Interview with Developer of BackupHDDVD

An anonymous reader writes "HD DVD and Blu-Ray were supposedly protected by an impenetrable fortress. However a programmer named "muslix64" discovered that this was not the case, and released BackupHDDVD. Now, Slyck.com has an interview with the individual responsible, who provides some interesting insight to his success."

Comments

Degrading Quality May Boost Cracking

[toonerh]

Unlike old DVD-Video, HD DVD and BluRay have a bit -- so far not set -- that degrades all output unless it is via an HDCP connection. This means my older Sharp 720p projector will be degraded along with all early adapter's HD gear

This creates a powerful incentive to not just "backup" your HiDef DVD, rather to remove an onerous limitation -- it may violate the DCMA in the USA, but it is morally and legally sound to most of the world.

Re:Degrading Quality May Boost Cracking

[purpledinoz]

Hollywood shouldn't be worried about this hack. They really should be worried about people actually buying these discs. What are the early adopter customers with the "non-secure" HDTVs supposed to do? Throw out their HDTV, and buy a new one so they can watch HD content? It's a real slap in the face of the customers... I hope both formats fail, and a new, non-restrictive format appears.

I'm glad he's not

[Weaselmancer]

If he was a native English speaker, he'd probably be in a country that has some sort of DMCA-type law. And he'd probably be in custody by now.

Re:AACS Easier to Crack Than CSS

[Sycraft-fu]

Ya, perhaps sidestep is a better term than crack. In all likelihood the cryptosystem itself can't be broken, it's AES. While we can never say for certain there's not an unknown weakness in a system, AES is one of the most studied ones out there and thus far it remains secure enough to use for classified data.

So, like the author said, you don't attack it you go around it. Obviously if the movie is being played back at some point things are being decrypted and you can get your hands on that key. That's precisely what he does. The player uses its key to decrypt the key that the volume is encrypted with. He then nabs that key and uses it to decrypt the volume.

Russian dolls.

[DrYak]

running non-"Trusted" programs in a sandbox that prevents them from accessing the hardware directly, specifically to prevent this kind of attack.

Yes, and how Windows it self will know that it isn't running inside a "simulated" trusted computer (the TC chip is virtual and part of the emulator) running inside an actual regular computer (with no chip to prevent you from running whatever you want ?) ...or running with a root kit hidden it self inside, like the Sony's one ? Treacherous Computing may work on the paper, but Microsoft isn't exactly known for perfect implementation of security tools. Root kits WILL be available.

For this to work you actually need TC-enabled computers. There aren't currently enough of them.
So either Microsoft pisses of its customers with something like "HD DVD & BD can only played on Windows Vista running on special mother boards. The rest of 80% of you just can't play them at all" (and currently customers are already pissed enough because they can't always play in full HD when they don't have display systems that *are* getting popular those days). Or either microsofts accepts to let some player run outside it's protected models and you don't even need a virtual machine or root kit to extract the needed data from memory.

As said by another /.er : stoping to provide the decryption key is the only way to avoid circumventing protection... but won't be implemented for very obvious reasons.

Seems like a decent guy

[Bralkein]

Since the DRM on these new formats is so insulting, I'll always be happy to see it suffering setbacks like this. However, I'd be slightly less happy if the person who cracked it was just some guy who wanted to be able to get everything for free and impress his mates by giving them free movies. Assuming this muslix64 character is telling the truth, he seems like a decent sort. His story is just that he wanted to be able to use his own purchased movies in the way that he wants to, in his own home. So consider him thoroughly endorsed!

On a different subject, this still leaves Linux (and BSD, ReactOS, Haiku etc., etc.) users in a spot of bother. I don't understand if having a movie key would allow you to watch something on the disc even without the right player software to access the HD-DVD/Blu-Ray drive, but even if you don't need special software it still looks like extraction of the movie keys can only be done with Windows software, and presumably OSX software in the future. I'd still really like to see a proper, Free Software, libdvdcss-style crack for these formats. I'd like to think it's only a matter of time...

Linux HDDVD/BR Software Player

[Pikoro]

How about a player for linux?

Since, based on the past, none of the studios will license a key for a linux player, I propose we create a player that, as part of playback, incorporates this "crack".

To get around this, the player will prompt for the disc key before playback. Then, the disc is decrypted as playpack is performed, thereby bypassing the "Player Key".