation list. All hardware using that key then drops dead, and you need to pay for another new genuine device and rip it again to get a new key. You also have to be insanely careful that your machine never leaks the fact that it can do things it is not supposed to be able to do, or they will again place the key on the revokation list and your hardware again drops dead, and you again need to purchace another compliant device with a new key.
(3) Software attacks that *kill* the system, without cracking it open. The system is extremely fragile - deliberately fragile. If anything goes wrong anywhere it is explicitly designed to "failsafe" into a broken nonfunctional mode. It is trivial for any software to disrupt the system. A program could easily kill the system until the next reboot... could easily wipe out all of your current keys forcing you to "reinitialize" the system and causing the destruction of all of your Trusted-secured files (repurchase your software and media files). It is also potentially possible for software to physically and permanantly destroy the Trust chip itself. This is a more challenging attack, and they are putting in some safeguards to try to prevent it, but there are in fact multiple documented vulnerabilities of this sort in the specification. There are ways to "burn out" the chip through software.
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The current scheme is a little more complex, and the planned methods are a LOT more complex.
A pool of device keys were rolled up randomly to start with. I don't know how many. Probably a few thousand.
For each DVD, a random key is rolled up. (it's possible for them to roll up a new key for each production run) This master key is used to encrypt the content. The master key is then separately encrypted many times, once with each device key, and the result stored on the disk in a key dictionary. Note that each disk has a different master key.
Each device manufacturer that wants to make a DVD player has to sign a contract with the MPAA/RIAA or whoever it was that runs this madness. They agree that in exchange for one of the device keys, they agree to protect and keep the key secret.
Two of the manufacturers did not follow the terms of the contract, and stored their device keys in their players' firmware in easily retrievable format. Once these keys had been discovered, any disk that had been pressed up to that time contained the master key for that disk encrypted using that device key, so all disks up to that date had their security defeated.
Due to the nature of the encryption, once you know the master key, it is possible and practical to reverse engineer the remaining device keys. As a result of this, all device keys are now known to a number of people. If this had not happened, the MPAA/RIAA would have just deleted the compromised device keys from the dictionary for future releases. But since all device keys to date are now known, the only thing they could do is make a new device key dictionary, which would render all DVD players made to date unable to play new DVDs.
Among other improvements, the new system, it's designed in such a way that the compromise of one device key does not reveal all the other device keys. Also, I know little about the remaining technology, but one of them allows a "kill list" to be placed on a disk. They have added a way to obtain a "serial number" of sorts from the DVD player based on a ripped movie. They then would place that DVD player in the kill list for their new DVDs, and when placed in the targetted player, would deactivate it. Hard to say if this is rumor or true, it'd be a trick but certainly not out the realm of possibility. This way, if a sing;e player was compromised, they could deactivate it eventually. I doubt this would be very effective, but they are apparently going to try it anyway.
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
A work is the property of the author.
/ a1_8_8s12.html
The guy that wrote the Constitution of the US (Thomas Jefferson) asserted several times that people did not and could not "own" ideas. Period. I have read his reasoning and I have to say, I agree with him. Maybe this is easy for me to say because I am not a media or software company, but I do write short stories, and I still agree with him.
http://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents
Furthermore, I think people who support the DMCA view of things should consider where we will be as a culture in a few decades. I understand the incentive argument, but the restrictions on reuse have become way more burdensome than is necessary for the promotion of creation. We will lose our creative/technical/cultural lead for this very reason. We currently hold a position very similar to France in the 1700's. Pretty soon we may hold a position very similar to France in the 1900's.
Call me a luddite, but I cant believe the amount of money people spend on all of this 'high end immersive home entertainment' crap.
... the rest is up to you.
... and kiss her for the first time as the tide laps against the beach.
.. feel good and learn more about the people you thought you knew.
really - thousands of dollars for what can only ever pass as a semblance of reality.
Want a real immersive FPS experience ? - drop $100 and spend a weekend out in the bush shooting paintball.
Want a real immersive flightsim ? drop $100 and spend a weekend learning to hang-glide, and get a feel for what flying is all about.
Want an immersive and memorable porn experience ? - drop $100, go out clubbing, meet dozens of attractive real people, have real conversions, get real phone numbers, and
Here are some recent $0 experiences which no amount of 7800GTX SLI cards can come close to :
- Hours wasted building sandcastles on the beach with a hot nursing student from china who doesnt speak the local language that well. Teach her a bit of english, learn a bit of mandarin, and engage your brain in the most complex real-time strategy game as you attempt to interpret her alien body language. Still on the beach as the hour approaches midnight, having built a full scale replica of a great white shark in the sand. Accidentally trip over the shark, catch her in your arms
- Hang out at a mate's house with a dozen or so others and play an 8-ball tournament, music, fridge full of drinks, play with the pet lizards
- Go to a birthday party, get smashed, end up at a bizarre karaoke bar, get up on stage with complete strangers and yell your lungs out. Pile into a taxi with your new found friends and end up at a 5-star hotel for breakfast as the sun rises. Obnoxiously pile up your plates with everything on offer, and charge it all to room 315 before slipping out the back door.
- Hand write an ultra-soppy card that you make yourself to an imaginary woman that you might have known for ages. Make sure you put your name and phone number on it. Go out, walk into a club or restaraunt and approach the most stunningly unbelievable waitress you can find. Hand her the card, and say 'Hi again - just wanted to say that im real sorry about the other night, I hope this card makes up for it'. Turn around and walk out, and dont look back.
Dont know - I just dont even have time to turn the TV on these days.
And this of course does not even cover this fun scenario: I crack my unit and do not release the keys so that they do not know which one it is, then I simply keep releasing the actual movies in .avi format. Oops. How are they going to put an end to that?
Correct.
No, sorry, that's wrong. The Queen has 16 different kingdoms, known as the Commonwealth Realms. The United Kingdom is just one of these, a single kingdom; the name comes from the fact that it used to be 2 kingdoms before 1801 (the Kingdoms of Ireland and of Great Britain), and before that, since 1607, 3 (Ireland, Scotland, and England), though all three were in personal union for a few hundred years. Note that Wales hasn't been a kingdom for a rather long time - about 900 years or so; it's currently a principality (which is more than can be said for Northern Ireland, Scotland, or England).
James F.
Interesting thought.
I'm waiting for what anyone informed has to say about this suggestion as well.
I wonder what would happen if this was done on a large scale; create a "poison pill" DVD that contained a large number of garbage keys with a date set some time in the future (so that its keys would be preferred over other DVDs' that you might insert later), and you could just fill up your player's key catalog and prevent it from loading any new ones.
It seems too obvious an attack, though. I assume there's something that keeps you from trivially adding new keys to the list in the player.
However, I wonder if disabling the WRITE ability of the EPROMs or whatever they use to store the keys in the player hardware wouldn't become a popular hack.
I'm not sure that the hack for HDCP is going to come from some 'lone wolf' like DVD Jon. I think it's more likely that it'll come from some nameless Chinese electrical engineer, working for some factory that wants to get into the mod-chip business. That's unless the hardware is completely potted under an inch of epoxy.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
You should read this:
p /hdcp111901.htm
/. not too long ago, but I'm too lazy to go find it. Here's there conclusion:
http://apache.dataloss.nl/~fred/www.nunce.org/hdc
I'm certain it was a story in itself on
HDCP's linear key exchange is a fundamental weaknesses. We can:
* Eavesdrop on any data
* Clone any device with only their public key
* Avoid any blacklist on devices
* Create new device keyvectors.
* In aggregate, we can usurp the authority completely.
The weaknesses are not easy to repair. Two proposed modifications are broken and still susceptible in O(n^2) work and n sets of keys to:
* Eavesdrop on any data
* Clone any device with only their public key
* Avoid any blacklist on devices
So even if they use copious amounts of keys (a unique one per device), HDCP will fail all the same and their blacklists won't matter.
But this is the video stream, not the data encrypted on the disk (analogous to CSS) so the "per disk" comment you made isn't applicable. HDCP & AACS are two separate issues/battles.
:wq
No, it will work, as long as the emulator properly emulates the Trust chip.
..... since you are not allowed to damage or destroy other people's property.
As I said, without a genuine key authorized and cryptographically signed by the Trusted Computing Group it doesn't work. No genuine key, no emulator.
As I said, the keys are locked inside the chips. Locked inside boobytrapped self destructing microchips.
As I said, if you manage to extract one of the keys to use in an emulator, you can only use it on a single computer or device. The keys are unique. The moment you try to use the key and emulator on a second computer they spot that duplicate use and that the key must be compromized. They revoke the key and your emulator drops dead.
it would be against the law in most countries to remotely disable already-sold hardware
I'd *love* to see them get nailed on legal issues like that, but I doubt it will happen. The bastards slip right through a very slick legal loophole on this. Let me run you through a typical example...
First you buy a computer or device from a manufacturer. Ok, you are correct that this manufacturer has certain legal responsibility to you. They must provide a properly functioning machine and they must not do anything to break it.
The movie industry publishes movies. They encrypt their movies, and on the disks they include keys that allow certain devices to be able to decrypt and play that movie.
The movie industry decides they don't like you any more, that they don't like your device any more, that they do not trust you or your device. Well the movie industry simply stops including the key on their movie disks that tell your hardware how to play the movie.
Guess what? The movie industry has absolutely no obligation to you in relation to the hardware you bought. Their publishing movies that cannot be played on your player is no different than them publishing new DVD movies that can't be played on your VCR.
Some company other than your hardware manufacturer can publish that key on a revokation list as "untrusted". The publishing industry and Microsoft and websites and every computer on the planet can then decide that they no longer feel like talking to you or your device. Your device drops dead, and your hardware manufacturer is *not* at fault. There is absolutely no one you can sue. No one who has any legal responsibility to you. No one is required to publish their content in a format that can be read on some specific machine. No one is damaging you machine. They are simply declining to publish their content in a format it can read, simply choosing not to talk to it.
Nasty slimy scummy and as insidious as all hell.
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There are some much easier "attacks", one of the primary components of these attacks is not caring that you get an exact digital copy.
DRM'd music and video is the LEAST of the reasons you should be very very afraid. Forget music and video and DRM'd content and forget piracy and fighting piracy. You and I and Microsoft and the Trusted Computing Group all know that this system can't and won't do squat to prevent music and movies from getting onto P2P.
What good is a "non-exact" copy of software? What good is encrypted software that you cannot run or install except in handcuff mode on a DRM machine?
What do you do when you want to surf to a website, and the website asks for digital proof that you have one of these DRM chips and demands DRM certification that you are running an approved DRM-enforcment webbrowser? When it demands proof that it is impossible for you to run a popup blocker or any sort of ad blocker? When the website gives you nothing but an error message unless you have a DRM chip in order to be able to enforce ad views along with the webpage?
What do you do when your ISP uses the Trusted Network Connect system?
Oh, you never heard of Trusted Network Connect? It's a specification documented on the front page of the Trusted Computing Group's website. In fact Microsoft has issed a statement that they are implemnting Trusted Network Connect.
So what does it do? Well your ISP uses it to check the "health" of your computer. And yes, that is exactly what they call it - checking your computer's health. Your ISP can use the Trusted Network Connect system to check that your computer is not infected with a virus. They can use it to enforce that you computer is running an approved and up-to-date anti-virus software. They can use it to enforce that your computer is running an approved and properly configured firewall. They can use it to ensure that your operating system is properly up to date and patched against virses oir other vulnerabilities.
But of course before they can check any of those things they first need to check that your computer *has* a DRM enforcment chip. They need to check that you have activated it. And of cource they also need to check that you are running an approved operating system to ensure proper use and communcation with the chip.
If you do not have a DRM chip in your computer, or if you decline to "opt-in" to the system and turn it on, or if you are running an unapproved operating system, or if it you have not applied the mandatory patches for that operating system, or if you are not running the approved and mandatory and software they want you to run, or if that software does not have the mandatory patches applied, or if that software is not configured the way they want it to be configured, then guess what happens?
Well according to the specification your computer gets "QUARANTINED" because it is not properly "healthy". And what does quarantined mean? Oh not much... it just means that you are denied internet access. We wouln't want your uncertified unapproved potentially unhealthy potentially infected computer getting onto your ISP's network and spewing out attacks and infecting other computers, now would we? We're not doing anything evil or nasty by denying you internet access... we merely want to make sure that your computer is "healthy" and and not infected, merely making sure that your compute doesn't start attacking other computers, merely making sure your computer doesn't get infected. Trusted Computing and Trusted Network Conect are good for you! We're only doing this for your benefit, to protect you and other people! We're the good guys! Aren't we just swell?
But don't worry... ISP's can't make Trusted Network Connect mandatory if it means locking out most of their customers. They can't make it mandatory unless at least 80+% or so of their customers already have Trusted Computing compliant machines.
But considering that starting later this year *every* new PC will be sold with Trusted Compliant ha
- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
This really deserves a more detailed reply, but I'm really tired right now. I'll run down some points and issues rapidly, and if you have any questions I'll get into more detail later.
The music and movie DRM issues of Trusted Computing players absolutely pale compared to the software and internet issues of applying Trusted Computing to computers. Software that cannot be instaleld or run except on a DRM compliant machine. Software that cannot be modified. Websites that are impossible to access except on a compliant machine, and only with approved unmodifable software. In a couple of years (4-6 years maybe?) your ISP may make it mandatory for internet access (this is called Trusted Network Connect, which is documented on the front page of the Trusted Computing Group's website and which Microsoft has announced they are implementing).
It is impssible to make an emulator unless you have a genuine key signed by the Trusted Computing Group. Software will not work on an emulator without a genuine key. The only way to get one of these keys is to extract it from a boobytrapped self destructing microchip.
If you do manage to extract such a key, yes you can make an emulator. And yes as you say it will be difficult for them to run enforment against standalone offline DVD players. However they have insane enforment powers against any computer that ever goes online and and any hardware inside of or connected to such a computer. The moment you try to do anything online they will spot the duplicate key and it gets revoked and you're screwed.
Oh, and as for mod chips... you can't do jack when the Trust Enforcer chip is built into the CPU itself and the CPU is effectively welded to the motherboard. Intel and AMD and IBM have either started shipping this crap embedded into the CPU itself already, or they have publicly documented that they will be doing so by the end of the year. The IBM Cell processor. The Intel La Grande system. AMD Presidio. All CPU embedded DRMM enforcement systems.
Think of it as a Matrix for DRM'd devices.
The entire POINT of the new system it to make it impossible just do a software emulator and defeat the system. To make it impossible to just set up a Matrix and deceive the system. The entire point is to make software attacks impossible, and to be able to detect and respond to and lock out even hardware based attacks if you do somehow manage to to pull off a hardware attack against the sealed boobytrapped selfdestructing hardware.
That's why they are collectively spending probably billions of dollars on this. Why they are trying to fundamentally change the very nature of computers. They explicitly want to prohibit people from just setting up their own Matrix where they are in control.
Very very ugly.
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You present it with a certain combination of inputs; it responds with a certain combination of outputs. [] intercept anything trying to write to the trust chip, and look up the appropriate outputs.
Impossible. You can't look up an input you've never seen before. The chip contains encryption and decryption keys. The inputs and outputs get uncrypted and decrypted. It inputs and outputs other crypto keys. The random keys get encrypted and decrypted. It inputs and outputs bulk data to encrypt and decrypt.
Chip Input: @(Y@H@OHoh2jh2890
Chip Output: KS(*#oi3#LNjkl2pji
Chip Input: IU@1b2kb2bjk@@L2
Chip Output: #)(*#h23uo3uo3@]
Ok, now you tell me what output you want to give for the input "ojhiZ#IHOiOHioh%"?
In fact for many of the operations the chip does they ensure you NEVER get the same input or output twice. They explicitly impose that rule to lock out any possibility of the sort of replay attack you suggested. To explicitly make it impossible to ever record one set of input or output data to reuse later. Certain operations where you are never given the same input again, operations where trying to reuse an output doesn't work. This less of an issue in an isolated peice of hardware, but it is a HUGE issue the moment you are talking about a computer going online or a Trust chip on a video card connected to a computer or the trust chip in the new Windopes Vista monitors, or the Trust chip in a HiDefintion DVD player connected to a HiDefinition TV with its own Trust chip. And no, the new HiDefinition DVD players WILL NOT play HiDefinition video on any TV that does not contain a Trust chip.
So in an isolated peice of hardware connected to nothing else, yes you may be able to replay data that you have seen before. However even in that case a software emulator still cannot decrypt a new movie. You cannot "replay" the inputs and output cryptions for the data you have never seen before on that new movie.
It's impossible to emulate the chip in software if you do not know the crypto keys inside.
You also have the problem that Intel and AMD and IBM and building these Trust chips into the CPU itself, and that CPU will basically be welded to the circuitboard.
If you *DO* manage to intercept and modify the inputs and outputs between a LIVE phsyical chip and a LIVE motherboard in realtime - a very challenging and intensive task involving all sorts of on going headaches - then yes that does pretty well let you crack the Trust system on THAT computer. It only works so long as you are actually sitting in between that single live chip and the rest of the system. You have to use the active chip itself to do all of the crypto work, with you analyzing and recording and modifying the live signals in sophisticated ways to manipulate and deceive it. But the technique is no help for making any sort of crack or emulation for any other system.
There are ways to get around the booby traps.
Yes, I thought I acknowledged that it was possible. Very very difficult and requiring some very expensive laboratory equipment extreme skill and a huge amount of work.
The issue is that ripping one chip like that is only good for making ONE liberated device. One by one, purachacing one genuine device and extracting one key to make one device. If you try to use clones of a key they will spot the duplicated use of that key the moment you go online, or the moment you try to offer cloned devices for sale. They then immediately revoke that key and all devices and all software emulators using that key drop dead. You then need to go pay real cash to buy another retail genuine compliant device and try to rip another key.
we obviously can block any "phone home" attempts, presenting an artificial "thank you, all is in order, play on" response.
You cannot decrypt and view a Trusted website until you respond to the validation request they send you. This data is NEVER repeated so you cannot record and replay it. The only way to decrypt and display the webpa
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