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HD-DVD and Blu-Ray Protections Fully Broken
gEvil (beta) writes "According to an article at BoingBoing, the processing keys for the AACS encryption scheme used by both HD-DVD and Blu-Ray video discs have been extracted, and a crack has been released. What this means is that there is now a method to extract the copy-protected content of any HD-DVD or Blu-Ray disc out there. This is different from Muslix64's previous crack, which only extracted the volume key for each disc. This new method bypasses this step and allows anyone to extract the data without first requiring the volume key."
The time has come to make the upgrade.
It puts a smile on my face knowing that a small group of unpaid media hackers are able to crack the AACS encryption scheme what tooks many developers and millions in R&D to create, in just a few short weeks.
Vista Help Forum
Windows Vista Help Forum
DRM is fundamentally broken by design. Ciphers of this kind rely on the attacker not getting hold of the key. At the same time, the recipient needs the key to get the data. I can never work because the attacker is the same person as the recipient.
In effect, DRM is security through obscurity.
How much longer will we have to put up with this crap before the media companies realise this and stop inconveniencing their customers and wasting our money and time as well as their own?
-- MartinG To mail me: echo kewyjlcxyzvjfxbqwh | tr bcefhjklqvwxyz
Exactly.
Error 001
Security Scan and Virus Detection do not work with your operating system.
After reading through the article I must conclude that while the author has made decoding current discs easier, AACS has NOT been "fully cracked". The key embedded in the current software may be expired in the future, rendering this method useless for discs produced after that expiration.
I'm not saying that this isn't a nice event, but we have further work to do.
When will the media industry learn that DRM strategies simply don't work?
As soon as you can see or hear it, it is then possible to duplicate it. No amount of copy protection will ever be able to prevent that short of preventing consumers from accessing the material altogether.
Learn to trust your consumers a little and focus on adding value to the material, and then people will buy your content. It might also help to provide some flexibility in the content licensing model, maybe giving people the option to upgrade DVD discs to HD-DVD for the same content may encourage them to continue buying media.
Eric Sarjeant
eric[@]sarjeant.com
I've said before, "safemaker, safebreaker."
Hollywood gets ONE move in the game: "Protecting" the content.
The rest of the world gets as many moves as it wants to get around the ConsumerRightsArentPermitted.
So Hollywood does everything it can to make itself hated by its customers and still expects to WIN this game?
I think they've made a mistake by breaking it too early. They should have waited until it was much more widespread. Then again, I would imagine it is psychologically virtually impossible to sit on a "breakthrough" like that.
...As most people know is that you're trying to copy protect an inherently open media format. Even in theory it's very difficult to copy protect media in a widely open, public format.
Until vastly different technology is available 20 or 30 years down the road, all that DRM is going to amount to doing is preventing the 'average joe' from copying en-mass. They just have to make it difficult enough for the casual user to be deterred from copying the content. Look at the copy protection scheme on the iPod - it's basically useless, but it prevents grandma from copying bulk amounts on content. It's like how photocopiers are not a danger to printed media, as it's just 'too' difficult to walk up to a copier and copy things on mass. The industry just has to make it hard enough to deter joe user.
The real problem for the recording industry comes in when now people are getting more and more saavy at copying content, and it's becoming more and more common place, and digital media sharing is now common place and digital media is now common place in the living room now. 10 years ago MP3's were just making there way on the scene and basically only very saavy users knew what an MP3 was, let alone what to do with it. What happens when 10 years from now mobile HD video players are just as common as MP3 players, and your average iPod video has a half a TB of flash storage? Copying (High-Def) DVD's at that point will be common place like MP3's are relatively common place now.
yes, we're all laughing because this outcome was obvious to the slashdot crowd years ago. however, the people really laughing are the blokes who sell this drm technology to the MPAA/ RIAA
why laugh at them when you can steal their money?
we need a committee of slashdot readers to compile a list of buzzwords and concerns of the RIAA/ MPAA, and then sell them some technovoodoo that doesn't protect them in any way whatsoever (nothing can, obviously), but continues the RIAA's/ MPAA's illusion that drm can or ever will work
give them their false security blanket, steal their money outright, and then continue to rip them off and drive into extinction the antiquated notion of corporate media distribution channel ownership
they need us, we don't need them. make that point explicit by bleeding them dry via all possible avenues
win win! idiots
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
People still buy books, including audio books and eBooks, even though photocopier exist.
I think the recording and motion picture industries need to look at why, and follow that lead. Instead of millions in copy protection R&D, why not spend millions to improve the product? Make the product something people liked owning. (Notice how libophiles obsess over the actual tangible book?).
The one really viable way to control it would be to mandate that all players have an internet connection and it verify the purchaser has rights to the media before playing it. Of course if people have good high speed connections to the internet there's no reason to buy the physical media, which they recording and motion picture industries simply can't abide with.
I'm a fiscal conservative, it's a pity we don't have a political party anymore
After reading through the article I must conclude that while the author has made decoding current discs easier, AACS has NOT been "fully cracked". The key embedded in the current software may be expired in the future, rendering this method useless for discs produced after that expiration.
In theory yes, but how easy do you believe it is to update all those specialized video players, all offline?
Don't forget: the people who buy those already had to put up with paying premium for a HDTV, expensive players, and also make sure the TV, cable and player play together through HDMI.
If you start demanding they are hooked non-stop to Internet so they can receive the daily patches, it may just be the thing crossing the line of tolerance.
Also: the hard part is retrieving keys from pure hardware. The new keys come as firmware updates over the network.. it's even easier to update those HD-DVD/BlueRay rippers. After all, you have even the keys they encrypted the patches with: you have the player, don't you.
All in all, the "super morphing update" ability of AACS seems more like a way for the AACS developers to claim "the war it's not over", when it effectively is over.
Companies will refuse to use the new keys for their disks, since they will be incompatible with plenty of the players out there, the AACS creators will whine a bit about how "they could fix it but they don't wanna, not our fault", and this is where it'll end.
We have the ability to copy books. Why do we not do that? Because books are cheap enough that it does not pay. Authors can still make a pile of money. Every other industry has went thru this phase. Content has to get less expensive, executives have to be reduced in number, pay cuts happen, then the industry can grow again. Resorting to DRM in any form, will be unsuccessful because, technology will overcome. The first company to recognize this, restructure appropriately, price appropriately, will win. Same as with book, computers, cars, even washing machines. My .02
Rod
Lawyers, I guess.
Poking around Doom9 thread, the processing key for all current HD-DVD discs was found.
Looking over some example source code, the processing key is used with the encrypted C value to build the media key, which can then build the volume key, which can then decrypt the disc.
The MPAA can revoke the processing key, but quoting from the forum:
Some of you are missing the true meaning of this compromise. If they revoke this processing key, we just take a player compatible with a new processing key, put in one of the titles that's already cracked, and go around in memory looking for the known key. We find it, insert a new title, look in the same place and we have a new processing key.
Essentially, it becomes a known-plaintext attack.
Not a typewriter
Web Developers and Web Content-Maker-Guys YEARS ago gave the "no right click" a try. We quickly learned that if some one wants the content off the web site, they will get it, so there is no use in trying to introduce barriers that only hurt the casual user. You don't see "no-right-click" scripts anymore, but we are still producing tons of content for the web. Much of it copyrighted, and mostly the copyright honored.
I can't help but see this as a parent who is all too restrictive with thier child, leading the child into endless rebelion that would have been avoided if moderation was used instead of a billy club.
insight through the mind
Why the fuck would the Recording Industry Association of America care about movies being pirated, precisely?
(Seriously, I see this far too often on Slashdot. It annoys me. A lot.)
By summer it was all gone...now shesmovedon. --
I have paid for every single DVD I own. No good deed goes unpunished, I am repeatedly subjected to unskippable previews, FBI warnings, commentary disclaimers and the same fscking flying logo and equally annoying jingle at 4 places before actually getting to the content I purchased. If I were stupid enough to buy into HD/BR I additionally lose my control over the resolution I want. This isn't about Imaginary Property rights, it's about THEIR control of MY property.
There is no right to feel safe thru security vaudeville at the expense of everyone's freedom, privacy and tax money.
Why won't I buy the $200.00 HDDVD player from MicroSoft?
Well, I've said it before, and it bears repeatin'...
I'll buy new content when those ASS-WIPES in Hollyweird stop putting advertisements in front of the movies on DVDs! GODDAMN, I'm SICK of wading through bullshit ads for movies that stopped playing in theatres years ago when I watch an old DVD.
Pull out your Matrix DVD or your 2001: A Space Odyssey DVD and insert it into your DVD player or PS2. What happens? THE MOVIE starts to play, doesn't it?
Now try that with any DVD you bought in the last three or four years. Pisses you off, doesn't it? Yeah, me too.
They can KISS MY ASS! Even though I'm not buying their HD disks I'm still laughing my ass off at this and looking forward to more penetrations of their security. (Hey, this is Slashdot. We gotta' have pron! Just not HD Pron. Pimples and hairs where they shouldn't be. YEECH!)
We have always been at war with Eurasia!
This is assuming the MPAA decides to allow software players to receive the new key. Granted, it would be seriously evil of them not to do so, but we *are* talking about the MPAA after all.
AACS/CSS/Security through telling people "don't do that" is trivial to implement, for as good as you can possibly get it (fundamental flaw in the design) and they STILL managed to fuck it up.
Basic concept: Encrypt a disk with a key that only the player has. If the player key is compromised, all disks are cracked.
"fix" #1: Encrypt the disk content a random key, encrypt that disk thousands of times with a library of pre-generated keys. Assign each player a key, quit putting that key on the disk when it's found to be compromised. Of course, you now have to re-encrypt thousands of keys for every title released, leading to possible exposure of the master database.
"fix the fix": Randomly create a single "production key", encrypt it with every player key, and give the 'blob' to every HD-DVD production facility. Now exposure is limited to one key that can be changed without exposing the master keylist.
Except someone was terminally lazy, and only did it ONCE. So EVERYONE USES THE SAME PRODUCTION KEY. Way to go! If you gave each studio their own, then compromises would be limited to a single studio's works (that were produced before the key was changed).
Worse, you introduce an attack vector to your management that effectively hides it's origin. Any hardware or software player could be compromised, or you could have an inside leak of the key. As long as the exploiter doesn't say "I got this key from Sony's HD-501 player" you have no idea how they aquired it. Basically, they completely and utterly shat on the key-revocation scheme, with no possible solution.
Whoops.
Dear MPAA: Please contact me before starting your next hairbrained content protection scheme. You can pay me millions rather then billions and I'll give you one that's not so embarassingly horrible. I'm no cryptogropher, but goddamn, it's not like you hired any security people for anything you've done yet anyway.