AACS Device Key Found

henrypijames writes "The intense effort by the fair-use community to circumvent AACS (the content protection protocol of HD DVD and Blu-Ray) has produced yet another stunning result: The AACS Device Key of the WinDVD 8 has been found, allowing any movie playable by it to be decrypted. This new discovery by ATARI Vampire of the Doom9 forum is based on the previous research of two other forum members, muslix64 (who found a way to locate the Title Keys of single movies) and arnezami (who extracted the Processing Key of an unspecified software player). AACS certainly seems to be falling apart bit for bit every day now."

Comments

Will they actually do it?

[LiquidCoooled]

Will they actually do it?

Will they actually revoke these software players from all new disks?
Its time for them to put their money where their mouth is and actually block access to these broken players.

If they allow it to continue, all their movies will be piratable (insert oh noes! here).

I wonder how pissed off people will be if they can't play their new movies?

Re:Will they actually do it?

[ijakings]

Of course they will. Remember who we are dealing with here. These people take old pensioners and small children to court over the flimsiest of evidence... they dont have much of a Public image left to lose.

Re:Will they actually do it?

[MightyMartian]

It's a ludicrous game, and the industry has been told that over and over again by security experts. There is simply no way they're going to come up with a DRM scheme that isn't going to make life miserable for the average consumer, and still won't be cracked by someone with patience and know-how to do it. It's a colossal joke on the entertainment industry. They keep pouring money into this crap, and it just keeps getting flushed down the toilet.

Re:Will they actually do it?

[rsmith-mac]

Yes, it's only a software player. Intervideo will work on better hiding the device key, and release a patch for all the current WinDVD8 owners whose players won't be able to play future disks. Breaking a major hardware player is a big deal, however breaking a software player is fairly trivial in the long-run as long as it can be upgraded.

Re:Will they actually do it?

[Neitokun]

In other words, will the nightmare come true? Depends. I think we'll see a split. Some studio's will demand revocation, so won't. Hopefully, that will cause enough tension that this whole damn thing will fall apart.

Re:Will they actually do it?

[Anonymous Coward]

Or DoS enough software players to complete kill off the media.

Re:Will they actually do it?

[statusbar]

Of course there are is no technological way that DRM could be 100% effective.

Now we go one baby-step down the path where debugging tools like the ones used by these "hackers","pirates", and "anti-establishmentarians" require a license to own and use, because tools like this can apparently cause more damage to our society than an unlicensed firearm can do in a school...

From The Right To Read:

Dan had had a classmate in software, Frank Martucci, who had obtained an illicit debugging tool, and used it to skip over the copyright monitor code when reading books. But he had told too many friends about it, and one of them turned him in to the SPA for a reward (students deep in debt were easily tempted into betrayal). In 2047, Frank was in prison, not for pirate reading, but for possessing a debugger.

--jeffk++

Re:Will they actually do it?

[LackThereof]

But any update will only be a temporary fix. ANY software player will have to put their key in memory at some point while it's running, the new key will be found quickly. And the keys for almost all software players will be found.

Assuming they keep their word, and revoke the keys as they're found, software players will become nearly unusable, with patches every few weeks to update the key, attempt to obfuscate it more, and make it usable with new disks again. If they go that route, it's only a matter of time until software HD-DVD/BR players are permanently blacklisted and cease to exist. Consumers won't like that much. We'll see special cables running from new drives to new video cards, because consumers will not put up with a lack of being able to play HD discs on their computers. And the ones that bought software players will be ROYALLY pissed.

If they let it slide, or just sue the people who found the key in the memory dumps, but do not revoke software player keys there's STILL no way to put the cat back in the bag - HDDVD/BR content protection is finished.

Which way will it go?

Re:Will they actually do it?

[Anonymous Coward]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Access_Conte nt_System

I'd like to direct your attention to this excerpt: "This approach allows licensors to "revoke" individual players, or more specifically, the decryption keys associated with the player. Thus, if a given player's keys are compromised and published by an attacker, the AACS licensing authority can simply revoke those keys in future content, making the keys/player useless for decrypting new titles. However, if the attacker doesn't publish the compromised player key, the AACS licensing authority doesn't know which key is compromised, and it can not revoke it. An attacker can use his/her player key to get title keys of several movies, and publish the title keys or the decrypted movies, without risk of revocation of his/her player key."

So, thank you to whoever published the device key: You're an idiot.

Re:Will they actually do it?

[dangitman]

Remember who we are dealing with here. These people take old pensioners and small children to court over the flimsiest of evidence... they dont have much of a Public image left to lose.

But if you don't buy enough of their product, the Merch turns into the Flash Reaper, and goes from house to house collecting torsos.

On the other hand, if you do buy their product, then the Merch imparts some keen insight, and somebody's father gets fucked.

Don't you want somebody's father to get fucked? Do you really want your torso to be collected by the Flesh Reaper?

Re:Will they actually do it?

[Goaway]

But any update will only be a temporary fix. ANY software player will have to put their key in memory at some point while it's running, the new key will be found quickly. And the keys for almost all software players will be found.

The key will have to be in memory, but there is no reason for it to be unobfuscated. Any kind of simple obfuscation will stop the kind of attack used here. Sure, somebody can start reverse engineering the code to work out the obfuscation, but that takes a lot more skill and time than what these people have spent. It cuts down the number of people who can and are willing to do the work considerably.

Re:Will they actually do it?

[vivaoporto]

Reverse engineering the eventual patch would be even easier than finding the key as they did, as all they would need to do is to look for the new key in the patch on in the relevant changed parts of the updated binaries.

Re:Will they actually do it?

[Goaway]

Breaking a major hardware player is a big deal

Nope. Hardware players can be individually revoked.

Re:Will they actually do it?

[gormanly]

Except, of course, for Windows Media Player which already has (i) patches every few weeks or months anyway (and so its mean time between patches << the probable mean interval between key revocation and 99.99% of customers purchase of a new disc); and (ii) a mechanism for patch delivery that most users are already using and comfortable with.

I'm sure Microsoft would be very upset if 99.99% of the population's perceptions were that every other software movie disc player had issues playing some, mostly new, discs but WMP worked fine all the time. Especially after a couple of years when word of mouth had lead to no-one actually using any other movie player software (can you see Dell or HP or any other PC builder shipping a media player which incurs many, many, more support calls than if they'd just left it off?)

Both Microsoft and the big content cartels have a vested interest in ensuring that cracked keys are revoked, and for that reason it will happen.

Re:Will they actually do it?

[thyarcher]

I hope they do revoke the keys. The cat and mouse game needs to be played, and the keys need to be cracked, and revoked again. It is the only way that the consumer that buys the revoked players can see the garbage that is the current DRM model. Once these formats are severely hindered, and possibly fail, maybe a more sane solution to the copy protection can be agreed upon.

Re:Will they actually do it?

[Mad Marlin]

Someone needs to find the key for the PlayStation 3. That will really twist Sony's panties in a knot. Must protect BluRay ... Must protect PlayStation 3 ...

Re:Will they actually do it?

[Usquebaugh]

Where as licensed firearms are ok in school. "Johnny that 9mm better be licensed son or your in real trouble!"

Re:Will they actually do it?

[Wesley Felter]

As the parent said, there is no such thing as THE key for the PS3. Each individual PS3 unit has a different key. Revoking one particular PS3 won't cause any collateral damage, so there's nothing stopping Sony from doing it.

Re:Will they actually do it?

[Wesley Felter]

if the attacker doesn't publish the compromised player key, the AACS licensing authority doesn't know which key is compromised, and it can not revoke it.

That only applies if there are many keys, which there aren't. Hackers only reverse-engineer software players, and there are only two software players. Worst-case, AACS LA could just revoke both.

Also, cracking DRM is all about revealing secrets; how could you expect the hackers to agree to some kind of "code of silence" when it comes to their work?

Re:Will they actually do it?

[kimvette]

All it takes is a few cycles of this cat-and-mouse game, and the media companies will finally realize that DRM is only wasting THEIR money in terms of licensing the broken encryption technology, the retarded (as in slow) uptake of HD-DVD and Blu-Ray, and decreased sales overall while they're trying to make their customers pay per play, or at least play per player.

Eventually they will come to their senses and ship the content DRM-free. Didn't one of the Harry Potter movies ship DRM-free (no CSS) and still sell very well?

Re:Will they actually do it?

[Above]

I believe your comment is only playing the probabilities. If one software player is broken they may well revoke the key and make that player upgrade. However, if the set of players making up 95% of the software player market are all broken on a monthly basis it will become increasinly costly and inconvenient to have them all revoked each month. Are there any limits on the size of the revokation list? If it got too long, would that break the hardware players?

While breaking one or more hardware players may force the situation sooner, this may be a war of attrition.

Re:Will they actually do it?

[Anonymous Coward]

It is infeasible for each individual PS3 to have an individual key. It is theoretically possible to have a different key for different manufacturing runs, but not definitely not on a per-unit basis.

Re:Will they actually do it?

[kefler]

I too am really interested to see what will happen. The DRM has all these levers they can pull, but they aren't without consequences.

What really needs to happen is someone needs to get the device key of a HARDWARE player, like one of those $1000 samsung bluray players. Then I'd like to see what happens. It would only take 1 person to somehow get the key out and post it for all those players to be in danger of being revoked.

Re:Will they actually do it?

[swillden]

Breaking a major hardware player is a big deal, however breaking a software player is fairly trivial in the long-run as long as it can be upgraded.

Breaking a single hardware device won't be a big deal, either, since the key revocation scheme allows that single player to be revoked (not the brand, not the model, not even the factory batch -- that single, specific physical player). What would be big would be finding a way to easily extract the keys from a model, or, even better, a whole class of players. Then, the hackers could just do a player every few weeks, and the worst case for those of us who like to back up the movies we buy is that we'd have to wait a few weeks after the release before we could back it up.

The way AACS key revocation works is that there is a massive binary tree of binary trees of possible encryption keys. The "main" tree is 31 levels deep (allowing for 2^31 possible player devices) and each node has a number of "shadow" trees associated with it (specifically, nodes in layer n of the main tree have n-1 shadow trees). Each player is given a carefully selected and unique set of ~500 keys, from which it can derive an enormous number of keys -- almost every key in that big tree of trees, in fact.

The "almost" in the last sentence is important.

Assuming no players are revoked, each disk needs only have few copies of the media key[1], each encrypted with a "processing" high up in the tree. All players have keys needed to derive[2] these processing keys. When a player is revoked, the publishers carefully select a set of processing keys to use so that every player *except* the revoked player can derive the processing keys. There's a fairly simple algorithm to select such a set of keys, and the structure of the trees ensures that for any set R of revoked players, no more than 2|R| processing keys need to be used (|R| means "size of R", in case that's not obvious).

Each encrypted copy of the media key consumes 32 bytes of disk space, so, assuming a million players have been broken and revoked, each new disk will "waste" 32 MB on encrypted media keys. Given the capacity of HD-DVD and Blu-Ray disks, 32MB is a pittance, so it really is practical for publishers to revoke every key that is extracted and published -- the hard part will be finding them all.

ANY software player will have to put their key in memory at some point while it's running, the new key will be found quickly. And the keys for almost all software players will be found.

Yep, that's a seriously hard problem to solve -- especially when you consider that time and manpower are 100% on the side of the attackers. The attackers have a disadvantage in that they have to work with binary-only code, but if this goes on for long enough, I'll bet the major software players will be so thoroughly reverse engineered that this will cease to be a very meaningful disadvantage.

Large-scale DRM simply cannot work. If you give the devices to enough interested and technically skilled people, they will be broken again, and again, and again.

And, of course, if publishers *did* somehow manage to get ahead of this game, it would just mean that the hackers would keep the keys to themselves, publishing them only to small groups of trusted friends -- all of whom would be ripping movies like mad and making torrents available so that everyone else can get them.

[1] The Media Key is used to encrypt the title keys, which are used to encrypt the titles. There are generally multiple titles per disk -- usually one for the main feature, and others for each of the extras, some for bits of the animated menus, etc. I've been puzzling over exactly how many copies of the media key are required in the no-devices-revoked case, and I haven't been able to figure it out yet. An answer and explanation from someone who understands this stuff well would be appreciated.

[2] The keys given to the players are called "device keys". The players l

Re:Will they actually do it?

[Schraegstrichpunkt]

Hardware players individually, or entire models of hardware players?

Re:Will they actually do it?

[Schraegstrichpunkt]

Also, cracking DRM is all about revealing secrets; how could you expect the hackers to agree to some kind of "code of silence" when it comes to their work?

The academics won't, but the tradespeople will.

Re:Will they actually do it?

[Anonymous Coward]

But it only takes one to figure it out for us all to benefit.

Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.
Margaret Mead

Re:Will they actually do it?

[vadim_t]

IIRC, there's a key per player model, maybe at best per manufacturing run, not per player instance.

Making a key per player copy is infeasible. How would you do that? Basically, every disk would need to have the data encrypted with each player's key. That number would be in the millions.

Re:Will they actually do it?

[Sillygates]

They dont care about software players, people those people can always download a new "security fix" and not even know the difference. What we need is to have the keys for the most popular hardware players to be released, after there is widespread adoption.

Re:Will they actually do it?

[SteveAyre]

And that leaves the consumer where? A software player can be easily patched using the net in seconds, which almost everyone has now. A hardware player will need servicing or replacing.

Given the cheap price, I imagine most people would not bother and would just buy another. Of a different make, since it would damage that manufacturer's reputation. They probably wouldn't even know that it would need updating since while their new DVD won't play their old ones would still work.

Re:Will they actually do it?

[swillden]

Each encrypted copy of the media key consumes 32 bytes of disk space, so, assuming a million players have been broken and revoked, each new disk will "waste" 32 MB on encrypted media keys.

Correction -- If a million players are revoked, up to *two* million copies of the media key will be required, consuming 64MB of space on each disk. However, that's only if the million broken devices are selected so that revocation is maximally inefficient. If they're selected at random, on average only ~1.25M MKB entries are required, so only 40MB of the disk must be used for MKB entries. That's 0.2% of a single-layer HD-DVD and 0.08% of a dual-layer Blu-Ray. Or, it's about 20 seconds of HD video, assuming that a single-layer HD-DVD will hold two hours. If a dual layer Blu-Ray disk contained video encoded at such a high bit rate that it would only hold two hours, the MKB block would eat up space equivalent to six seconds of video -- and that's with a *million* revoked keys).

In practice, of course, the time unavailable for video will bever be a problem. If the movie and the MKB can't both fit, you just tweak the encoding to drop the average bitrate by a 10-20 kbps. When you're encoding normally at 8,000-20,000 kbps no one will be able to see the reduced quality. Also, even regular DVDs are rarely within 100MB of being full. There's plenty of room available for "large" MKBs.

Re:Will they actually do it?

[ankarbass]

You first have to find someone who bought a playstation 3.

Re:Will they actually do it?

[krs804]

I, like most Americans, don't have the time or interest to watch most movies more than once. That's why Blockbuster Video exists. Therefore, I couldn't care less about DRM. However, if they start fighting this battle and it ends up costing us money, to stop a (relatively) few pirates, then they will loose a lot of money. After all, video sales did fine even though it was very easy to defeat the copy protection.

Re:Will they actually do it?

[swillden]

Making a key per player copy is infeasible. How would you do that? Basically, every disk would need to have the data encrypted with each player's key. That number would be in the millions.

It's not only feasible, it's exactly what AACS does. Each player has about 500 keys from which it can derive billions more, all structured so that a disk only needs a small number of media keys encrypted with "processing" keys, which the players can derive from the device keys they have. The number of copies of the media key that must be present on each disk is guaranteed to be no more than 2r, where r is the number of individual players that have been revoked. On average, only 1.25r media keys are required.

Though the application is evil, the "subset-difference tree" concept used to make all this work is a very cool bit of math.

Re:Will they actually do it?

[digitalchinky]

More than a few cell phone manufacturers do unique keys for each handset already, why would it be so hard to have a custom jig do the same for any other hardware device?

Re:Will they actually do it?

[Kadin2048]

Each individual PS3 unit has a different key.

This is not the case. The media key block on the HD discs contains the media key, encrypted with several hundred device keys. There's not nearly enough room in the key block to have an individual key for each player produced, it's just enough for each model, or perhaps each hardware revision / production run of each model.

There are a finite number of keys on each disc. The way keys are "revoked" is by simply not using that key on any new disc pressings. A disc made (prior to) today, on which the key block contains a compromised key, have been well and truly cracked.

Re:Will they actually do it?

[LiquidCoooled]

The protection scheme allocates an amount of space on each new disk to list the codes for all de-activated player keys.
It is one key per revision of software/silicon, otherwise to revoke every machine/instance of software you would need to store the possible keys used in every device/installation ever known to the system.
There is simply no space for that.

Re:Will they actually do it?

[mjjw]

Wrong. You don't have to keep the key in memory. Keep the bytes that make up the mey encrypted in memory - something simple should protect against the sort of casual inspection that revealed these keys - just flip the bits, rotate them by a specified amount - add a number to each of the stored bytes ... you name it. The actual key could then be reconstructed within CPU registers without ever storing it in main memory where it can be probed. Yes debugging tools may allow access to the contents of CPU registers and a clever hacker may be able to spot the encrypted key and figure out how to decode it - but it would certainly make it a lot harder!

Re:Will they actually do it?

[Yartrebo]

How do you know that r is small? If you know how to crack one box, then the information can be passed around and plenty more player keys cracked and released.

How large can r get before there's some serious performance issues (either filling up the disc or requiring a long boot-up time)?

Re:Will they actually do it?

[Anonymous Coward]

AACS LA could just revoke both.

On what basis? Software companies are businesses. They won't allow their keys to be revoked without reason. After all, updates are expensive (to make and distribute, plus they cause significant customer dissatisfaction). Not naming the player would have caused quite a problem for the AACS proponents. Now they have a scapegoat and can make an example of him. The captcha for this comment is "stoning".

Re:Will they actually do it?

[TheSkyIsPurple]

Will they really? I don't know the algorithm, so I may be talking out my ass, but is there any reason the entire key HAS to be in memory all at one time?
Is there any reason it can't encrypted, split and moved around, only to be streamed to where it needs to go?
Can't they reimplement the algorithm slightly to allow this?

Granted, that doesn't make it undiscoverable, but it does make it considerably harder.

I remember code in the past that was compressed and would decompress itself in pieces in different parts of RAM, and twiddle jump tables to pull everything together. They were defeated, but took longer to get done. (With DEP enabled on alot of machines this may not be implementable anymore... I dunno really.)

Re:Will they actually do it?

[Anonymous Coward]

And it is a ludicrous game indeed. Saw this guy selling non-drm dvd's from his trunk the other day.. for cheap too. New movies as well. He said he hooked his dvd to his betamax vcr and then to his computer running linux and v4linux with the dvd burner. Man, that DRM did'nt stand a chance. ha ha..

Re:Will they actually do it?

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

Hardware players can be individually revoked.

They *could* be if the manufacturers were fully implementing the AACS spec, but they aren't even close to doing that. AACS is fully spec'd but the actual implementations are just bare minimums.

Re:Will they actually do it?

[Detritus]

Target shooting is an international sport. Although it is probably too politically incorrect for most school systems, I've heard of marksmanship teams at some high schools. It's probably safer than driver's education.

Re:Will they actually do it?

[statusbar]

Well, that's the point, right? There are no handguns licensed to high school kids. Imagine if debuggers were strictly controlled.

We need the right to bear debuggers...

--jeffk++

p.s. After all, what do they have against stopping buggery? ;-)

Re:Will they actually do it?

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

There are a finite number of keys on each disc. The way keys are "revoked" is by simply not using that key on any new disc pressings. A disc made (prior to) today, on which the key block contains a compromised key, have been well and truly cracked.

It is actually more sophisticated than that, relying on each individual unit having a certain set of 512 keys out of a billion or so, and then providing only enabling a subset of possible keys on each disc in the MKB. The trick is once they know the specific unit they want to disable, they enable a set of keys in the MKB on the disc such that all the "good" players have at least one key in the MKB but the "bad" player does not.

See this about NNL in AACS

That's how it could work in theory. In practice its going to be hard to identify any compromised hardware players such that they can be revoked and chances are they have not been distributing keys with unique combos per player yet (if they ever do).

Re:Will they actually do it?

[a 2 Bathtub Larva]

Which in turn makes CDs and movies more expensive to cover their costs, which in turn makes more and more people consider downloading them, which in turn....

It's like RIAA Doug... "BOOM! Footshot!"

Re:Will they actually do it?

[Anonymous Coward]

Thanks, I was going to post nearly the same information. There is just one additional piece that I would like to add. The way the key tree is set up hardware and software players receive their keys from different branches of the tree. Each hardware player gets a unique key. Each version of a software player gets a unique key (but that key is common to all copies of that version). Additionally, there is little reason for them NOT to revoke the keys of a software player since those keys are already only valid for a short time (I can't recall if this is 6 or 18 months from issuance).

Re:Will they actually do it?

[triso]

I, like most Americans, don't have the time or interest to watch most movies more than once. That's why Blockbuster Video exists. Therefore, I couldn't care less about DRM.... With the crap that is coming out now, my mates and I don't even find it worth putting a downloaded movie onto a DVD-R disc. It is a waste of 50 cents and 30 minutes of our time.

Re:Will they actually do it?

[swillden]

How large can r get before there's some serious performance issues (either filling up the disc or requiring a long boot-up time)?

Each copy of the media key consumes 32 bytes. 16 bytes for a descriptor and 16 bytes for the encrypted key. So, on average, the publishers have to use another 40 bytes of disk space per player key published. Given that single-layer HD-DVDs hold 15,000,000,000 bytes, they have plenty of space to handle any conceivable number of revoked players.

I went through some numbers in this comment

As for startup time, the process of comparing each descriptor in the MKB to the device's own "key path" is quite efficient. It requires four 32-bit integer operations, two ANDs and two comparisons. On average, 50% of the checked descriptors will fail after the first AND/compare and the second pair of operations can be skipped entirely. Even a very low-powered processor will be able to check over a million of descriptors per second.

Reading the MKB might be a bigger issue, and it's not very big. The nominal data rate of HD-DVD is 40Mbps = 5MBps. For one million revoked keys, it would take a device eight seconds to read the entire MKB from the disk. BUT, even first-gen players are probably capable of somewhat higher data rates, reducing that time -- and 8 seconds is only mildly annoying anyway. I also highly doubt we'll see a million revoked devices unless they decide to revoke large blocks (all of a particular model, for example), and contiguous blocks of devices require far fewer MKB entries to revoke.

No, I think the key revocation scheme is eminently workable, except for one thing: If the hackers can just crack a nice, constant stream of devices, say, one per week, every released disk will be decryptable by the time it hits the shelves. See, publishers can only revoke players whose keys have been published. But it takes at least a week or two between the moment the disks are pressed and the time they hit the shelves. In the meantime, another player key set will be released.

So, while the math is cool, and the system does provide the ability to revoke individual players (something I would have said was impossible), it's unlikely that it will pose much difficulty to those who want to copy their disks.

Re:Will they actually do it?

[MoxFulder]

The key will have to be in memory, but there is no reason for it to be unobfuscated. Any kind of simple obfuscation will stop the kind of attack used here. Sure, somebody can start reverse engineering the code to work out the obfuscation, but that takes a lot more skill and time than what these people have spent. It cuts down the number of people who can and are willing to do the work considerably.

Did you RTFA? The folks who've accomplished this already got around a decent amount of obfuscation. They are determined and obviously have some coding skills. A couple more layers of obfuscation would be just another few weeks' or months' delay.

ALL DRM IS OBFUSCATION! The decryption keys must inevitably be revealed to the firmware/software, and it is at this point that they can be intercepted. How many times do I have to say this? *Sigh*

Re:Will they actually do it?

[innocent_white_lamb]

I had a class in safe firearm handling (that involved handling firearms, of course) in high school. In Canada.
 
Of course, that was also 30 years ago so things have probably changed since.

Re:Will they actually do it?

[MoxFulder]

Who the hell cares WHERE the key is kept? You want flipping bits and all that crap? It's been done in CSS with DVDs... look how well that turned out. *ALL DRM IS OBFUSCATION*

Re:Will they actually do it?

[MoxFulder]

Will they really? I don't know the algorithm, so I may be talking out my ass, but is there any reason the entire key HAS to be in memory all at one time?

No, you could trivially devise an algorithm that didn't require the entire plaintext decryption key to be available at once. Just take an existing algorithm, double the key length, and use each half to decrypt half the data.

Is there any reason it can't encrypted, split and moved around, only to be streamed to where it needs to go?

Sure, but this does not increase security. It simply moves the weak point in the system from the decryption routines to the routines where the key gets divided up. Watch those algorithms, and you'll get the key.

All DRM is obfuscation. This is just more obfuscation...

Re:Will they actually do it?

[MoxFulder]

Nope. Hardware players can be individually revoked.

Only in theory... the manufacturers don't yet implement the full AACS spec which would allow this.

Furthermore, if hardware players had completely individualized keys, then this would open up new vulnerabilities. The individualized keys would of necessity be stored in Flash or EEPROM, since the economies of scale required to manufacturer semiconductors inexpensively don't allow fabricating unique ASICs for each player.

This would, of course, help hackers narrow down the location of the hardware keys in the system. :-P

Re:Will they actually do it?

[XStylus]

My wager is that not only will they revoke the key, but they'll prohibit software players entirely on any 32-bit OS platform.

If you guys manage to extract the key while running a 64-bit version of the program, then I'll be impressed.

Re:Will they actually do it?

[Firethorn]

Heh...

In my state, the only 'license' you need for firearms is for CCW, the firearms themselves are completly unlicensed.

Now, schools are currently strictly off limits for carrying. Now tell me; is it truly bad for a CCW holder, having taken training, passed a test and background investigation truly a threat to the school's occupants? More than that, is the restriction going to do any good if an individual decides to shoot the place up? I'm sure that that one extra felony out of the dozens will be the thing to make the potential killer decide not to do it.

Bleh...

Back on topic, I hope they figure out a way to crack at least a few of the hardware keys; They're there, we just have to figure them out. I also hope that these laws will start going away as the old guard in the political world go away and new blood comes in. Some senators have been in for decades.

Re:Will they actually do it?

[Anonymous Coward]

Software players you say? What do you think is running on that chip inside your hardware player?

It's pretty damn hard to avoid sofware these days, good luck with that :)

Re:Will they actually do it?

[countach]

Pretty hard to ban a tool that just dumps memory. It's as simple as it gets.

Re:Will they actually do it?

[digitalchinky]

Ah, you are indeed correct, I never followed through on the logic!

Re:Will they actually do it?

[TheVelvetFlamebait]

I don't think they care one way or the other. As long as they only sue "pirates", and vilify them to the public, they will have a Public image in some eyes.

However, the moment they start revoking players, the sh*t will really hit the fan. They'll have thoroughly pissed off legitimate users who aren't even trying to exercise any of their fair use rights (apart from watching the thing). This is the sort of thing that can really alienate their supporters (including politicians).

Re:Will they actually do it?

[howlingmadhowie]

no, of course they won't actually do it. they make far more money taking the odd person to court and scaring others just enough that the average person decides to buy the fucking dvd. they don't want to force people to buy them, that would be bad for business.

Re:Will they actually do it?

[UfoZ]

Apples and oranges. You don't put mass-produced read-only media into cell phones.

Re:Will they actually do it?

[AmiMoJo]

> the hard part will be finding them all

Surely, this is the biggest weakness. Say I rip a key from a hardware player, and then use it to decrypt a load of movies and then share them via P2P. Once decrypted, there would be no way to tell which key was used to decrypt the movie. All it needs is for one ripping group to find a key and keep it to themselves.

Re:Will they actually do it?

[makomk]

Did you RTFA? The folks who've accomplished this already got around a decent amount of obfuscation. They are determined and obviously have some coding skills. A couple more layers of obfuscation would be just another few weeks' or months' delay.

Yes and no. All the keys were found in the same region of memory in clear, obfuscated plaintext. They were only in memory for a short period of time, but that just meant patient individuals had to run the program slowly, take frequent memory dumps, and test the area of memory for the key every so often.

Re:Will they actually do it?

[DrXym]

Someone needs to find the key for the PlayStation 3. That will really twist Sony's panties in a knot. Must protect BluRay ... Must protect PlayStation 3 ...

Chances are they'd just shove out a new firmware update and that would be that. No doubt there would be a running battle to reissue keys but they'd do if it they had to, and would jiggle the hardware too if necessary to prevent any cracks from working on all machines.

Re:Will they actually do it?

[IamTheRealMike]

In fact AACS contains a variety of traitor-tracing algorithms designed to find the player key used to decrypt a title even if that player key is never published. How well the mechanism works I could not say, as I don't think it's been used yet. But suffice it to say, AACS is significantly more advanced than CSS and takes into account many different attack scenarios.

I don't get what the big deal with this story is. A badly written player was cracked. Its keys will be revoked, a software update will be offered. Protecting keys in memory is theoretically impossible, but in practice you can make it very difficult such that only a few people have the time, patience and skill to extract the keys. The Microsoft WM DRM splits the keys into pieces and scatters it throughout the heap, meaning you can't use the approach muslix used - you actually have to reverse engineer large parts of the code to find out how the key is split up and where the pieces go, a significantly harder proposition. WM DRM has been cracked in the past, but that was before they started splitting up the keys.

Re:Will they actually do it?

[MBGMorden]

Only individual MODELS can be revoked. Not just a single leaky one. There's not enough keys for that. If they blacklist an actual hardware player, then there's going to be hell to pay. Either the manufacturer is going to have to do a recall (which is gonna cause a Type 2 Shitstorm), or the players are just gonna quit working and people will have to buy new ones (resulting in a Type 5 Shitstorm).

Re:Will they actually do it?

[Anonymous Coward]

Thank you for posting. Insightful and informative, I'd mod you both if I could.

Re:Will they actually do it?

[Chmcginn]

I also hope that these laws will start going away as the old guard in the political world go away and new blood comes in. Some senators have been in for decades.

But there will always be senators who've been in for decades. "If it's not broke don't fix it" applies heavily to most people's voting decisions, and unlike slashdot, the average american votes on one thing - the economy, stupid. As long as the (local government contractor/military base/whatever) is getting federal funds and putting money into the local economy, probably half of those who bother voting won't vote out of the current incumbent, regardless of what is going on with other issues.

Hell, I think for a good percentage of people, there aren't any other issues.

Re:Will they actually do it?

[Chmcginn]

No, I think the key revocation scheme is eminently workable, except for one thing: If the hackers can just crack a nice, constant stream of devices, say, one per week, every released disk will be decryptable by the time it hits the shelves. See, publishers can only revoke players whose keys have been published. But it takes at least a week or two between the moment the disks are pressed and the time they hit the shelves. In the meantime, another player key set will be released.

There's another flaw - the studios need to know what player key sets have been compromised. If ATARI Vampire cracks multiple player keysets, but only releases the player keyset for most of them, the studios wouldn't know which of the keysets was compromised. And then (probably through a third party), publish the title keysets for everything else coming out.

No, I think the problem is (sans trusted computing) software players will be cracked, as long as you can play them on a machine you control. Hardware players will be cracked, too, unless they incorporate some seriously paranoid security measures. (I'm thinking epoxy-block everything around the decrypt device, with a fairly large capacitor designed to burn up the flash memory if the epoxy is disturbed.)

Re:Will they actually do it?

[Plutonite]

Yes but if I undertand correctly, the new processing keys (selected just so that the "bad" player can't derive them) need to be provided on all future media in order for this to work. It is not easy to replace every single retail disc in existence(in response to a revokation), and the likely situation will be that you will have a mingled bunch of discs , some of which are playable on "bad" players and others which have new keys, and hence are not. The industry will have to go through a million complete production cycles to truly wipe out a million offending players, if the offending keys are published at the right times.

I think you've already said this, but the point needs emphasis so forgive me.

PS: Why the hell do they have the extra layers of encryption? Media key + title key.. why not just have the data encrypted with the "processing keys", since they are the only real secret??

Re:Will they actually do it?

[SillyNickName4me]

Yes and no. All the keys were found in the same region of memory in clear, obfuscated plaintext. They were only in memory for a short period of time, but that just meant patient individuals had to run the program slowly, take frequent memory dumps, and test the area of memory for the key every so often.

Since the program will need the key and not some obfusicated version, for decryption, there is no way to always keep it obfusicated.

Re:Will they actually do it?

[AmiMoJo]

I am somewhat surprised that no-one has come up with the idea of making a "fake" graphics driver to circumvent DRM like WM.

There already exists a special "mirror" driver for TightVNC which accelerates VNC connections by eliminating the need for polling. Instead, calls are made to it like any other graphics driver, which I can then comminicate to VNC. Presumably, video could be intercepted this way too. A little bit like optical drive emulators.

Re:Will they actually do it?

[TechForensics]

What happened for MacroVision will probably happen for all new content-protection systems: Protection will be widely used, but inexpensive or not-too-technically-difficult workarounds will exist. This will keep 80% or more of the public from defeating the protections, but let the technorati romp as before. Just my two cents.

Re:Will they actually do it?

[Anonymous Coward]

Breaking a single hardware device won't be a big deal, either, since the key revocation scheme allows that single player to be revoked (not the brand, not the model, not even the factory batch -- that single, specific physical player).

This is tremendously good news for us rippers.

This means that if I obtain a device key, then all I need to do is to keep my key secret.

I don't need to worry about new titles revoking my single specific player, because there's no way they would know that I had discovered the key to my own player. My key will keep on working for me forever, as long as I keep it secret.

The only problem I can see is if the decrypted content contains watermarked (or steganographic) information about the identity of my specific player. (Does it?) If so, then we (the ripper community) will need to develop a post-processor to blur the watermark.

Re:Will they actually do it?

[swillden]

Yes but if I undertand correctly, the new processing keys (selected just so that the "bad" player can't derive them) need to be provided on all future media in order for this to work. It is not easy to replace every single retail disc in existence(in response to a revokation), and the likely situation will be that you will have a mingled bunch of discs , some of which are playable on "bad" players and others which have new keys, and hence are not.

They won't bother replacing any existing disks. If a key is revoked today, then all new disks published from today forward will be unplayable on that player. All disks published before today will work fine. I doubt they'll even bother remastering images of already-published disks so that future pressings will be "safe".

I think you've already said this, but the point needs emphasis so forgive me.

And I felt the need to clarify your emphasis, so please forgive me :-)

PS: Why the hell do they have the extra layers of encryption? Media key + title key.. why not just have the data encrypted with the "processing keys", since they are the only real secret??

Why use media and title keys? I don't know, but I would guess it's mainly for flexibility and security during production. Whoever is responsible for final encoding and preparation of each title can generate a random key and perform the encryption, without any access to processing keys. Similarly, whoever does the disk authoring can generate a random key and perform the title key encryptions without needing the processing keys. After everything else is ready, the media key can be submitted to the organization that does have all of the processing keys for the current revocation set. That organization can then generate the MKB and send it back, completing the disk image.

That approach means that security considerations don't slow down the preparation and authoring stages, allowing them to be widely distributed while keeping the keys tightly controlled.

Another, more theoretical, benefit is that it reduces the amount of ciphertext generated from the processing keys. Were some practical attack on AES to be discovered, odds are that it would require huge amounts of ciphertext and (probably) the corresponding plaintext. If the actual video data were encrypted with the processing keys, they could perhaps be broken by such an attack.

In practice, I don't think such a break of AES is likely, but cryptographers are accustomed to designing with this idea in mind, and almost reflexively try to reduce the usage of the most sensitive keys.

Re:Will they actually do it?

[swillden]

This means that if I obtain a device key, then all I need to do is to keep my key secret.

Yep. And, as another poster pointed out, your best approach would be to recover the media keys and publish those. With a good on-line databases of media keys, rippers and players could easily decrypt any AACS-protected media, and publishers would have no way to know which devices to revoke.

The only problem I can see is if the decrypted content contains watermarked (or steganographic) information about the identity of my specific player. (Does it?)

AACS includes no watermarking or tagging provisions.

Re:Will they actually do it?

[Goaway]

Hardware players individually, as I said.

Re:Will they actually do it?

[Goaway]

Please go read the actual AACS spec, or some summary of it. What I said was correct. Individual players can be revoked.

Re:Will they actually do it?

[Goaway]

Only in theory... the manufacturers don't yet implement the full AACS spec which would allow this.

Do you have a reference for this?

Furthermore, if hardware players had completely individualized keys, then this would open up new vulnerabilities. The individualized keys would of necessity be stored in Flash or EEPROM, since the economies of scale required to manufacturer semiconductors inexpensively don't allow fabricating unique ASICs for each player.

This would, of course, help hackers narrow down the location of the hardware keys in the system. :-P

It might, but it still wouldn't help the fact that as soon as they got the keys, they would be revoked, negating the usefulness of the attack.

Re:Will they actually do it?

[Goaway]

Of course there is, and any decent programmer would know this. You can modify the algorithm to directly use obfuscated values, or only ever keep parts of the key in registers and never in memory, or a combination of the two. It is not undefeatable, of course, but it requires a lot more effort to defeat than this one.

Re:Will they actually do it?

[Goaway]

Did you RTFA?

Not only did I RTFA, I have been following the threads from the start.

The folks who've accomplished this already got around a decent amount of obfuscation.

There was zero obfuscation.

They are determined and obviously have some coding skills.

Some, but nobody has even touched a disassembler yet. That requires quite a bit more skill than looking at hex dumps and implementing AES from specs.

The decryption keys must inevitably be revealed to the firmware/software

You could write an alternative implementation of AES that does not use keys in the normal form, but directly uses obfuscated values. You can make sure values are kept in registers and the entire key is never present. These can be defeated, but it takes a large amount of work with a debugger and disassembler to trace and re-create the algorithms from the machine code. This is a much harder task, and the pool of people who have the skills to do it, and the willingness, shrinks quickly.

Re:Will they actually do it?

[Goaway]

Perhaps you should tell that to the people who actually made the AACS spec and included that very feature? I'm sure they'll be glad to be corrected on that matter.

Re:Will they actually do it?

[Goaway]

This is not the case. The media key block on the HD discs contains the media key, encrypted with several hundred device keys.

Perhaps before shooting your mouth off, you should actually try and read the AACS spec and see if that is true or not? Because it isn't.

Re:Will they actually do it?

[MoxFulder]

Do you have a reference for this?

Read doom9, the rest of this /. thread, http://www.freedom-to-tinker.com/?p=1122, etc. It's quite puzzling that the manufacturers haven't yet used the full AACS spec.

It might, but it still wouldn't help the fact that as soon as they got the keys, they would be revoked, negating the usefulness of the attack.

Actually, if per-player keys became the norm, the AACS crackers would stop releasing device keys (the most powerful) and start releasing processing keys instead. Those can't be definitely traced to individual devices or models, since every device has a large subset of them. With a big enough pool of processing keys available, a software program could basically emulate an authorized device...

Or they could just use the cracked device to crack a big pile of discs, and release the keys for the individual discs.

There's more than one way to skin a cat :-)

Re:Will they actually do it?

[Goaway]

Please re-read my comment. Hardware players can be individually revoked. Not lines of players. Individual, single, physical players.

Re:Will they actually do it?

[MSZ]

Driver like this will never be signed. For normal work lack of signature will be just an annoyance at installation time, but DRM players will check signatures and refuse to work if there's unsigned driver. AKA Protected Video Path (c)Microsoft...

Re:Will they actually do it?

[MoxFulder]

Not only did I RTFA, I have been following the threads from the start.

My apologies, shouldn't have been so quick with that.

There was zero obfuscation.

Some, but nobody has even touched a disassembler yet. That requires quite a bit more skill than looking at hex dumps and implementing AES from specs.

You could write an alternative implementation of AES that does not use keys in the normal form, but directly uses obfuscated values. You can make sure values are kept in registers and the entire key is never present. These can be defeated, but it takes a large amount of work with a debugger and disassembler to trace and re-create the algorithms from the machine code. This is a much harder task, and the pool of people who have the skills to do it, and the willingness, shrinks quickly.

As I read it, the WinDVD software definitely obfuscated the key... in time rather than in memory. There was only a brief execution time window in which it was in the clear. What you're proposing is some kind of obfuscation in terms of deviating from the official spec's straightforward AES algorithm. I agree that would make things more difficult, you'd have to disassemble to find out what the modified algorithm is doing differently.

Certainly would be more difficult, I'm not sure if the folks involved would be any less determined though.

I feel that as the DRM gets more and more complex, the prestige and economic value of cracking it goes up. So bigger and better people will get drawn to the challenge of cracking it. I mean... if AACS went uncracked for a year or two, I think we'd see some pirate-DVD companies in Asia actually *paying* hackers to work on it. (I don't want it to sound like I'm supporting large-scale piracy, but I think the economic incentive for those people would inevitably cause them to invest in cracking efforts.)

Re:Will they actually do it?

[Goaway]

Read doom9, the rest of this /. thread, http://www.freedom-to-tinker.com/?p=1122, etc. It's quite puzzling that the manufacturers haven't yet used the full AACS spec.

The freedom-to-tinker.com link, at least, does not say that NNL key trees are not being used. It says that they are not using randomized processing keys, which is another matter entirely. It is weird that they are not using it, but it has nothing to do with lacking implementations in players, but with lacking implementations of the full standard when mastering new discs.

Or they could just use the cracked device to crack a big pile of discs, and release the keys for the individual discs.

This is unworkable due to being too big an effort. It might work now that releases are few, but if one of the formats grows to the same popularity as DVDs, that plan is impossible.

Re:Will they actually do it?

[Goaway]

I feel that as the DRM gets more and more complex, the prestige and economic value of cracking it goes up.

Most of these attacks are temporary, though. They can be circumvented by revoking keys and patching the software. This means that there is a need for a constant stream of cracks to keep new discs playing. Sure, the first person to crack a device key gets his share of fame, but what about the 135th person to do it three years down the road?

This is a war of attrition between hackers and content producers, and the outcome is far from certain at this stage. Barring any real vulnerabilities being discovered in the algorithms (unlikely, since this time they chose good ones), the question is merely who will tire of the game first.

Re:Will they actually do it?

[rekoil]

Could it be possible that the hardware players contain multiple player keys, so that they don't become toasters if a single key is broken and later revoked?

Then again, if you can get one key out of the player, you'll probably be able to get all of them...never mind...

Re:Will they actually do it?

[Anonymous Coward]

If they go that route, it's only a matter of time until software HD-DVD/BR players are permanently blacklisted and cease to exist. Consumers won't like that much

Consumers? How about Microsoft? Do you really think that MS will allow the AACS LA to ban all software players? When they spent all that money adding DRM to Vista specifically so that it can play HD content? One of the few selling points MS has with Vista is its ability to play HD content, and you think that MS will let that get taken away from them? I think it's pretty safe to assume that software players will be around for a quite a while, they will just get a little bit more secure.

All your video are belong to us

[Anonymous Coward]

Sincerely, J. Q. Public

Re:All your video are belong to us

[sokoban]

Narrator: In A.D. 2007, war was beginning.

        MPAA: What happen ?
        RIAA: Somebody set up us the bomb.
        RIAA: We get signal.
        MPAA: What !
        RIAA: Main screen turn on.
        MPAA: It's you !!
        J.Q. Public: How are you gentlemen !!
        J.Q. Public: All your video are belong to us.
        J.Q. Public: Your revenue stream are on the way to destruction.
        MPAA: What you say !!
        J.Q. Public: Your business model have no chance to survive make your time.
        J.Q. Public: Ha Ha Ha Ha ....
        RIAA: MPAA !! *
        MPAA: Take off every 'Lawyer' !!
        MPAA: You know what you doing.
        MPAA: Move 'Lawyer'.
        MPAA: For great injustice.

Re:All your video are belong to us

[mgiuca]

It was necessary.

Re:All your video are belong to us

[sokoban]

Getting modded -Redundant and -overrated and then +6 funny kinda sucks though.

Oh well, my karma's been maxed for years.

Introduction of hardware DRM

[gilesjuk]

I'm sure all this cracking of DRM by snooping memory will result in hardware protection being rolled out. Of course it woud need to be in the chipset and CPU.

Of course such restrictions would make debugging your own programs harder if it was always on.

Re:Introduction of hardware DRM

[romland]

In the long run this wouldn't work anyway, at least not on PC's as we know them today. For every device released on the market (be it a media player or some software that types your thoughts) you'd have to plant new DRM in your box, think it would fly with normal users? Doubtful.

The other side of the coin would be if [they] implemented an API to insert new DRM into this protected environment on your motherboard... well, there you go again, back to square one.

The only way this DRM will actually work is to release hardware only products; and not even that is 100% safe. But hey, look at Xbox360, it's standing up good against the hackers. (Yes, you can still pirate the games, but that is not due to the XBox firmware being hacked, it's the DVD players).

Re:Introduction of hardware DRM

[romland]

s/For every device/for every DRM-infested-software/g *sigh*

But I must say I'm increasingly impressed with the people having a go at the XBox360 and the inventive ways they go about snooping pipelines and what-not. Thank [entity] MS gave them a challenge this time around :)

Cool stuff.

Re:Introduction of hardware DRM

[necro2607]

"I'm sure all this cracking of DRM by snooping memory will result in hardware protection being rolled out. Of course it woud need to be in the chipset and CPU."

This is crackable anyways. The original Xbox was cracked by someone building their own data sniffer hardware installed on the system bus. No kidding. People will go to pretty much any length, including hardware modification, to break out of constricting usage limitations (aka DRM)...

Re:Introduction of hardware DRM

[Lumpy]

Problem is they now know a lot more information about the keys. Now you go and grab some firmware images of the popular Panasonic and Pioneer BluRay or HD-DVD players and start digging.

crack some device keys and that will toss monkey fecies in the face of every MPAA executive pretty hard. They dont DARE revoke any keys from the expensive hardware. Pissing off your early adopters, specifically the rich ones will guarentee doom.

Re:Introduction of hardware DRM

[Kjella]

It's not just Microsoft that's been pushing TCPA. There are a lot of companies involved with real experience making secure systems for the military and such. When they have all the pieces connected together, the bus will be encypted. The memory will be encrypted just like the hard disk, even if you try to use special double-access memory chips. The TCPA chip will be integrated into the southbridge (Intel 2008) and you have nothing going in the clear on the bus, it'll probably move to the processor so it'll cover the memory controller too. With heavy pipelined chips they can do it with zero penalty to bandwidth, but a ~15 cycle penalty to latency which I'm sure they can apply to the TCPA curtained memory only. At that point it's hidden in a huge haystack already, but I'm sure they'll throw in tamperproofing too. In short, cracking hardware is going to be terribly much harder than cracking software. The day they can afford to turn off all our non-TCPA systems and say "upgrade or get lost" most of the hacks you see today will come to an end.

Re:Introduction of hardware DRM

[mrchaotica]

What they really need to do is crack the PS3's device key!

Re:Introduction of hardware DRM

[Anonymous Coward]

Go ahead and do that. Idiot. Each hardware player has a unique key, unlike software players. If you get the same brand and model of player that I have, you extract the key and post it online, you get your key revoked and mine is still unaffected.

Re:Introduction of hardware DRM

[compro01]

Go ahead and do that. Idiot. Each hardware player has a unique key, unlike software players. If you get the same brand and model of player that I have, you extract the key and post it online, you get your key revoked and mine is still unaffected.

just because the spec says something doesn't mean it happens in the real world.

Gets on my chimes!

[Anonymous Coward]

All this stuff really gets on my chimes!

Not so fast...!

[bogaboga]

Dudes, this is certainly good news but not so fast!

In fact let that team wait for a lawsuit...if this lawsuit does not materialize, then we can celebrate.

Go to plan B

[TapeCutter]

I think the time has come for to give up on encryption and move to plan B, and no they don't mean plan A + panic, they mean they will be forced to randomly post armed gaurds on customers DVD player's.

Sure it will be somewhat inconvienient and more expensive for customers, but that's the price they are choosing to pay when they turn a blind eye to piracy.

Re:Go to plan B

[TapeCutter]

I was aiming at humour but somehow I hit insightfull?

Re:Go to plan B

[Anonymous Coward]

that's gonna make watching p0rno dvds uncomfortable

selling a secret to consumers...

[LackThereof]

This was only a matter of time.

You can't sell a product with a "secret" key inside it to tech-savvy consumers and expect it to remain secret for any extended period of time.

It just won't work. It's time for this incovenience to end (not that it will).

The hackers are moving too early...

[Anonymous Coward]

They are going too soon. None of the HD formats have "taken off" yet (in any mass market sense - they are high end luxury goods).

DeCss worked because there were a good few million players out there - CSS couldn't be replaced - the critical mass numbers had been passed.

I just get the feeling that the hacker groups are just doing the media companies work for them - use them to show up all the holes then go and make some major modifications before the product goes mass market (which isn't going to be for another year or three the way things are looking at the moment).

Re:The hackers are moving too early...

[ScrewMaster]

That's a good point ... of course, if you make modifications of sufficient magnitude to frustrate existing decryption tools, odds are you just created a whole new set of security holes. Those will also be found. Also, like CSS before it, the technology will have to be implemented by every video hardware and software maker on the planet (well, in China anyway) and sooner or later the details will get out. Furthermore, if (and it's currently a big "if" given the childlike manner this whole media war is being played out by the likes of Sony, Microsoft and the rest) either HD-DVD or Blu-Ray actually does take off and manage to replace the DVD, they'll find themselves in the same situation they were in with CSS. Not that it matters: as the MPAA has admitted the goal is to keep the bar high enough that the vast majority of consumers have no way to bypass the DRM. There's a certain acceptance by these people that there will always be a some degree of infringement going on, they just don't want it too widespread.

Ultimately, the only real way to protect content is going to have remote-controlled content-monitoring LCD shutters surgically implanted in everyone's eyes as soon as they are old enough to enjoy TV (and these creeps would do just that if they could get away with it.) Anything else will be circumvented sooner or later, which they know perfectly well. It's also why the content companies are pushing so damned hard to export US/EU-style IP law around the world and have copyright infringement treated as a heinous crime akin to murder. Once the cops (everywhere) are accustomed to treating copyright infringers as serious criminals, the MPAA and their ilk are hoping and praying that people won't do it anymore.

I think they will be disappointed. I hope they will. There aren't enough jails to hold everyone that ever violated a copyright, or exercised fair-use rights in countries that support them.

Re:The hackers are moving too early...

[Anonymous Coward]

MOD anonymous parent UP!!!!!!!!

Re:The hackers are moving too early...

[Anonymous Coward]

OP here, ultimately I do agree with you - what the media companies are attempting to do is just straight up impossible - for us to see the content means that a fundamental flaw exists.

That being said I think that while it is impossible, it has become far more improbably since the CSS days. Not only more complex and flexible encryption schemes, but also hardware integration with displays, mean that this is a far tougher battle than it used to be. And by exposing both their methods of attack, and holes found so far, at this early stage of the war, means I think that the hacker groups are just making their job harder (if the media companies respond while they can). How much harder is up for debate.

In the long term there really only is one route, Douglas Adams always seemed to have a way of looking forward and cutting through the mist. At the hight of the P2P downloading /P2P shutdowns / beginnings of legal action he confidently predicted that in the end restrictive models of licensing simply wouldn't work and that liberal licences, coupled with micropayment solutions would (and simply had to) dominate. Low cost, high degree of freedom, large volumes of sales - all sides are happy. I know I for one wouldn't have bought half the amount of DVD's that I had over the last 6 years if I didn't know that I could back them all up to a hard disk and that I wouldn't be left with a load of worthless doorstops in 15 years time when there were no players or the disks had become warped.

Nobody other than the media firms wants DRM, and unlike the chants that have been going on here for the last 5+ years, I am actually seeing this becoming a mainstream voice now - and that is critically important - folks on here are a minority - but when the mainstream take action then the media firms have to respond, or their bottom line is knocked.

Re:The hackers are moving too early...

[billcopc]

The thing that amuses me the most with DVD, HD, BluRay etc, is the physicality. It's 2007, physical medium is so last century! I could probably download just about any movie in less time that it would take me to walk down to the video club and rent it, plus I don't have to worry about getting a scratched disc. My ISP is nothing special, since I'm stuck with a retarded mega-corp cable company that's always 10 years behind for everything (on purpose!)

The dumbest thing about DRM is that it's trying to "protect" something in your physical possession. There's DRM on every DVD disc I own, but they're idly collecting dust in a box because I ripped them all to my media server, because I much prefer browsing a list of all my movies onscreen, jukebox-style with a live link to the IMDB, than having to juggle hundreds of jewel cases, fussing with the flimsy retention rings, cleaning/scratching/dropping/misplacing yadda yadda. Instead, I just sit my ass down, twiddle my remote for 5 seconds and my selection starts playing immediately. Hell, it takes longer than that for the stupid DVD drive to recognize a disc.

The best part of this story is that I will wait until there is reliable decryption available for High-Def content, just so I can incorporate it into my current media center setup. Eight years ago, I was the kind of guy who drove around with a computer in the car, because skippy scratchy fumbly CDs were obsolete to me, versus a hassle-free sortable searchable MP3 collection. These days kids slap an FM transmitter to their iPod to do the same thing. How sad is it that the average no-job no-life no-future teenager is more technically advanced in their entertainment than the entertainment industry itself with its billions of dollars in annual income ? These billion-dollar imbeciles need to get with the times, hate them as we may, but they could actually make MORE money.

Re:The hackers are moving too early...

[MichaelSmith]

Ultimately, the only real way to protect content is going to have remote-controlled content-monitoring LCD shutters surgically implanted in everyone's eyes as soon as they are old enough to enjoy TV

No thats very weak DRM. You would still be able to recall the movie from your memory without paying for additional licenses.

Okay that does it

[Anonymous Coward]

Would someone PLEASE explain once and for all how AACS works? How is this any different from the previously found keys?

How many keys are there? Why aren't there just one? What's the difference? IS there any difference?

Is this better than the last key uncovered? Are there more keys to uncover?

What is the final ACCS "key"? How many levels are there?

I'm not being ignorant, I'm just confused, and I'm sure I'm not alone.

Thank you.

Re:Okay that does it

[guruevi]

http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=122363

Re:Okay that does it

[wolf08]

I'm semi-ignorant as well, but, here is what I (think =P) I know:

AACS Device keys are the top level. The reason why there is still a debate is because (in theory) studios can issue a new device key, meaning that all players using the old key will be broken.

What I'm fuzzy on:

This device key... Is it specific to the player? Meaning, does a device containing AACS protection have multiple ways to unlock/decode it? It would seem so...

Re:Okay that does it

[Anonymous Coward]

AFAIK, it goes as follows:

Each player (software or hardware) has a key, or actually a tree of keys. Some ingenious trickery is being used so that each player can have its own key, but that isn't done on software players (because it would be a pain to enforce it so each downloader gets a different key).

The disc contains title keys for various player keys. When the player wants to play a disc, it takes its player key, decrypts the disc's title key with it, and decrypts the content with the title key.

Now, two things can happen with hackers in the loop. Either the title key gets sniffed from memory, or the player key does. If the hackers get the title key, the disc can be decrypted by anyone. If the hackers get the player key, any disc that can be read by that player can also be decrypted by anyone.

The logical thing for the *AA to do once they discover that a player key has been leaked is to blacklis that player from future discs - just exclude that one player key. Because of the tree trickery, this is easier than it seems (though I'm not completely sure how it works), so they don't have to have billions of omitted keys.

So the hackers should release the (less powerful) title keys (which aren't bound to any particular players, and thus the *AA can't find out which player has been compromised), or give out player keys to software players they know can never be completely secured. In this case, it seems they've done the latter. If the *AA blacklists WinDVD 8, the hackers can just go download the update all the good consumers need to keep playing their discs, and then just coerce the new key out of it. Rinse and repeat. The only way to stop it is to have a watchman in your CPU - hardware DRM - to keep potential hackers from peeking at the player's memory.

Re:Okay that does it

[flooey]

How many keys are there? Why aren't there just one? What's the difference? IS there any difference?

AACS uses a bunch of different keys in a hierarchical structure. Gradually, the cracks have been revealing keys higher and higher up the food chain. As I understand it, this is a bottom-up description of AACS's key structure:

At the lowest level, every piece of content is encrypted with a Title Key, which is unique to at least an individual title, possibly a particular printing of the title. The original cracks revealed the Title Keys for individual titles one at a time. These can be used to decrypt the content, but don't break the scheme, just the encryption on an individual piece of content.

The Title Key is stored on the actual media, encrypted by the Volume Unique Key, which is unique to a given title.

The Volume Unique Key is the result of a keyed hash of the Volume ID (stored on the media) and a Media Key, which is unique per title.

The Media Key used is generated by combining the Media Key Block (stored on the media) with a key unique to the decrypting device. Each device has a different key, but generates the same Media Key.

I'm not entirely sure why so many keys are used, but that's basically how the scheme works. Previous cracks were based on revealing keys that were title-specific. This one has revealed a device-specific key, which means that until the key is revoked, which would cause all future discs to no longer play on that particular player, any piece of content can be completely decrypted.

Re:Okay that does it

[RealSurreal]

"What is the final ACCS "key"? How many levels are there?"

It seems to go on and on forever. But then you get to the end and a gorilla starts throwing barrels at you.

Re:Okay that does it

[Kjella]

This key doesn't really add anything to what's already done. They could already decrypt every movie by simply sticking it in the player and extracting the key, all this does is make it possible to make a standalone tool to decrypt discs (until they revoke this key, anyway). But if you don't mind breaking the DMCA in the first place, how many would have moral problems getting a copy of WinDVD to extract the key anyway? This really is non-news.

Re:Okay that does it

[flooey]

This key doesn't really add anything to what's already done. They could already decrypt every movie by simply sticking it in the player and extracting the key, all this does is make it possible to make a standalone tool to decrypt discs (until they revoke this key, anyway). But if you don't mind breaking the DMCA in the first place, how many would have moral problems getting a copy of WinDVD to extract the key anyway? This really is non-news.

It's more news in that it could make HD content decryption as universally accessible as DVD decryption currently is. A lot of people might want to extract their HD content but not have the know-how or motivation to do anything beyond "download this program, hit start", though it's less news since I've heard there are already programs that will do that using a list of title keys that's periodically updated over the Internet.

Re:Okay that does it

[swillden]

Each device has a different key, but generates the same Media Key.

As I've mentioned in another post, each device has a whole bunch of keys, which can be used to derive any one of a few billion processing keys. Those processing keys are what are actually used to encrypt the media keys. Device revocation is done by choosing a set of processing keys which are not derivable by any of the revoked devices.

Re:Okay that does it

[alphamugwump]

The ultimate key would be AACS-LA's Root Key. If they could find that one, hollywood would have to revoke everything. Every player in the world would stop playing new disks. If they had the balls to do it.

But this key is enough to decrypt any DVD currently on the market. Unlike before, you don't need a copy of windvd, you could write a standalone program for linux. Previous keys were specific to each movie, and you had to do a ram dump on windvd to find them.

Re:Okay that does it

[LarsG]

The ability to make a stand-alone player is non-news? In my book (and probably in the book of every non-windows user) that's huge news.

Re:Okay that does it

[Villageidiot9390]

It seems to go on and on forever. But then you get to the end and a gorilla starts throwing barrels at you. Here, let me fix that for you...

It seems to go on and on forever. But then you get to the end and a gorilla starts throwing chairs at you. Much better.

Re:Okay that does it

[Anonymous Coward]

It's more news in that it could make HD content decryption as universally accessible as DVD decryption currently is. A lot of people might want to extract their HD content but not have the know-how or motivation to do anything beyond "download this program, hit start", though it's less news since I've heard there are already programs that will do that using a list of title keys that's periodically updated over the Internet.

Yes but it was already possible to have a database of all reversed title keys in a program to do the decryption. Distribution of this kind of program is almost certainly in the same legal status as distribution a device key, so the legality is no different. Furthermore, the title keys cannot be revoked since the discs have been pressed, whereas the device key can be revoked. Any automated software based on a single device key (actually, if I understand correctly we need many devices keys to actually calculate a title key) will only work if that player works. The correct attack IMHO is to publish the title keys still, which was the original breakthrough from muslix.

Re:Okay that does it

[coredog64]

I do believe you've missed the point -- he's paraphrasing a quote from Futurama.

The only reply that makes sense is "You suck!"

Re:Okay that does it

[ozphx]

We're sorry Mario, but the Media Key is in another Block...

Re:Okay that does it

[darkwhite]

DKC FOREVER

Miserable?

[Frosty Piss]

There is simply no way they're going to come up with a DRM scheme that isn't going to make life miserable for the average consumer

I'm not sure what you mean. I buy / rent a movie, put it in my player, and it works fine. Never had a problem. But then, I'm not trying to do something with it that I shouldn't, like copying it when the purchase agreement clearly says I'm not suppose to... Over all, every DVD I've ever used has worked as advertised. I'm not "miserable" at all...

Re:Miserable?

[Anonymous Coward]

My parents bought a DVD with a narrated tour of some ruins they visited on vacation outside the country in order to show their friends. It wasn't region 1, so they couldn't play it. They, like the average non-geek, had no idea about region coding, and of course didn't know that they had to look for a certain "type" of DVD.

When I explained to them why their disc wouldn't play, they were mad. When I gave them a working copy of the disc, they were happy.

Re:Miserable?

[smittyoneeach]

You may have a point. By the time they make the hardware components cheap enough, we can have a small unit that requires only power input to function, and all of this abstract property can remain safely under the control of those with feelings of ownership.
Those who just want to watch/listen/experience can do that.
Those cursed with natural human curiosity can watch the small unit self-destruct when tampered.
But does it sell?

Re:Miserable?

[Anonymous Coward]

I put a DVD in the player, and most of the time the brightness keeps fading in and out. My DVD player is connected to my VCR which is connected to my TV which has only one input. Apparently somebody expects that I copy a DVD to a VHS tape and tries to prevent that by requiring the DVD player to afflict the output signal with Macrovision. I think I don't need to explain how utterly idiotic and counterproductive that is.

Re:Miserable?

[Perseid]

Good luck playing that DVD overseas. Good luck playing that DVD in Linux. Good luck with your new fancy disks if your player gets revoked. And all of this while the people who really ARE doing things they shouldn't are just double-clicking their unrestricted .avi file.

Re:Miserable?

[dangitman]

But then, I'm not trying to do something with it that I shouldn't,

So, am I not "supposed" to watch my DVDs on my old TV? The macrovision protection makes the picture nearly unwatchable. The TV is very nice, and does the job well. Why should I have to throw away a perfectly good TV and buy a new one just to watch a DVD? It doesn't make any sense - if I have to buy a new TV, that's less money for me to spend on DVDs, so the copy protection would actually reduce their sales.

Likewise, have you never bought a DVD from another country? If you're not supposed to do that, then why can I buy DVDs from another country? Sure, you can get region-free DVD players, but not everybody has one - and with "RCE" protection, some titles won't even work on some region-free players. And region-free players are technically illegal in some places.

I also like to watch movies but some titles won't let me go straight to the movie, and instead force me to sit through unskippable ads and FBI warnings. I even had one disc that I bought, which made me sit through a quite long lecture about the evils of piracy, telling me how people who copy DVDs are funding terrorism and destroying the industry. Ironically, it was quite simple to make a copy of that DVD, with the anti-piracy ad removed. If they didn't have that unskippable propaganda at the beginning. If I ever get another disc with that ad, I'm going to return it as defective. I paid to watch the movie, not to be lectured by propaganda.

Re:Miserable?

[Anonymous Coward]

What if the key to your player is decoded. The key to your player is revoked. Any movie you try to play from then on won't play anymore. Whatever you paid for the player is so much wasted money. And you did nothing to deserve that. That's the problem with the whole DRM scheme. Being able to revoke hardware keys means that lots of people who've done nothing get to be penalized on the whim of some corporate guy. They might even revoke the wrong key. But that doesn't matter if you're the poor sob whose perfectly legitimately purchased player won't play his legitimately purchased movies.

Re:Miserable?

[cptgrudge]

But then, I'm not trying to do something with it that I shouldn't, like copying it when the purchase agreement clearly says I'm not suppose to...

What purchase agreement? I agreed to nothing when I bought it. And I'll do whatever the hell I want with the property that I own. Much like I don't use CDs anymore when playing audio content, I don't want to use DVDs when playing movies. So I rip and watch on a HTPC. The process is much more complex than ripping an audio CD, mostly because of the DRM.

The physical media that we buy can become scratched and broken, even when we take care of it. And thanks to the convenient duplicity of ideology that is held by the content companies, we are said to be buying only a license to the content, which happens to have a copy along with it on the media. Good luck getting replacement media so you can exercise that license if a disc happens to get scratched. They want to have their cake and eat it too, so we get, "You should take better care of your discs." and DRM protecting the content.

This is BULLSHIT. There's really no way to get the message across to them, so no more. I won't buy another movie on DRM-protected media. Until they change, or offer a (paid for) download of the video without DRM, I won't be buying another movie. I'll rent from an online source and rip to a media server. Yeah, I'll still watch them and get the content, but I won't purchase the discs anymore.

Illegal? Probably. Unethical? I don't think so, and really, I don't care.

Re:Miserable?

[cpt kangarooski]

I'm not "miserable" at all...

Well, they do say that ignorance is bliss.

I'm not trying to do something with it that I shouldn't, like copying it when the purchase agreement clearly says I'm not suppose to

There is no purchase agreement, actually. When a DVD has a notice on it to the effect of 'copying this DVD is illegal' that isn't even arguably an attempt at forming a contract, it's just a simplistic and one-sided restatement of the law. Believe me, if they wanted to push a contract on you, you'd know it; look at software, which has very prominent EULAs (which are only sometimes found to be valid as a general matter -- the courts are still hashing out whether EULAs are to be allowable or not). The notices on DVDs, CDs, and most other copies of creative works generally don't cut the mustard, nor are they even intended to. But they've got you fooled, and that is really the point.

As for what you can and can't do, it depends. First, let's remember that accessing the plaintext on a DVD is not the same thing as copying the DVD (whether it is encrypted or not). Unauthorized copying of a DVD certainly may be illegal, but it is not illegal in every case; for example, if you could copy a DVD pursuant to fair use (c.f. people ripping CDs to their computers and iPods), then it would not be illegal. But unauthorized access to an encrypted DVD is always illegal, at least in the US. But even that leaves open the ability to unauthorizedly but lawfully copy an encrypted DVD with its encryption intact, and then accessing that new copy in some authorized manner, which is possible since it isn't you that is authorized, but your player. Still, that's all harder than it needs to be; it'd be simpler if the DVD wasn't encrypted in the first place.

So given that there are things which you could lawfully do, given the right circumstances, but which DRM does interfere with, do you think you might end up feeling at least a little miserable at some point?

I know that even if I never needed to do anything that would be legal but for anticircumvention laws, I'd still be upset at the restriction, which I feel is unwise, unreasonable, unwarranted, and unconstitutional.

Re:Miserable?

[Score Whore]

You're making that up. To pass video through your VCR, it will not attempt to recognize the signal, decompose it, recompose it, and send it to your television. It'll just be a little switch that passes the signal directly through to your TV. Additionally every television built during your lifetime has multiple inputs. Stop lying.

Re:Miserable?

[zantolak]

I've noticed this happening as well, on both my computer and my DVD player, but only with certain discs. Is there any way to fix it?

Re:Miserable?

[jthill]

You don't consider being forced to watch advertising a problem?

You don't consider having the terms of your "agreement" dictated to you after you've already handed over your money a problem?

Re:Miserable?

[Detritus]

You're full of shit. I've seen the exact same problem on several VCRs. Macrovision screws up the picture, even when the VCR is in bypass mode. The only way to fix it is to directly connect the DVD player to the TV.

Re:Miserable?

[brandond1976]

In that case your parent's should be happy with HDDVD since it does not have region coding. This is in fact one of the huge benefits to HDDVD over BluRay. Many movies are licensed for distribution by BluRay only studios inside the US, but in other markets the distribution rights have been sold to other studios and those other studios are releasing them in Europe and Japan on HDDVD. Since there is no region coding you can order them from other regions in the format of your choice.

Re:Miserable?

[TheoMurpse]

And region-free players are technically illegal in some places.

At least in the US, they are never illegal to possess. The only illegality involved with region-free players is that the manufacturer of the player signed an agreement to obey region encoding in order to license the technology (MPEG2 decryption probably, plus to use the DVD consortium's trademarks). Thus, manufacturing a regionless player may or may not be illegal. Possessing one is definitely legal in the United States.

Re:Miserable?

[failedlogic]

I recently bought a cycling magazine which included a DVD with the issue for Free. I'm in North America and the disc is European encoded instead of being Region free to my disappointment. I wanted to watch the movie on my tele (I have an older DVD player which isn't nice to burnt-DVDs). So I have to play it in my computer.

Re:Miserable?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, it sounds too weird to be true, doesn't it? Unfortunately most VCRs have automatic gain control in the pass-through path...
http://cse.stanford.edu/class/cs201/projects-99-00 /dmca-2k/macrovision.html

Re:Miserable?

[lgw]

Region Coding seems to be the future for HD-DVD, however. Save your current player if you have one.

Re:Miserable?

[lgw]

You *do* know you can buy a RF encoder for like $20 and hook your DVD player in through that, right? Not thet you should have to, but things being what they are it might be handy.

Re:Miserable?

[wilfire]

I know where your coming from with the watching movies thing. Found VLC to be very useful in this, it loads up the main menu as the first thing it does. Effectively skipping all the marketing humph at the beginning of the disk

Re:Miserable?

[Anonymous Coward]

The region coding thing is part of CSS. Anyone who makes a hardware DVD player will want it to be able to play the 99% or so DVDs that are encrypted, so they need a license for CSS. That license states that the device has to obey region coding. Most region-free DVD players have either been modified to be region-free (often through software, or by entering codes on a remote), or were made in China.

The Chinese don't give a damn about DRM, copy protection, patents, licenses, and so on, so they typically don't include region coding, and use a "pirate" CSS implementation, most likely using a key stolen from whatever DVD player they reverse-enginnered to build theirs. Region coding would only make the players more difficult to export anyway - typically, they differ only in power supply input voltage.

Re:Miserable?

[babbling]

If you live in the US or Australia, then yes, it is illegal to decrypt the media you bought unless you have permission. You don't seem to care about that because you don't consider it immoral to decrypt something you purchased without permission. I agree with you, but the laws don't, which leads to my question for you...

If you're breaking copyright laws either way, why not just download it instead? I realise some people feel a need to "support those responsible for the art" but those same people (or people they do business with) are responsible for lobbying for these unbalanced copyright laws.

Re:Miserable?

[Chmcginn]

But I'd be surprised, if they do start using region coding, if (at least software/networked hardware (xBox360)) the studios didn't force an 'upgrade' on current HD-DVD players...

Re:Miserable?

[cptgrudge]

If you're breaking copyright laws either way, why not just download it instead?

I understand that it would probably make more sense, so I'll explain my reasons.

Yes, there's some small part that still wants to compensate the artists in some way, but it's quite minor. Really, it's about quality and convenience. Much like I make sure my music (ripped from CDs) is encoded at a decent quality, I'd like my video to be an acceptable quality as well. (As an aside, I buy my music CDs, not borrow from friends or get them from another source. No DRM on a CD is a Good Thing for me, so I continue to buy.)

While I could just go on torrentspy or piratebay or wherever and download the movies (as I have before), the video files are of varying quality, different resolutions, and usually only two channels of sound. Certain ripping groups are known for decent quality, but still they sometimes lack. It comes from the need to cram the entire video into a 700 MB CD so they can be played on a portable DivX player. Also, it seems that only new movies seem to be out there in any decent number. I'd rather be able to rip the video at the native resolution, have more than two channels of sound, and encode it all at a decent quality. Of course, it will take up more space, but I'm willing to build a ridiculously large array of drives on my media server to accommodate it. I can just have a list of my wanted movies and I know they'll be decent quality because I'm the one doing the ripping. As added bonuses, I'm insulating myself from MPAA lackeys and their agents by not exposing my IP address while downloading, and I can use my bandwidth for something else.

If there was a legitimate downloading service that had decent quality, no DRM "protection", and reasonable pricing, I'd probably switch instantly. But the love affair with DRM by the industry is stopping what could be wildly successful. Personally, I created a concept system that would work (based on bittorrent). But I'm discouraged by the likelihood that it would never be accepted by the industry because it relies on the good-will and honesty of their customers (and is probably too "cheap" in their eyes).

Re:Miserable?

[Skreems]

I'm just waiting for someone to go the extra mile and find/publish the player code for the PS3.

Re:Miserable?

[dangitman]

I went with a PAL/NTSC converter instead. Which comes with a color bar generator, which is nice to have for calibration.

Re:Miserable?

[Jesus_666]

...and revoke the keys of those that don't implement it. Actually, they'll probably just revoke all keys and issue new ones to players with region code support.

Re:Miserable?

[jandrese]

I don't think we'll see player keys revoked in the near future. It's a PR nightmare to have people who bought your player to suddenly find themselves on some shit list just because the manufacturer messed up. In a tight race like HD-DVD vs. Blu-Ray it's suicide.

Re:Miserable?

[maxwell demon]

Chances are that you wouldn't have been able to watch it on your TV anyway. As European disk, it was probably in PAL format, while your TV is probably NTSC.

Re:Miserable?

[geminidomino]

Correct. I also had, back in the late 90s, one of those combination TV/VCR units that did the same thing whenever a tape was in the VCR (even if it had the copy tab popped out).

Parent is right. Grandparent is a flaming trolling twat.

Re:Miserable?

[iainl]

Lack of region encoding is one of HD-DVD's saving graces in the fight with Blu-Ray at the moment. While the latter still exists, I don't expect regioning to start. And frankly, despite buying HD-DVD myself, I don't expect it to win against a couple of million Playstation fans.

Fair-use community?

[/dev/trash]

Is that waht they call crackers and pirates these days?

Re:Fair-use community?

[Anonymous Coward]

If I am going to be playing a BluRay or HD-DVD movie anytime soon on my Linux box, AACS will have to be cracked first.

Re:fair-use community?

[RealSurreal]

Or it's people who expect to be able to exercise their fair-use rights getting together and forming some kind of, you know, community in order to achieve that.

Re:fair-use community?

[erbbysam]

You might be right about most of these people being disguised pirates but there's definitly been a huge spike in interest in the ethical world... epically technology-literate people who don't want to have to spring for a encryption-bogged down system to watch this HD content... this is getting back to the debate that DRM Causes Piracy that was posted earlier where people will look for the best way to get their content and sometimes that means piracy... All of this makes me ask the question: if none of these movies had any DRM and all the movies cost between $5-$10... would anybody even bother having there connection bogged down by downloading an entire movie for 2 days straight?

Re:fair-use community?

[Anonymous Coward]

"fair-use community"? No such thing. It's either hackers who are doing it to do it, or it's pirates.

bollocks... and what if I want to play one of these disks on my linux machine?

is it fair that I don't get to play the dvd that I rent/buy because I choose not to use a proprietary OS? Or should I fork out extra £££ because I want to watch a movie? Not everyone owns (or wants to own) a TV/DVD player.

Re:Fair-use community?

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, that's not good enough for me. LEGALIZE BluRay and HD-DVD, INDEMNIFY me, and sometime I MAY be playing such a movie on my Linux box. Until then I will keep on reading this stack of public domain books. I have NO MERCY and NO MONEY for you, MAFFIA ;)

Re:Fair-use community?

[/dev/trash]

Do what the rest of the world does. By a DVD player.

Re:fair-use community?

[TheDreadSlashdotterD]

Argh! Right you be matey, but we be not making off with ye picture shows. We be making off with ye rum and wenches! Arggggggggggggghhh!!

Re:Fair-use community?

[damiangerous]

Ok, I'm by a DVD player. What are you all doing?

Re:fair-use community?

[AusIV]

Hardly. There are plenty of legitimate ways to use media that are prohibited by DRM. I'd like to have all of my movies and music on my media PC so I could just pull everything up with a remote. This is legal with my music, but DRM (supported by the DMCA) prevents me from doing the same with my movies. My media center also happens to be a Linux computer, which has no (legal) support for DVDs, HD-DVDs or BluRays. I am not a hacker, trying to prove that it can be done, nor am I a pirate - I simply want to be able to use my media without being told what uses are allowed.

Re:fair-use community?

[arcade]

I don't have a regular television.

I have a computer with a big screen.

I run linux on said computer.

Said computer has a DVD player.

Said computer really wants a HD-DVD player. .. only reason I don't care to buy an HD-DVD player is that it's useless for me until someone breaks the encryption thorougly and implements it in mplayer. Until then, I don't have a use for it.

Fair use community includes me. Not hackers, not pirates. People like me - who want to play their stuff on their computer.

Re:fair-use community?

[XO]

OK, but are you out there writing the programs that you will eventually use to do this?

I'm guessing that's a "no" ..

I don't know what is the idea behind this

[vivaoporto]

If the idea is to "stick to the man", they are doing the right thing disclosing what is the player in question. But if the idea is to actually use they key, they should keep them in the dark and not to specify what player got corrupted, so the keymakers cannot revoke the key.

Re:I don't know what is the idea behind this

[Anonymous Coward]

The device key is going to be unique to the player. Unless you keep the device key a personal secret (in which case, what's the point?), there's no way the pirates can hide where it came from, any more than InterVideo could hide what the value was in publicly-distributed binaries.

Re:I don't know what is the idea behind this

[DrKyle]

If any exploit becomes used, won't it be fairly obvious to find what key is being used and then look it up in the big list of player keys to figure out which one it came from?

Re:I don't know what is the idea behind this

[eddy]

>Unless you keep the device key a personal secret (in which case, what's the point?)

(ignoring traitor tracing) Because you're a HD-DVD/BluRay Movie Release Group and want an edge on the competition?

Re:I don't know what is the idea behind this

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm guessing that for every exploit that's published, there are probably several other exploits that are being kept secret.

You're not hearing about the secret exploits. So, from your perspective, it might appear that "everybody" is publishing their exploit. But I don't think that's actually the case.

Re:I don't know what is the idea behind this

[lindseyp]

Not unless made-widely-available HD DivX or AVCHD files retain records of the keys used to read the original from which it was encoded.

i.e. "No"

This is great news

[(H)elix1]

I've got one of those 30" dell monitors. Problem is it does not have the fancy encrypted link, so 'useless' as a blueray/hd-dvd monitor. With this stuff getting cracked, I am looking forward to VLC playing not only my stack of DVD and whatever the next generation of movies I end up buying and re-encoding.

Re:This is great news

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, sir, you do. Dell's 3007WFP was one of the first monitors to support HDCP over DVI.

Look under Ports: http://accessories.dell.com/sna/productdetail.aspx ?c=us&cs=19&l=en&sku=222-0863&~section=specs

Wrong verb tense!

[mrchaotica]

What do you mean, "will result?" It already has resulted in hardware DRM -- if you have Vista and a machine with a TPM, it's already there!

Re:Wrong verb tense!

[swillden]

What do you mean, "will result?" It already has resulted in hardware DRM -- if you have Vista and a machine with a TPM, it's already there!

No, actually, it isn't. While the TPM could be used to "seal" the HD-DVD/Blu-Ray player device keys to a given boot state, the decryption of the disk contents would still have to be done using the main processor (TPMs don't do bulk decryption, don't know anything about AACS, and aren't programmable to teach them how to do the AACS key derivation/decryption scheme).

Also, I don't know that Vista is really TPM-aware.

In the near future, it may become the case that if you have (a) Vista + some service pack, (b) a TPM and (c) a processor with hardware virtualization support (Intel VT/AMD-V), then your HD-DVD/Blu-Ray player may run on a separate virtual machine which your main OS has no access to and which you therefore cannot debug, and the TPM may be used to seal the device keys to the particular software in that VM, so that no other piece of software has any reasonable hope of retrieving them.

Collectively, BTW, (a), (b) and (c) above are known as Palladium, aka NGSCB.

Personally, I think it's more likely that your video card may gain an AACS subsystem, so your PC would feed the data stream from the disk to your video card, which will decrypt the data and display it. The video card would then have to have a way to securely transfer the audio stream to your sound card. Or maybe your sound and video card will negotiate secure data connections to your HD-DVD-ROM drive and the drive would do the AACS stuff and feed it securely to your output devices, so that your main processor never gets to see an unencrypted copy.

There are ways to make software players more secure, but a TPM alone is insufficient, unless the OS is airtight, unhackable/modifiable even by the administrator. Given Microsoft's track record with making an OS unhackable by random people around the world with no privileges on the box at all, I don't think that's going to happen.

Re:Wrong verb tense!

[BronsCon]

TPM... Thought Process Modifier? They're implanting those at birth now, aren't they? Glad they started that program after I reached majority age; I declined when they offered me the implant.

Re:Wrong verb tense!

[mrchaotica]

TPM means "Trusted Platform Module." You know, that thing the TCG ("Trusted Computing Group") made a specification for.

Re:Wrong verb tense!

[BronsCon]

LOL means "Laughing Out Loud." You know, that thing YOU ("Yourself") are supposed to do after reading a joke.

Re:Wrong verb tense!

[TheRaven64]

AES is not required by the TPM specification, but a few chips do implement it (actually, I wish more would; it would be nice to be able to offload AES to a dedicated chip). All of them can do SHA-1 and HMAC in hardware, and most can do RSA too. AES will probably be added at some point, at which point it will be possible to implement AACS securely.

Re:Wrong verb tense!

[swillden]

AES is not required by the TPM specification, but a few chips do implement it (actually, I wish more would; it would be nice to be able to offload AES to a dedicated chip)... AES will probably be added at some point, at which point it will be possible to implement AACS securely.

AFAICT, there is no way to use a TPM to do bulk decryption with arbitrary keys. The command set simply doesn't support that operation. It's not a matter of whether or not TPMs have hardware AES coprocessors, it's simply that TPMs are not designed for this task. They're designed to be key management devices, not general-purpose crypto engines, and they're not programmable (by design! A fixed-function device is orders of magnitude easier to secure).

If you can point out the TPM commands you'd use to implement AACS, from either the 1.1 or 1.2 specs, I'd appreciate the correction, but AFAIK it's simply not possible. The TPM designs have always assumed that bulk crypto work will be done by the main CPU; the TPM's role is secure key storage and system state authentication.

key in memory - on some PCs yes

[davidwr]

Within 5-10 years, if DRM is still popular, you will need to have a dongle that does the decrypting of DRM'd materials. The dongle, in conjunction with "protection" circuitry in the video and audio channels, will provide a revocable key between the media player and the video output device.

It will work something like this:

There will be two channels of data, one from the media source to the dongle, and one from the dongle to the playback device.

The dongle will decrypt data from the media source, or possibly ordinary RAM. In some cases, will be done with the aid of software tokens purchased from rights owners. In others, it will merely verify region, time-expiration, and other restrictions embedded in the media are complied with. In some cases, part of the key will be downloaded from the Internet in real time, or a time-bombed key will be renewed at regular intervals.

The dongle will re-encrypt the data so the playback hardware can play it, but memory-snoopers can't access it.

The dongle will be a "black box," protected by hardware features and possibly legal protection: "Tamper with this for the purposes of understanding it and go to jail."

The dongles will be handed out like candy for little or not profit, but they will be revoked individually if any one is compromised. People concerned about privacy and tracking implications will trade dongles or simply buy them by the bucketful.

I don't know if these dongles will be USB dongles or if they will be on a faster bus or maybe even connected directly to the video playback circuitry.

Mark this post, it may prove useful in challenging future dongle patents.

Re:key in memory - on some PCs yes

[Anonymous Coward]

In future, patent your idea and give it to the FSF or some other fanatical anti DRM organisation. If you don't have the money to pay for the patent then I will donate (at least a large chunk) of it personally (via the FSF - make your need for money pubic, not what the patent is).

Re:key in memory - on some PCs yes

[vadim_t]

That wouldn't work either.

At some point in the digital playback device, the data becomes cleartext. Given enough effort, that data could be extracted. Especially if it's a CRT, as AFAIK, the method used by a CRT monitor to drive the CRTs is quite simple. A LCD is probably more complicated, but it'd give you a 100% precise result.

Besides, I am fairly sure that with the right equipment you could do a decent analog recording anyway. Use a big, good quality LCD monitor with a DVI connection, and a camera pointed precisely at it. Taking the output of a BluRay movie and encoding it into a DVD quality DivX should give very watchable results.

Only thing that could be done against that is watermarks, but that's defeatable too. Have a few people dump the same movie, compare the results, and flip bits randomly where it doesn't match.

Re:key in memory - on some PCs yes

[SteveAyre]

However, if you find a way to claim to the device that you're a legitimate player, then the dongle will be sending you the media stream in a form you can decrypt so it'll be no different to normal really.

As a refinement to the idea, the dongle could send the decrypted video straight to the video card to play on an overlay. That would probably work better since it wouldn't be so easily circumventable.
However even then 1) you could circumvent it using custom hardware snooping the video card's data bus and 2) it'd mean all codecs etc would need to be on the dongle, which'd prevent new codecs being introduced or old ones being patched - firmware updates wouldn't be possible as that would provide the program code which could be decompiled to retrieve the key (even if it was encrypted someone would crack or leak the key).

The problem is that there's ALWAYS the ultimate analog hole - at some point it has to be playable so that we can actually watch it. That means the customer's device must decrypt it at some point and that means there's always going to be some way of getting at the data. They're fighting a battle they've already lost. They're just making customers and their hardware jump through endless loops, some of which are harmful to the customer, while not actually doing anything which'll stop the really determined people (pirates).

Re:key in memory - on some PCs yes

[rtechie]

Within 5-10 years, if DRM is still popular, you will need to have a dongle that does the decrypting of DRM'd materials.

First off, this isn't even remotely new. Dongles for copy protection are as old as the concept of copy protection. AutoCAD used a dongle. I'm sure there are dozens of other examples. But they haven't been widely implemented for the same reason this won't be. Cost.

It's too expensive to ship a sophisticated $20 part with a pressed disc that costs $1 to make and you're selling for $20. Dongles have only really been used in very expensive software packages for this reason.

Also, the whole content industry is moving to a "download over the Internet" model. Bill Gates was right when he said this is likely to be the last physical format war. Any solution that is not software only is a non-starter in this context.

The dongle will decrypt data from the media source, or possibly ordinary RAM. In some cases, will be done with the aid of software tokens purchased from rights owners. In others, it will merely verify region, time-expiration, and other restrictions embedded in the media are complied with. In some cases, part of the key will be downloaded from the Internet in real time, or a time-bombed key will be renewed at regular intervals.

If you're going to require an internet connection, what's the point of the dongle? Just make the user verify the key in real time against the server for every play. This would already have been implemented if they thought users would stand for it. They won't.

The dongle will re-encrypt the data so the playback hardware can play it, but memory-snoopers can't access it.

This makes no sense. The playback hardware presumably doesn't have encryption capability. If it does, and it has the encryption hardware built in, what is the point of the dongle? You're also expecting a DONGLE to decrypt, encrypt, and transfer HD video in full resolution all in real-time. That's a pretty beefy dongle. See above for the cost issues.

I think it's worth expanding on this point. Do you really understand how sophisticated the dongle you're talking about would have to be? It would have to include a CPU, memory, and storage to do the encryption. And how they're totally useless unless you ship a SEPERATE one attached to EACH video you want to play? The keys have to be individual for each "disc" (or instance of video) and ROM-burned, not flashable. The idea of some sort of "dongle vault" or multikey that allows you to used multiple stored keys is fatally flawed for a vast number of reasons. The most basic being that it would make hacking the dongles extremely attractive.

Now if you're thinking of "embedding" this dongle into the computer itself, it's been done. This is the whole concept of the TPM chip and concerns about it being used for DRM. This solution is also not feasible for any number of reasons.

I don't know if these dongles will be USB dongles

No, it will have to be a proprietary interface. USB is too easy to sniff.

maybe even connected directly to the video playback circuitry.

So users are going to have to crack their case open every time they want to play a video? I think not.

Mark this post, it may prove useful in challenging future dongle patents.

None of this is either novel or practical.

Re:key in memory - on some PCs yes

[KKlaus]

It requires too much hardware support to work. The problem is that since security is of course only as strong as its weakest link, everyone has to play along. People that make the motherboard, the video card, the monitor, everybody. If any part doesn't require an encrypted stream, then some company in china can make a card that circuvents the whole process (similar to the idea, though not the way, that people modded to mod their PS2's). Maybe that hardware wouldn't be available to the average US citizen, particularly for legal reasons, but markets in other countries would support it and then pirates would upload .avi's and we're right back where we started.

So anyhow, back to my original point, I don't think the **AA's will be able to control the entire stream well enough without breaking too many anti-trust laws, or anti-competitive laws. Hardware companies can't be locked out of the market if they refuse to build to content producer's specifications, and I think we'll even see them start lobbying against media companies when it becomes obvious to them that such collaboration hurts them anyway, because its cumbursome, expensive, and annoy's their customers. Sony wouldn't, because they produce content and the hardware it's played on, but those not as vertically integrated will. Why would I cripple my hardware for someone else's benefit? Are they buying me off? Well they can't because if you buy everyone off then you'll run into anti trust legislation. So the **AA's are screwed.

Re:key in memory - on some PCs yes

[Anonymous Coward]

It's too expensive to ship a sophisticated $20 part with a pressed disc

The dongle doesn't need to be shipped with each disc. It encapsulates the key management module of a hardware player. People don't buy a new DVD player with each movie, do they?

the whole content industry is moving to a "download over the Internet" model. [...] Any solution that is not software only is a non-starter in this context.

The described scheme is independent of the source of the data, unlike AACS, which does not offer a way to get data through an untrusted system (because it lacks a scheme for the encrypted communication between the decoder and the key management module).

Just make the user verify the key in real time against the server for every play.

As long as software handles unencrypted data, it can be hacked (much easier than hacking hardware). As long as the data from the server isn't inherently required to play the movie, the software can be made to believe that it has verified the key without actually verifying the key.

The playback hardware presumably doesn't have encryption capability. If it does, and it has the encryption hardware built in, what is the point of the dongle?

The decoder has decryption hardware built in and authenticates itself to the dongle. The point of the dongle is to enable more flexible licensing models and to allow revokation. It has the same purpose as a smart card. In fact it may well be one if you don't insist on the reencryption part, which is indeed unnecessary.

You're also expecting a DONGLE to decrypt, encrypt, and transfer HD video in full resolution all in real-time.

No, if the dongle reencrypts, it only needs to handle the compressed data stream. Not even that if it only manages the keys.

It would have to include a CPU, memory, and storage to do the encryption.

You have no idea how small one can make these things. I have a couple of these systems in my pocket. They're not as fast as data-stream reencryption would require, but that is merely a design choice.

The keys have to be individual for each "disc" (or instance of video) and ROM-burned, not flashable.

No. AACS is a pretty secure system. Its main problem is that it needs to support software players which handle decrypted data on general purpose computers. Remove that and you've raised the bar high enough. People are not cloning GSM SIMs on a regular basis. That's a similar level of difficulty. At that point it's easier to patch into the display hardware and reencode the video.

The problem with the described scheme is that it requires a hardware decoder, but that is a minor detail, not a showstopper.

Re:key in memory - on some PCs yes

[MoxFulder]

If you're going to require an internet connection, what's the point of the dongle? Just make the user verify the key in real time against the server for every play. This would already have been implemented if they thought users would stand for it. They won't.

Indeed. That was the premise of the original DIVX, which were basically throwaway DVDs that had an additional layer of encryption, and the player hardware would make a phone call to get the key to play the disc.

I remember when Circuit City was pushing those left and right... 1999?

Re:key in memory - on some PCs yes

[Kadin2048]

without breaking too many anti-trust laws, or anti-competitive laws

When has this bothered them? You seem to think that these companies modify their business model in order to conform to the laws, when in reality, it is the exact opposite.

They decide on their business model, and then they get it via carefully purchased legislation.

Re:key in memory - on some PCs yes

[tendays]

It's too expensive to ship a sophisticated $20 part with a pressed disc that costs $1 to make and you're selling for $20. Dongles have only really been used in very expensive software packages for this reason.

He meant a single dongle for the computer, that is used by all discs

Also, the whole content industry is moving to a "download over the Internet" model. Bill Gates was right when he said this is likely to be the last physical format war. Any solution that is not software only is a non-starter in this context.

See above - you get that dongle once for all, maybe when you buy your computer if such a system is widely used

If you're going to require an internet connection, what's the point of the dongle?

Assuming the dongle isn't tampered with and the computer isn't trusted by the media company (I know, that's a big "if"), this allows creating a secure communication between their servers and the dongle

maybe even connected directly to the video playback circuitry.

So users are going to have to crack their case open every time they want to play a video? I think not.

Huh? You don't have to open your box when you plug a usb stick do you? He talked about two data channels - "connected directly" - that means there's a separate bus for the dongle output - doesn't mean the connector is inside the computer.

I'm not sure however there is a point in re-encrypting the data between the dongle and the screen+speakers as anyway you'd have the "analog hole" afterwards. Maybe it could work like that though:
1. The output devices (screen+speakers) have their own private keypairs
2. The movies/songs are encrypted with another key which is stored in the dongle. Maybe the dongle has to download the keys for each new disk (using a secure connection to the keyserver - the pc can't see the data any more than a router can see https traffic), whatever.
Then when you playback something, the dongle decrypts it if you're allowed to, then re-encrypts it for the output devices.

Anyway no matter if you do that or not, no software trick can decrypt the data - you'd have to first read the dongle memory to get its private key, or have a hardware sniffer between the dongle and the output devices (in case that path is not encrypted the way I described above)

No that I hope any such system ever comes to existence of course

Re:key in memory - on some PCs yes

[Talchas]

And just what do you thing TCPA and HDCP are?

Re:key in memory - on some PCs yes

[shutdown -p now]

Just make the user verify the key in real time against the server for every play. This would already have been implemented if they thought users would stand for it. They won't.

It depends. The technology is already being used - just not with music or video, but games already have it. The most prominent is probably NWN, or rather its "premium modules" - you have to authenticate with the server every time you start a new game or load an existing one. And yes, that's for single player mode. I recall hearing that some Steam games also authenticate every time they're run, though it probably isn't as obvious as they're mostly multiplayer only.

And what'd you think? Those NWN premium modules did sell quite well. Good enough for Atari to release a couple more, anyway.

Re:key in memory - on some PCs yes

[Anonymous Coward]

> It requires too much hardware support to work. The problem is that since security is of course
> only as strong as its weakest link, everyone has to play along. People that make the motherboard,
> the video card, the monitor, everybody.

Exactly! The whole idea that you could exercise that level of control and keep the product marketable is ridiculous.

It's like if publishers were trying to sell books that were available only in a format that's unreadable except by a dedicated "player." The publishers would have to coordinate every last detail with the manufacturers of these book-players so that these "e-books" could never be read or copied by a third-party device. Nobody would buy them!

Like I said, the whole idea is... ah... wait. Never mind. :)

Re:key in memory - on some PCs yes

[Tim C]

Patent the idea of having a software application reliant on a hardware dongle for correct operation?

There's prior art for that going back as long as I've been using computers to my knowledge (24 years), and probably longer.

Re:key in memory - on some PCs yes

[Muad'Dave]

...the player hardware would make a phone call to get the key to play the disc.

Not exactly. The player would play the disk without making a call. It had a very cool embedded security processor, and was fully capable of decrypting the video without phoning home for keys. The phonecall reconciled the playing of a disk/account pair. If the disk had never been seen before, it was a free initial play. If it was seen on this account 48 hrs on this account or on any other account, it was charged.

Yes, each disk was individually numbered.

Re:key in memory - on some PCs yes

[rtechie]

He meant a single dongle for the computer, that is used by all discs

And I attacked this very concept later in the post. If you give people what amounts to a flashable "key vault" that holds all the hardware keys for a vast range of media you've created a very attractive target for hacking. All people have to do is hack the dongle ONCE and now they've all been hacked. Even if you somehow made it impossible to tamper with existing keys, the pirates can custom-make "pirate keys". Would you rather pay for media or pay $50 for a "pirate key" and get all the media for free? If you're questioning the viability of this, look into pirate satellite TV cards.

Huh? You don't have to open your box when you plug a usb stick do you? He talked about two data channels - "connected directly" - that means there's a separate bus for the dongle output - doesn't mean the connector is inside the computer.

This shows a lack of understanding of the internal design of PCs. You can't just "cut into" the video data path on PCs. Special, very sensitive, interfaces like PCI Express X16 that have trace length limitations and signaling limitations are required to handle the huge amount of bandwidth required for video applications.

Sure, you could put a pass-through dongle on the DVI port so that all video coming out of the DVI port is protected. This has also already been implemented through the "protected path" widely-discussed for Vista. And has already been cracked. Microsoft tech support will even tell you how to do it if you ask nicely.

One thing's for sure...

[reacocard]

...DRM just ain't all its cracked up to be.

Holy Neverwinternight...

[__aaclcg7560]

Atari must be doing really bad after releasing NWN2 to start hacking DRM keys.

Publishing DRM exploits prematurely is dumb

[gd23ka]

It would be far better to have them put out a lot of material first
and then make the key / exploit available. Now you can depend on
it that future titles will not be able to be decrypted with that key.

Re:Publishing DRM exploits prematurely is dumb

[Wesley Felter]

Except these people aren't cracking AACS for your benefit. They're either doing it so they can watch movies or for publicity; in either case they have no incentive to wait.

Now, just like DVDs...

[Anonymous Coward]

HD-DVD and Blu-Ray are for the first time suddenly becoming more appealing to me, and I might buy some.

Like most of us, I never did embrace the original DVDs until the copy protection on those was broken, too. Ever since it was, I have bought plenty of them.

Ugh

[Quantam]

I don't think this is as good as you think it is. I'm all for breaking DRM (and was extremely pleased when they broke the AACS process key), but I think releasing a player key was a BAD idea. I'm betting the MPAA's logic in regards to this will look like one of these two:

- WinDVD is not handling its device key in a secure manner
- WinDVD cannot be trusted
- WinDVD won't be getting another player key

Or even worse:

- WinDVD did its best to protect its device key
- It's impossible to protect a device key in a program that people can reverse-engineer [true]
- We'd better not allow any software to read AACS-protected content

Although this may all be moot anyway, as they can extract future process keys with relatively little effort (though it'll be a lot more effort if hackers have to break hardware systems instead of software).

Re:Ugh

[hugzz]

In a small, backwards and somewhat "revolutionary" feeling way, it's a good thing. If they break the DRM and force bluray/dvd to change the keys or ban the players, then the users will be inconvenienced. Although this should be a bad thing, it at least leads to the chance that consumers will rebel against DRM and DRM-free media will gain popularity

Re:Ugh

[Anonymous Coward]

This is only bad if you work for InterVideo or own InterVideo shares. If you are a *user* of WinDVD all you have to do is to switch to an open source player that implements the crack.

Re:Ugh

[Lumpy]

though it'll be a lot more effort if hackers have to break hardware systems instead of softwarethough it'll be a lot more effort if hackers have to break hardware systems instead of software

here is a little secret for you. Hardware players do not exist. every HD-DVD player and Blu Ray Player is a software player. and hacking those is not any harder, just requires different tools they have to be built or bought instead of warezed off of a bittorrent site.

Re:Ugh

[mgiuca]

- WinDVD did its best to protect its device key
- It's impossible to protect a device key in a program that people can reverse-engineer [true]
- We'd better not allow any software to read AACS-protected content

That's a good outcome. With hardware-only DRM, well we lose rights to our movies. But at least we get to keep our computers.

The way it went with Vista, however, is that we lost the rights to our movies, and now we've lost the rights to have access to our computers too. It's all locked up, to the detriment of all future computer users.

So at the very least, DRM can get the hell off my computer.

Re:Ugh

[Godji]

- WinDVD did its best to protect its device key
- It's impossible to protect a device key in a program that people can reverse-engineer [true]
- We'd better not allow any software to read AACS-protected content

This is wonderful. If software players are gone, this means either of two things:
a) The HD formats take off, we get to watch them only in hardware, and all the DRM shit is removed from Vista and much more importantly PC hardware, so we end up with hardware that can at least theoretically have open specifications. -> GOOD
b) More likely, the HD formats don't take off, nobody bothers as we download all our HD content in annoying Windows/Apple-based DRM which we break to watch movies on Linux. Ideally, DRM is dropped altogether, and we get the outcome of a) plus the added benefit of watching movies with no hassle. -> BETTER

Both cases are better than the default scenario: closed hardware, manufacturers using DRM as an excuse to keep specs and open drivers to themselves, DRM shit on all content, and potentially a very strong Microsoft/Apple lock-in, if nothing else is able to play movies conveniently.

Re:Ugh

[Anonymous Coward]

Since you feel that way, why don't you show me how to unlock my Nokia N93. It's just software, right. Not any harder than hacking WinDVD?

Re:Ugh

[dpreviti]

probably a troll and all but here

ask and you shall receive.

http://www.cellphonehacks.com/viewforum.php?f=1

DRM is provably insecure

[this great guy]

Revocation, obfuscation, TPM chips, hardware tricks ? Whatever, DRM is provably insecure.

Re:DRM is provably insecure

[SharpFang]

The problem with DRM is that no matter how poor it is, DMCA makes cracking it illegal. So if they included a single-byte XOR encryption with key written on the back wall of the device, still decrypting it is illegal, and that's enough for them.

Re:DRM is provably insecure

[Anonymous Coward]

DRM is provably insecure.

Umm, no. I wish this was true, but TCPA hardware embedded into the southbridge and ultimately the CPU (entering production now / soon respectively) along with appropriate OS support can make this sort of hack basically impossible. There's no way for software DRM to be 100% secure on current systems sure, but hardware enforced DRM most definetely can be made extremely difficult to break. It's already been done too, in military and satellite decoder systems.

Getting complacent about this shit and thinking "oh it doesn't matter, some dude will just crack it" is a very bad idea and exactly what the *AA want you to think.

Re:DRM is provably insecure

[PenGun]

Most of the satellites are wide open ,,,, I think only direct-view is still whole.

Re:DRM is provably insecure

[mstroeck]

I didn't know they have the DMCA in Poland? Seriously, the rest of the world doesn't give a fuck about fascist US copyright legislation.

Re:DRM is provably insecure

[swillden]

So if they included a single-byte XOR encryption with key written on the back wall of the device, still decrypting it is illegal, and that's enough for them.

Which is why libdvdcss is completely unobtainable in the USA.

Re:Might be offtopic

[boner]

I'd vote this down as karma whoring...

One Word

[Coucho]

0wned.

Re:whoopty doo

[Anonymous Coward]

For (3b), instead of a theoretical argument I'd be more interested if you could name ONE specific example where a company was able to embed a secret in software and keep it secure for years against major efforts trying to find it.

Re:whoopty doo

[beelsebob]

1) This is a method of cracking what was supposed to be one of the best encryption algorithms there is out there - it doesn't matter if it's a simple hack, it's still impressive.

2) So they key gets revoked -- now that they've got the software key for one player they can start getting the disk keys for a lot of disks, based on that they can then use these known keys to get back to the software keys of a *lot* of players.

3a) Apparently it does - that's 3 seperate people now working on cracking this one, and hey -- 1 was enough to crack CSS.

3b) Yes, yes it can -- it's important to note though that it always is crackable, and I would expect that this particular class of software will always have people trying to crack it.

Bob

fair-use community?

[XO]

While I don't at all agree with the insane forms of protection that the companies are putting on the media, Slashdot is definitely showing an editorial bias... "fair-use community"? No such thing. It's either hackers who are doing it to do it, or it's pirates.

Re:whoopty doo

[Anonymous Coward]

Good call! You won't explain the 'tricky bits' because you can't, yet you site "obvious reasons" or "you wouldn't understand"

nice one, but it doesn't wash, lamer.

The "Man" is me.

[Anonymous Coward]

And it's me neighbor. And his neighbor. Et al. This "Man" you so disparingly dismiss are common working folks who own shares in these companies. Our companies spend MILLIONS of dollars to develop product. We also spend millions to pay business taxes, taxes imposed by people YOU elected. We payed our taxes. While we are not owed profits, we should at least have the unfettered right to attempt it. After all, we have already payed for it. Piracy eliminates that attempt. If anything, I hope this cracker gets charged with racketeering and extortion charges, and obstruction of business.

If you disagree with this, then instruct yoour puppets in DC to eliminate all business taxes. What's the point of paying taxes if hackers are just going to destroy our business attempts.

Re:The "Man" is me.

[Runefox]

I'd rather have a company that I'm "paying for" start producing decent products, rather than simply attempting to protect the legions of drivel that's been flowing from them recently with overly-expensive and overly-complicated encryption algorithms that have nothing to do with the industry at all.

The point is to get these companies to change the way they think and do business so as to be more suitable to today's increasingly electronic world, rather than simply changing the locks on the door and tossing out scribblings on driftwood instead of a decent product.

Re:The "Man" is me.

[Anonymous Coward]

ROFL. Your broken business model is my problem because...?

<crickets>

Re:The "Man" is me.

[Catbeller]

You're not owed a damned thing. We own the discs. We'll reverse engineer them. This is the way the universe works. You don't get a say in what we do with things that we buy. Your connection to my home is not welcome.

And I believe player pianos were supposed to break musical profits. and TV was supposed to break movies' business model. and cassettes were supposed to destroy record companies. And Valenti compared VCRs to the Boston Strangler. And music and movie downloads are supposed to break the RIAA and MPAA members. Both outfits are making more money today than they did last year, and the year before.

You are wrong. And you've bought laws to invade our lives and put grandmothers in prison. The least we can do is break your balls, over and over and over.

and please, do, go out of business.

Fortunately, it's still in infancy :)

[alisson]

I know that personally, I refuse to upgrade anything for Blu-Ray or HD-DVD. Even if it weren't for the content 'protection,' what's the real point? Sure, it's nice to put more per disc for PS3 or XB360, but should that really determine the format of movies, or music? The 'truth' that the xxAAs don't understand is that physical medium are on the way out.

So, of course; don't buy them. Tell your friends not to buy the, and spread the word. If technology was selected based on worth and merit, we'd all have been using beta-max and mini-discs. But consumers don't always go for quality, innovation or convenience. Most often they like whet their friends have, they like what they already have, and sometimes? They just follow the pr0n industry (uh oh, did i just predict the HD-DVD?) THe point being, this one is easy to 'nip in the bud.'

Now, if you were to start a large-scale boycott of xxAA products? That would rock the boat. But I'm not holding my breath for you.

Re:Fortunately, it's still in infancy :)

[dangitman]

So, of course; don't buy them. Tell your friends not to buy the, and spread the word.

But then the Merch will turn into the Flesh Reaper and start collecting torsos!

If technology was selected based on worth and merit, we'd all have been using beta-max and mini-discs. But consumers don't always go for quality, innovation or convenience.

What the hell? Minidisc absolutely sucks. It's not a good example of a quality product.

Now, if you were to start a large-scale boycott of xxAA products? That would rock the boat. But I'm not holding my breath for you.

Sigh. Didn't I already mention the torsos?

Re:Fortunately, it's still in infancy :)

[alisson]

But then the Merch will turn into the Flesh Reaper and start collecting torsos! Well who's torsos are we talking about here? I mean, is it my torso? Or perhaps Condoleeza Rice's torso? It really makes a huge difference.

And as for minidiscs... I actually like them. Not the same quality as CDs, but certainly good enough for a portable player. They're much smaller than CDs, and don't skip as much.

Of course, as I write this, I'm listening to my iPod, which would answer why MDs didn't take off >_>

Re:Fortunately, it's still in infancy :)

[dangitman]

Well who's torsos are we talking about here? I mean, is it my torso? Or perhaps Condoleeza Rice's torso?

Sooner or later it's going to be your torso, unless you keep buying product. I didn't want to have to do this, but as nobody seems tyo be getting the joke

Not the same quality as CDs, but certainly good enough for a portable player. They're much smaller than CDs, and don't skip as much.

I guess they aren't the worst format ever invented, but they don't really fit anywhere. They're not quite good enough for professional use, but they were too expensive and user-unfriendly for recreational use. Most people can't stand the interface of minidisc players. Some players made it really hard to work out how to even start a recording.

The other problem was that to get the audio off the device onto your computer, you had to play back the content in real-time. I don't know of anyone who had a minidisc drive in their computer which could read the disc as data. Same for transferring audio from the computer to disc. May as well use a proper DAT tape if you have to do that.

The blank discs were also expensive, and when they did introduce the "Net MD" that could connect to a computer, the Sony software sucked, and it was full of proprietary formats.

Compare to the CD - cheap, ubiquitous, and you can rip or burn an entire CD in minutes - which was standards-compliant and could be used almost anywhere. Plus it has better audio quality.

Of course, as I write this, I'm listening to my iPod, which would answer why MDs didn't take off

Which is why i don't understand why Sony made the MD format. It wasa obvious that hard drives and flash memory was the future - and they introduced a new optical audio disc right at the end of the optical audio disc's popularity and usefulness. Kind of like someone releasing a new line of 5.25" floppy disk drives with improved storage, at the same time as almost everybody had moved to 3.5" floppies.

Why didn't Sony just release their own "iPod" instead? They could have made a "pro" line of HD-based players that had professional quality audio inputs for recording, and a "consumer" line focused on playback, portability and fashion.

Re:Fortunately, it's still in infancy :)

[Fex303]

Which is why i don't understand why Sony made the MD format. It wasa obvious that hard drives and flash memory was the future - and they introduced a new optical audio disc right at the end of the optical audio disc's popularity and usefulness.

The MD format was originally introduced in 1992. USB wasn't released until 1996 and the iPod was still a long way off.

I think that where MD really fell down was that Sony hadn't quite realized that people were ready to start treating their music as a digital resource that could be manipulated by computer. MiniDisc is a format that is based around MD player/recorders functioning as single-use appliances. Most people changed how they thought about music somewhere between 1996-2002, depending on how wired they were. They realized that music formats were digital and that music could be downloaded, stored, and manipulated on computer. MD was a format that didn't allow these functions, and so it was useless. Not a bad format for what it did, but it missed a shift in how people thought about what music did.

As a side note, I think that the same shift is happening with television. It's taken longer to catch on, but now everyone's starting to understand that the episode of Lost they missed doesn't mean they have to beg to borrow a tape off some friend because it's on the internet and can be downloaded if they want to...

Re:Fortunately, it's still in infancy :)

[MP3Chuck]

"Why didn't Sony just release their own "iPod" instead? They could have made a "pro" line of HD-based players that had professional quality audio inputs for recording, and a "consumer" line focused on playback, portability and fashion."

A lot of the time it seems like Sony exists solely to push their proprietary formats ... and a HDD player wouldn't sell their Memory Sticks now would it?

I'm not quite sure what the logic is behind creating their own format for everything (Memory Stick instead of CF or SD, ATRAC instead of MP3 or Vorbis, Blu-Ray instead of HD-DVD)... seems to me that the R&D money could have been spent elsewhere, perhaps on more useful things.

Re:Fortunately, it's still in infancy :)

[Ginger Unicorn]

beta-max was technically inferior to vhs in one vital area. the tapes only lasted an hour. so people chose the technical superiority of 2 hour VHS tapes. picture quality is only metric of technical superiority.

Re:Fortunately, it's still in infancy :)

[Ginger Unicorn]

sorry, i mean "only one metric"

Re:Fortunately, it's still in infancy :)

[Air-conditioned cowh]

Originally, in the mid 70s, yes, but like all formats around at the time (such as the Philips VCR format), they soon found ways to get a decent number of hours out of a tape. Once past the three hour mark it was probably not such an issue since that was enough for most films. Stacking lots of 30min TV shows on one tape and then trying to find them after was a hassle so I remember we eventually just had lots of tapes and tended to use them on a one tape, one programme basis.

Re:Fortunately, it's still in infancy :)

[TheRaven64]

ATRAC instead of MP3 ATRAC was released in 1991, and so was MP3. Both required several years of development, so it isn't surprising that they created their own format. What is surprising is that they stuck with ATRAC when every listening test showed how appalling it was.

Re:Fortunately, it's still in infancy :)

[jamar0303]

What? MDs are great! More durable than CDs and they can hold more data now with Hi-MD. I had an MD player all the way up until I got a cellphone that played MP3s. Sure, the first versions of SonicStage sucked, but the later versions work pretty well (the Japanese version does, at least).

Re:Fortunately, it's still in infancy :)

[Anonymous Coward]

I visited a radio station in Japan a few years ago. They used MiniDisc, not CDs, or MP3s. They also indicated that most radio stations used MiniDiscs for pre-recorded content (such as commercials) and for archiving. My aunt also asked me if I had an "MD" (meaning MiniDisc player). Also, the format was introduced before MP3s were prevalent and flash drives weren't nearly as cost effective. A friend of mine got a MiniDisc player before I had ever heard of the term MP3. It's easy to pretend that you could've been an oracle 15 years ago (when the format was commercially available) when you have the luxury of hindsight.

Re:Fortunately, it's still in infancy :)

[StikyPad]

Even if it weren't for the content 'protection,' what's the real point? ...don't buy them. Tell your friends not to buy the, and spread the word.

The point is that they have more capacity. Sure, it's not a revolutionary change, but most changes are incremental, and the increment (or the culmination of successive increments) may be compelling enough for some people to upgrade. If it's not compelling for you, that's fine, but I'm not going to proselytize on your behalf. I refuse to pay $600 for a next-gen burner, but once prices hit the ~$200 mark, I'll probably buy.

The 'truth' that the xxAAs don't understand is that physical medium are on the way out.

We're all "on the way out" from the moment we're born, but most people don't give up until they're gone. There's a big difference between "on the way out" and "gone." Specifically (and I assume you're referring to distribution channels, because physical media themselves are here to stay), most people don't have access to broadband, and won't for some time, so it makes sense for them to stick with physical media. Of those who do, many connections are insufficient to transfer HD content in a reasonable timeframe and, moreover, there are no legitimate sources for such content. I am certainly in favor of online distribution, and it may or may not completely replace physical distribution at some point, but that change will be organic, and cannot be forced by simply "not buying" physical media, which would only prolong the transition to HD and/or stem the production of content due to perceived lack of demand.

In short, what makes sense for you doesn't necessarily make sense for everyone, so while it's fine to explain your perspective, it's unreasonable to talk in absolutes and expect everyone to share your position.

Re:Fortunately, it's still in infancy :)

[Zontar_Thing_From_Ve]

Which is why i don't understand why Sony made the MD format.

MiniDisc was intended to replace audio cassettes. It was never intended to replace compact discs as people claim. Keep in mind that MD made its debut around 1992. At this time portable CD players were non-existent or close to non-existent. I bought one of the first ones I knew of around 1995. MD was intended to be a portable way to play music you recorded to it as portable MD players came out almost immediately. MD has many advantages over audio cassettes. It has instant access to tracks like CDs and higher quality audio than cassette tapes. The problem with MD is that very quickly it became cheap to make good quality portable CD/MP3 players and once that happened, MD wasn't needed. Cassette tapes are a dead format and I'm glad for that, but Sony couldn't read the future and they had no way to know that CDs, not MDs, would kill off cassette tapes.

I'm not a Sony fanboy, but a lot of people talk crap about how MD was supposed to replace CD and stuff like that and it's simply not true. Sony mismanaged the MD format and cost and poor design of players and recorders helped to doom it, but the ability of people to make their own CDs and create and play MP3 files were ultimately what finished off MD.

Re:Fortunately, it's still in infancy :)

[Specter]

"I think that where MD really fell down was that Sony hadn't quite realized that people were ready to start treating their music as a digital resource that could be manipulated by computer."

I disagree. I think the real reason MD failed is because everyone had just converted all of their old tapes to CD's. No one wanted to pay to replace their music _again_ just to move to the questionable benefits of MD.

Re:Fortunately, it's still in infancy :)

[3choTh1s]

I'm not quite sure what the logic is behind creating their own format for everything

It's because they were successful at it in the past. You have to remember that they helped create the CD http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compact_Disc. I think you remember how that one turned out. But as successful as it was they know that it's going to go away sooner or later. They need something else to carry the data for all digital minded people who want their information on the go. There isn't a lot of standards going around. SD isn't standard flash memory and the Blu-Ray/HD-DVD battle isn't over yet so we can't say which one will become the standard.

Yes it's about making money. But all they are doing is giving the consumer choices. Pick the best one. Or just pick the best one for you. Technically Blu-Ray is superior to HD-DVD... something apparently you think the R&D should be spending their money on. Doesn't mean it's the right fit for you but it might for a lot of other people. I see absolutely nothing wrong with competing formats as long as when a real winner has been declared everyone gets on board. Unfortunately we probably will never see one for flash media and audio formats. Just too many good choices and too many people advocating one side or another. Oh well. I personally use Memory Stick Pro Duo's because both my phone(w810i) and my PSP use them. Good enough for me.

Re:Fortunately, it's still in infancy :)

[dangitman]

At this time portable CD players were non-existent or close to non-existent.

What?!? I bought my first CD player in 1990. It was a portable unit, and much cheaper than a shelf unit.

It's much more accurate to say that MD "hardly existed" in 1992. Sure, it may have been released then, but nobody knew about it, and it wasn't widely available until much later.

MiniDisc was intended to replace audio cassettes. It was never intended to replace compact discs as people claim. ... I'm not a Sony fanboy, but a lot of people talk crap about how MD was supposed to replace CD and stuff like that and it's simply not true.

Well, that's bloody stupid then. CDs were extremely popular. Whether it was "intended" to or not, MD had to compete with the CD. Sony doesn't get immunity from market forces by saying it's only supposed to compete with cassettes. Why should we have one format for recording, and another for buying music on, and another for data?

Anyway, I doubt the accuracy of your words. If Minidisc was not supposed to compete with CDs, then why did they sell pre-recorded Minidiscs with music on them, right next to the CD racks? They were promoted as a more compact, more modern CD. Where did you get this idea that it was not supposed to compete with CD from?

Re:Might be offtopic

[Anonymous Coward]

When I'm voting on the firehose I

      What makes you think we give a fuck, honestly?

what about memory encryption?

[vlad_petric]

The CPU can encrypt memory transactions on the bus. There are several research proposals that address this issue, btw (e.g. Xom). My point - they can continue the arms race as well.

Re:what about memory encryption?

[Helvick]

A well designed hardware cryptographic solution presents an extremely hard barrier if implemented well. The original X-Box failed because short cuts were taken in the architecture and keys were transmitted across a high speed bus but the same does not apply to the X-Box 360. It has thus far resisted all of the attempts to circumvent it, the minor hacks achieved to date have done little to break down the core security of that system despite significant efforts on the part of the X-Box hacking\mod community. Forget about separate TPM's in chipsets - the "ideal" solutions are now being rolled out pre-built into consumer CPUs. Apart from the clever crypto parts of the X-Box 360's CPU, both Intel's LaGrande and AMD's Presidio provide robust "Trusted Computing" features that (could) fully prevent the type of attacks that have been used in the WinDVD key discovery attacks. All three systems implement in-cpu protected key storage and secure memory for key dependent operations. Even without the absolute control that the XBox 360 enforces through its trusted boot process the LaGrande\Presidio technologies allow developers to build DRM solutions that are effectively invulnerable to key discovery attacks on any OS.

Re:what about memory encryption?

[Yartrebo]

Would this be resistant to physically probing the chip (though how you stick a probe into a wire that's less than 100 nm wide and sealed in a casing would be far beyond my capabilities - perhaps with the use of pulsed lasers and a scanning electron microscope?)?

Re:what about memory encryption?

[SiliconEntity]

Would this be resistant to physically probing the chip

I was at a presentation a couple of weeks ago by Infineon on their TPM chip. They said the chip has "over 50" sensors to detect attacks like this and zeroize sensitive data. As a simple example there is a light sensor, so that if the chip cover is removed and light strikes the silicon, it erases the secret keys that enable its operation. Apparently there are many more such sensors, although Infineon keeps the details secret.

Re:what about memory encryption?

[Yartrebo]

I was not suggesting removing the chip cover, though if you wanted to, I don't see why you couldn't keep your specimen in the dark or illuminated only by infrared light. After all, electron microscopes don't need light and light (of energies above the work function of the material) might even interfere.

What I was thinking of was ablating a tiny (a few micrometers or so at the chip surface) portion of the cover with the laser and use that information combined with the layout of the chip (garnered from a sacrificial chip if the information isn't publicly available) to zero in on the spot. Once you drill your hole in the right spot, you can use a tunnelling electron microscope to read the data (it will show up as variations in the tunnelling rate) with minimal interference. Your odds of hitting one of their sensors is close to nil and, if properly calibrated, the electrons lost to your probe will be less than background noise so any current/impedance sensors would be foiled too.

Re:what about memory encryption?

[IamTheRealMike]

Good thinking but I'm afraid they're far ahead of you.

Firstly, secure chips are not a new technology and have been refined over many years as they're commonly used in smart cards (for instance satellite tv cams), and financial applications like VISA authentication modules. Light sensors are one of the most well known tamper-proofing devices but there are many more. Your suggestion of using infra-red light is interesting and might work, I am not an SEM expert, however even entry-level secure chips are protected by a wire mesh these days designed to interfere with the operation of the microscopes.

I think you also underestimate the complexity of reverse engineering a chip. Chip layouts are synthesised artificially and are not logical. It is like trying to decompile a program from the machine code, except that whereas lots of people have the knowledge required to attempt the latter very few have the knowledge to do the hardware equivalent. When you say "use that information combined with the layout of the chip" you toss aside potentially years of effort with a sentence.

The basic idea in this thread is correct - putting DRM into well designed hardware that doesn't take shortcuts (like the original xbox did) significantly raises the bar for attackers. One of the reasons pure software DRM has never worked well is because so many people have the tools and knowledge to take apart a program, and because programs aren't well defended at all except through obscurity. The same is not true of hardware. That's why things like LaGrande are being built.

Care to show a proof?

[vlad_petric]

I mean, a formal proof. You're making a pretty broad statement, after all. The fact that some DRMs were cracked doesn't necessarily mean that all of them are inherently crackable.

Re:Care to show a proof?

[jZnat]

Not in formal proof notation, but:

Encryption is used so that A can send a message to B in such a way that C cannot intercept and read what the message is. DRM sets B := C, thus defeating the purpose of encryption. It is therefore a logical impossibility.

Re:Care to show a proof?

[grammar fascist]

I mean, a formal proof. You're making a pretty broad statement, after all. The fact that some DRMs were cracked doesn't necessarily mean that all of them are inherently crackable.

At some point between the information and your eyes and ears, the information must be in "plaintext." (Otherwise you can't see it or hear it.) At that very point, the information stream can be intercepted and stored. This is true even if we have jacks in the backs of our heads to accept personal AV signals.

Here's another way to look at it: in the theoretical environment in which the decryption takes place, the person playing the part of consumer also plays the part of adversary. DRM systems give information to the adversary in plaintext. Alice wants to send a message to Bob. But she wants to send it to Bob in a way that Bob can't comprehend it... but he can, but he can't...

Yeah, so it's brain-dead. But there you go.

Most cracks happen earlier than between the emitter and the eyeballs. As long as the digital signal is converted to an analog signal in an environment that can be totally observed, the process of decryption can be observed and replicated. If someone ever designs a perfect black box, we'll possibly have no way to capture the digital signal. But we'll still be able to capture it before it reaches the eyeballs.

This is as close to a proof as you're likely to get on Slashdot. :) I could formalize it, but I don't want to spend the time.

Re:Care to show a proof?

[this great guy]

Of course there is a formal proof, just ask any cryptographer or cryptanalyst. A basic sketch of it is that DRM makes use of conventional cryptography. However conventional cryptography has never been designed to prevent attacks in a threat model where the attacker has illimited physical access to the device performing the decryption operation.

Re:Care to show a proof?

[vlad_petric]

Well, the problem with the "plaintext" (i.e., photons traveling to your retina) is that recording it at that stage degrades its quality significantly (at least with today's recording technology). It's a bit better with sound, but some audiophiles would complain about that as well.

Re:Care to show a proof?

[sokoban]

I mean, a formal proof. You're making a pretty broad statement, after all. I have a truly marvelous demonstration of this proposition which this margin is too small to contain.

Re:Care to show a proof?

[Abcd1234]

Encryption is used so that A can send a message to B in such a way that C cannot intercept and read what the message is. DRM sets B := C, thus defeating the purpose of encryption. It is therefore a logical impossibility.

Actually, this is incorrect. Using more traditional notation, you have Alice, Bob, and Eve. Alice wishes to securely send a message to Bob, and Eve is listening in.

In the case of AACS, Alice is the movie studio. Eve is the viewer. Bob, however, is not Eve. Bob is the *video playback device*.

Further, Bob and Alice share a private key (the player key, to be specific). And so it's relatively easy for Alice to encrypt the message with some key K and then encrypt that key with Bob's private key and include that as part of the message (this is precisely how AACS works).

The problem, here, is that Bob's private key has been compromised. And, as a software player, it's not clear to me that there's any solution to that problem, since the keys must be held in memory at some point (perhaps TPM addresses this?). Of course, you could always have a hardware dongle that was responsible for performing the decryption (and thus contains the player key).

Re:Care to show a proof?

[Anonymous Coward]

It doesn't have to be ("significantly" degraded), it all depends on the resources you are willing to commit. Each pixel -- the analog component of a digital display -- could be precisely measured and recorded. That's a given. The record of these pixels could be reformed into a 'movie'. This movie could be stored in a format that is (at best) no worse than the original signal (i.e., a faithful, pixel for pixel recreation, artifacts and all).

The argument you are making of course is that we will never not use lossy formats for video distribution (because all digital storage is in some regard 'lossy'). I'm saying we can achieve very, very small values for "significant".

The "arms race" if you will really comes down to "do the media cartels have the resources to produce more desirable media than the piracy cartels have the resources to re-encode?"

Re:Care to show a proof?

[vadim_t]

Except that Eve must see the result, which is exactly what makes it unworkable.

Eve doesn't need to break the crypto. She can play it on a high quality screen and record with with a video camera (which I'm pretty sure can be done at a very acceptable quality with good equipment and effort). I would be surprised if an HD DVD couldn't be recorded with a quality similar to DivX-encoded DVDs this way, which people find more than acceptable.

Eve could also open the monitor, and read the cleartext output from the circuitry. After all, at some point it has to be transmitted to the TFT or the CRT, and both should be possible to capture with the right equipment. CRTs should be quite straightforward.

Re:Care to show a proof?

[schizoid4]

Actually, this is incorrect. Using more traditional notation, you have Alice, Bob, and Eve. Alice wishes to securely send a message to Bob, and Eve is listening in. In the case of AACS, Alice is the movie studio. Eve is the viewer. Bob, however, is not Eve. Bob is the *video playback device*.

In that case Bob is in Eve's custody and subject to rubber hose cryptanalysis. Anything Bob knows Eve can find out. Thus it is impossible for Alice to send a message to Bob without Eve reading it too.

Re:Care to show a proof?

[Anonymous Coward]

a^3 + b^3 = c^3 ...

hahahahaha

Re:Care to show a proof?

[The Master Control P]

Drm implies giving you the ciphertext, the plaintext, the key, and unlimited hardware access: MAFIAA fails the logic.

patent and publishing

[davidwr]

What I posted was insufficient for a patent. At least it should be, if the patent examiner isn't one of the BIGNUM% who are asleep at the switch.

However, it was sufficient to show that any such device is "obvious." I literally came up with it on the spur of the moment. Patenting such an obvious patent then donating it to a patent-freedom agency would itself be an abuse of the patent system.

"Finishing" the patent would - or should - require at least one real or paper implementation. Anyone with particular knowledge about a particular media playing device and memory implementation has the knowledge to create the first path, that is, that step is "obvious" to someone with the skills. Ditto the 2nd half for someone who knows how video works.

It would take me a few hours or maybe days to gain those skills, but I'm sure a significant number of Slashdot posters have them.

Here is what IS fair game in a patent:
Particular implementations that tie a particular drive or memory system to a particular dongle, or which tie a particular dongle to a particular video system. Such a narrow patent would only protect against near-identical clones but would not protect against slightly different systems. The only real "bad" patent possibility I see is if a standard emerges and a submarine patent surfaces after it's too late to redo the standard. With new patent laws that "expose" pending applications after a period of time, this risk is much lower.

Re:patent and publishing

[Ernesto Alvarez]

"Finishing" the patent would - or should - require at least one real or paper implementation.

The interesting bit is that I designed a very similar device (in paper) a couple of years ago. It was a black box that would first accept some keys at startup, then take some encrypted data (encrypted with the key mentioned above) as input and the encrypted key of a client and if would decrypt the data and then reencrypt it with the client's key (all without revealing the master keys loaded at startup) to be sent to the client's printer, that has a crypto engine itself. Then it would get printed locally. Our device was not supposed to accept any dongles or such, though.

We would use that device in order to secure PINs valid for a certain amount of pre-paid phone time. The idea was to prevent evesdropping even on compromised machines.

I can't give you any docs since I'm still under NDA, but the device has been built purely on software. But the original specs were for a hardware box, the idea was to use a PC connected only via serial cables to the server.

All your problems solved

[ElDuque]

I recommend books.

Re:All your problems solved

[mgiuca]

Er, great solution. Until ebooks become feasible and portable enough that it sees mass adoption, books begin to be distributed more and more in this way until it reaches critical mass, and sure enough, the books are protected by insane DRM (to stop people from "stealing passages" of the work).

Due to the demand to read ebooks on general purpose computers (and the incredible ease of copying text - far moreso than audio or video), general purpose computers will be locked down more and more, copy and paste will become a "protected channel" and ebook programs will be given high-security status.

And the cycle will continue ... the Apple eBooks will be incompatible with the Microsoft eBooks, the open source eBooks will be an indie niche, and you'll have to buy and carry around multiple eBook readers to handle the competing standards. We're talking about plain text becoming a format war.

And I am not kidding or exaggerating. This little-known technology is already present in Office and Internet Explorer (including "protected HTML") since 2003.

If you want to avoid DRM, I recommend you get behind the anti-DRM movement now, not stick to formats yet-to-have-been conquered.

VLC implementation

[StreetStealth]

Yes, the sooner this finds a VLC implementation, the sooner I might actually send some money the studios' way for some HD titles. Of course, the release would have to happen in a country without a DMCA clone... Where might we find one of those? Does France's (home of VLC) DADVSI prohibit linking to, say, a Hong Kong site hosting a theoretical VLC-HD?

Re:whoopty doo

[Creepy Crawler]

AZPR and Advanced Disc Catalog.

Both use IDEA-encrypted data segments and extensive checking that munges data structures.

No-go protections are easy. Just JMP past them. Data corruption techniques are the nastiest to crack, if you can understand the format..

Not if you're trying to prove a point ...

[Schraegstrichpunkt]

If you're trying to demonstrate that DRM is futile waste of energy, it's in your best interests to release as early as possible.

Releasing an exploit a couple of years after the technology is first released gives people the impression that the DRM was "good" for those two years. On the other hand, releasing the exploit a week later drives home the point that the copy-protection racket is selling nothing but snake oil.

Not so fast...

[LinDVD]

Intervideo/Corel has the dominant OEM market share of the largest PC vendors, and many of the middle-tier vendors, so don't assume Hollywood will suddenly default to Cyberlink's PowerDVD in the future, just because WinDVD 8 got hacked. This dominance of OEM's is what allowed them to have a mildly successful IPO, so compared to Cyberlink, Intervideo/Corel has a lot more money, and generates a much larger volume of DVD sales than Cyberlink and others could anytime soon.

Glad it is broken

[flyingfsck]

For only M$5, I'll invent them a new one.

Re:whoopty doo

[linuxrocks123]

http://www.planetddl.com/search-download-full-azpr -version-4-00-crack-serial-keygen-free-rapidshare- megaupload-1.html

You lose.

Re:whoopty doo

[Jettero68]

The latest access card for DirecTV receivers comes to mind. I don't think I have read anything about a successful hack on the latest version of the access card that is currently used for DirecTV.

dvd

[ralph1]

HaHa

doom9

[FlynnMP3]

I wouldn't be surprised if they go after the ISP, the hosting company, and the doom9 community with DMCA violations. If you can't beat them technically, use the (broken with respect the DMCA) law.

That's fine

[Sycraft-fu]

They are welcome to stop issueing keys and get all paranoid. Then they'll end up with a situation where nothing is able to play their media, so nobody buys it, so it never takes off.

Idiots

[melted]

Why in the world would you disclose the fucking key? By disclosing it you pretty much guarantee future movies won't work with it!

Re:whoopty doo

[daniel23]

what about skype?

Re:whoopty doo

[patchvonbraun]

Re: 3b Software *can* be arbitrarily obfuscated to the point that it's extremely difficult to untangle, but at substantial penalty in size and execution time. But in the end, the software has to run on a real CPU that actually exists, and it must actually interact with the memory and I/O environment. You can slow the smart ones down, but you can't stop 'em.

Re:whoopty doo

[Anonymous Coward]

The question asked for a "software" example, in the sense of a binary meant to run on general purpose hardware.

Not that I want to help the *IAA

[symbolset]

But the only likely secure method of decryption for their content would reasonably be to put it in the drive and provide drives with audio and video output, much like the digital audio output found on CDROM drives.

With their secure channel (HDMI) to the monitor, this prevents the decryption from being done inside a general-purpose PC.

But it would be cracked shortly anyway.

Re:Not that I want to help the *IAA

[Anonymous Coward]

Far too expensive. You would need a fairly powerful CPU, memory, and MPEG2 hardware crammed in there, basically the guts of a full standalone player.

Mod parent up

[Anonymous Coward]

Mod parent up. Every time a story about AACS keys come out, a bunch of /.'ers with no understanding of the technical issues treat it like the equivalent of DeCSS. These are more stories about weaknesses in WinDVD 8, not AACS. The first thing I thought when I heard WinDVD 8 would support Blu-ray/HD-DVD on XP was that someone was going to extract the keys as soon as the software was available for download/purchase.

The other thing I thought was, "What the hell does Hollywood think it's doing?" If they were really serious about their DRM, they'd never trust software to protect a key. The only reason why it wasn't rampant for DVD is that CSS was so laughably weak that key compromise wasn't even needed.

Re:Mod parent up

[Anonymous Coward]

You say:

If they were really serious about their DRM, they'd never trust software to protect a key.

Parent says the opposite:

Software can infact be made extremely hard to crack

So why should we mod it up?

Re:Mod parent up

[ScrewMaster]

If they were really serious about their DRM, they'd never trust software to protect a key.

I think the reality is they're not, at least not in an NSA sort of way. This is just a bar that has to be raised high enough to keep the ordinary viewer out in the cold, so far as content distribution and usage is concerned. These people aren't stupid (misguided, perhaps, but certainly not stupid) and I'm sure they are fully expecting AACS to be cracked at some point, at least partially. But that doesn't matter if that average viewer has no access to the tools needed to do it. That's pretty much the way it is with CSS now ... how many non-technojocks do you know that have any idea what DeCSS or DVDShrink are, or would know where to go to get a copy of AnyDVD? CSS is still working just fine, for what it is.

Re:Mod parent up

[The Master Control P]

The wonderful thing about the Internet is that once one person decrypts it one time, anyone else can get it with ease. I love BitTorrent ^_^

Re:Mod parent up

[Anonymous Coward]

ow many non-technojocks do you know that have any idea what DeCSS or DVDShrink are, or would know where to go to get a copy of AnyDVD? CSS is still working just fine, for what it is.
That's exactly why CSS (and other DRM implementations as well) doesn't work. It makes every customer's life needlessly difficult (DVD zones are the most obvious example) without providing any protection against anyone with just a little bit of technical knowledge.

Re:whoopty doo

[Anonymous Coward]

Ableton Live (music production) seems to have very well withstood all of the hacking/cracking attempts.

Could this be *better* for society?

[skeftomai]

*Could* things such as this - opposition to lockdowns and restrictions - theoretically be better for society? If people were to actually _think_ about implications and to some extent the ramifications of those implications, couldn't these restrictions become unnecessary?

Or, do you already find restrictions already unnecessary? Do enough people think things through already, and do they think things through enough?

Re:Miserable? -- No. Macrovision.

[tiny-e]

It's not made up... It's called Macrovision®... and it's been sucking hard for decades (the company has been in the news lately, offering to "lead the way" for more DRM.

If you don't believe the poster, try it yourself. I have a cheap-o TV from years ago that works just fine -- but it has no inputs. I have to connect my DVD player through the back of a VCR (which I have), or go out and buy a separate signal combiner (which I don't). I do, however, have a copy of MacTheRipper and AnyDVD - and a severe distaste for DRM'd DVD's.

20 minutes later.. and Voilá it really does Play For Sure.

self destruction the only DRM

[bussdriver]

We are only talking 36Mbps a second tops for HD/blueray top data rates.
A cheap re-encryption chip within 10 years that can do that is quite possible.

The LAST LINK ultimately has to be open to the end user to receive the data.

This message will self-destruct after reading and take out your browser cache, ram, swap, isp proxy, and everybody at your terminal... so you can't pirate it.

Re:self destruction the only DRM

[pyite]

We are only talking 36Mbps a second tops for HD/blueray top data rates.
A cheap re-encryption chip within 10 years that can do that is quite possible.

You assume without cause that there won't be a more data intensive format in those 10 years. There are already really fast implementations of AES and they have enough trouble keeping up with HD. We're just starting to see DRM being questioned by the powers that be as far as audio is concerned. Eventually, all these questions will come up for video too. DRM doesn't have 10 years to sort itself out. It's on its way out already.

Re:self destruction the only DRM

[TheRaven64]

You can buy a miniPCI crypto card that will handle AES at 300Mb/s (and order of magnitude faster than HD-DVD needs) for $50 retail. Wholesale, the chips are probably already cheap enough that you could bundle them with any authorised player.

Re:whoopty doo

[Creepy Crawler]

Not really. How do you know that ALL the code checks were removed?

How do you know that it wont munge the zips?

How do you know it wont just lie and go right through the "good" password?

If I was them, I'd chew up CPU cycles while showing a glitzy screen that looks like it's doing work.

Better yet, how do you know this software isnt boobytrapped ? Im sure you could do an exhaustive search by creating dead listings and hopping around in an ICE, but that only gets you so far. For as far as you know it, it could download a small batch file depending on specific user input and execute arbitrary instructions (like removing home directory) or slowly corrupting your user data.

If a program slowly changed your Document/Spreadsheet/Database setup in that it corrupted letters and numbers, when would you notice it?

Lastly, when I had my hand at it, I didnt like AZPR and my preparation that I had to do to even debug it properly. That, and what +Fravia says usually is true. I have his site to thank for what I taught myself what I know now.

Re:whoopty doo

[TCM]

This is a method of cracking what was supposed to be one of the best encryption algorithms there is out there

The algorithm wasn't cracked. They used a key Alice handed to them because Alice fails to see how futile DRM is.

Of course

[JustNiz]

...there will now shortly be a new media format announced that supercedes blu-ray and HD-DVD.

Now that picture and audio quality is already better than humans can perceive, I wonder what new marketing bullshit feature they'll come up with this time to persuade the public they really need spend thousands more on yet newer hardware just because it has even more restrictive DRM and no bacwkard-compatability.

Look out for super ultra mega HD resolution media and players with 12.1 audio and smellyvision coming to your local store soon!

Re:Of course

[alexgieg]

I guess nothing short from full 3D video will do the trick. And after that, only 3D with solid objects (read "holodecks"). Then it ends. :)

If only they had peer-reviewed...

[kRutOn]

If only they had peer-reviewed AACS before releasing it like the RIAA did with their Secure Digital Music Initiative, then none of this would have happened!

Re:If only they had peer-reviewed...

[Timmmm]

Seriously! No-one has cracked AACS! This is not a flaw in the AACS system! The MPAA *predicted* this! They expected it! Arrrgh. How many times?...

All they have to do is tell the WinDVD developers to hide the key better, and revoke their old key. Then it will be back to square 1.

Actually, they were, once.

[Kadin2048]

Once upon a time, kids used to be able to bring their target rifles to school, if the school had a marksmanship program, and many did. My highschool still had a nice indoor range in the basement at the time I went to it, although it was being used for storage -- the program having fallen victim to political correctness before my time (sometime in the early 70s).

Perhaps if more young people learned about and actually used firearms in a safe and productive way, during their more formative years, they wouldn't have the same mystique. It certainly seems like a whole lot less bizarre stuff got done with firearms when they were something more people were familiar and attached less significance to. It's when a kid sees a firearm and the first thing they see is a weapon or killing tool, rather than a particularly specialized sporting or hunting tool, that we have a definite cultural problem. Kids shouldn't have their first exposure to firearms through violent entertainment and general culture, which takes a few ounces of steel and presents it to children as though it's the only thing standing between them and being powerful.

But then again, I also think that kids should probably learn about sex in a Health class, and not through Hollywood's or pornography's alternately twisted or idealized visions of it. Guess I'm probably on the losing side of the war on all fronts.

(And for the record, I don't support banning, or even really limiting children's access to, either violent entertainment or pornography. Neither one are particularly harmful, if you've already been educated prior to viewing them. It's when they're the first exposure and thus the learning experience, that misunderstandings seem to be inevitable. The solution isn't to try and keep kids away from violence and porn, which they'll inevitably find anyway, the solution is to indulge their curiosity in a productive way first.)

Re:Actually, they were, once.

[TheRaven64]

I was on my school's shooting team here in the UK. We had an armoury on the school grounds, with a load of .22 target rifles and L89s and a couple of LSWs (both SA 80 variants. I used to shoot a couple of times a week. I haven't touched a gun since I went to university though; after a while they just got a bit boring (squeeze trigger, make hole in far-away thing gets old quickly).

Re:Actually, they were, once.

[cyber-vandal]

You have to say yeeeeehaaaaaaawwwwwww too otherwise it just aint fun.

Re:Actually, they were, once.

[Butterspoon]

And for the record, I don't support banning, or even really limiting children's access to, either violent entertainment or pornography.

Just you wait till you have kids of your own!

Re:Actually, they were, once.

[Usquebaugh]

Obviously a public school?

My brother is a teacher and they still do this stuff at his school. He and I were taught by our dad when we kids, six or seven. I left the UK in '96, the nanny state drove me out. He's leaving this year, the lack of opportunity is driving him out.

I've never found shooting boring, but I've always changed disciplines. Currently I'm getting into silhouette shooting .22lr and .308win. More of a squeeze, bang, clang sort of thing. I'm also getting a brace of hammer shotguns for sporting clays.

Mod parent up

[Anonymous Coward]

Some cool hacker will come up with hardware device keys eventually, I'm sure.

jurisdiction

[oliphaunt]

the DMCA attempts to make cracking DRM illegal... in the United States. Fortunately, there are still many places around the world that are not part of the United States.

Re:jurisdiction

[howlingmadhowie]

well, show me a country in the world whose citizens are outside the reach of the american legal system when it comes to intellectual property.

Re:jurisdiction

[W2k]

Considering The Pirate Bay is still on-line... Sweden, I believe. Makes me proud to live here.

Re:jurisdiction

[a_n_d_e_r_s]

Dont be. DMCA is called EUCD in EU and are part of the laws there. As long Sweden stays in EU - it is illegal to break DRM here too.

Re:jurisdiction

[oliphaunt]

In no intentional order (except, perhaps, population? I don't know anymore, and I'm too lazy to pull up the CIA factbook)

1. China
2. India
3. Brazil
4. Thailand
5. Turkey

I could go on, but these are the 5 where general and pervasive disregard for US and international IP law has the largest financial impact on global markets. At least one or two of those countries have some pretty smart people living there. And I treasure the "Mouth Face EXPETITION DANGER" (North Face counterfeit) backpacks my little brother brought back for me from Thailand :-D

Also, in some circumstances, you might want to think about

6. Israel, which is home to several generic-label pharma companies which don't respect pharmaceutical company IP, and the US and EU allow them to do pretty much as they please. I can't help thinking that if they're cheating in pharma, they've got to be cheating in the electronics and software domains as well.

MD: Coulda been a contendah.

[Kadin2048]

I think that where MD really fell down was that Sony hadn't quite realized that people were ready to start treating their music as a digital resource that could be manipulated by computer. MiniDisc is a format that is based around MD player/recorders functioning as single-use appliances. Most people changed how they thought about music somewhere between 1996-2002, depending on how wired they were. They realized that music formats were digital and that music could be downloaded, stored, and manipulated on computer. MD was a format that didn't allow these functions, and so it was useless. Not a bad format for what it did, but it missed a shift in how people thought about what music did.

You're absolutely correct, I think. However, Sony could have used the MD platform to its advantage, when it became clear around 1997/8 that something was changing in the music world, and MP3s had started to catch on. They could have leveraged the MD systems and turned it into a "bit bucket" format, like little mini CD-Rs, that people could put stuff on without regard to format (except if they wanted to play it back on a portable device, it would need to be one of the formats supported by the player, obviously). IIRC they made a move in this direction, which I think was called NetMD, but it was horribly crippled. I don't think they ever just made a Mass Storage Class driver for it, and of course the players only played ATRAC, even though by then anyone could tell that MP3 was the future.

MD definitely predated the digital audio revolution, in terms of the portability and standardization of digital audio on personal computers, but if Sony had more foresight and hadn't been so concerned about the threat to their other businesses as a result of the changes that digitization and portability would bring, they could have been a leader.

I think one of the reasons that Apple succeeded with the iPod, is that they could really commit themselves. In some ways, they didn't have a whole lot to lose. Apple had a string of basically utter failures when it came to making consumer electronics, and if the iPod had flopped, I don't think anyone would have said anything besides "told you so." But they were able to really go for it and commit to their product and their approach with a singlemindedness that a conglomerate like Sony couldn't touch.

I've always wanted to like MD as a format, and I think in the hands of someone besides Sony, it could have done well. Maybe not as well as hard-disk based players have done, but it could have been a much more serious contender, if it had a company pushing it that didn't have ulterior motives holding it back.

Solution is easy, pity it's illegal.

[Kadin2048]

Rip the disc, disable Macrovision, and burn it back out to a blank DVD. Problem solved.

You can also get rid of the obnoxious "No UOP" functions, and other garbage. If you're like me, you can just do a title rip, and strip out all the crap besides the movie itself, and pretend you're in a theater. (Well, without the 15 minutes of ads and previews. So basically, not like a theater at all, anymore.)

I used to do this to most of my DVDs, but then I built a MythTV box, and started using its built-in DVD player, which is a beautiful little thing* that doesn't do anything besides just play the main title, sans mandatory-previews, menus, and other shit normally foisted off on the viewer by the studio. I tried testing a scratched disc in a regular player after getting used to it, and I wanted to claw my eyes out, just waiting for it to craw though the mandatory-view crud.

* I think it's MPlayer. If you really want, I think you can use Xine instead and get the menus back, but I'd sooner shove a hot poker in my eye.

Not so.

[eddy]

There are several good reasons to reveal the key. 1) It's useful now 2) The software players are completely b0rken anyhow and could have been revoked/patched any day because of the other keyleaks 3) You want to see what happens, by forcing the issue.

The games has hardly even started. When the hardware guys start chipping away epoxy, that's when the games officially open :-)

Somewhere down the line it makes sense to keep device/host keys secret and let them try some traitor tracing, but not now.

It's those pesky users that are the problem.

[Kadin2048]

Simple on a computer today, sure. But if you follow the path laid by DRM and the desires of the studios and media companies, I'm not sure it would be so simple in a decade or so.

First they'll just make precompiled debuggers illegal. And then when that doesn't work, they'll make compilers illegal. And when people go after the hardware, they'll pot the whole motherboard in epoxy, doped with iron filing and wired with self-destruct mechanisms. And only signed code will run as root or system, so even if you do get a compiler, you'll have to somehow forge Microsoft Central Control's signature to run it on the bare metal. Oh, and the whole thing will probably brick itself if it doesn't dial in for re-verification and updates on a weekly basis. Hell -- don't even let the user install any software: if they want something, they can call Microsoft with their MasterCard in hand, pay for it, and it'll get downloaded to their machine overnight.

There's precedent for most of this already; the US government has already mandated that all VCRs look for and cripple themselves if they detect Macrovision signals, so it's really not much of a hop from there to a "full length" mandatory HDCP. Since the only way you can make DRM stick is by not letting the user actually do anything, that's the obvious solution. Just lock them out.

Re:It's those pesky users that are the problem.

[statusbar]

All of this is technically possible now via the full utilization of TPM.

Sure you would be able to run a compiler and debugger in your own virtual machine, but all the "trusted" operating system and media player /viewer code would be required to run in the hypervisor... And you would need an appropriate certificate and vetting in order to be one of the inner circle of the hypervisor programmers.

All of this creates a platform where can not trust your computer because you do not know if your unscrupulous multinational corporate competitor has hypervisor certificate that is reading your product designs...

Of course it will be presented as an "optional" feature for you.... If you want to connect to the internet or watch a movie or listen to music, you must be in "trusted" mode.

--jeffk++

Re:It's those pesky users that are the problem.

[Anonymous Coward]

This is similiar to ESR's "right to copy", http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html except it is the mafiaa & m$ (vista), rather than the publishing industry doing it to us.

Re:whoopty doo

[Anonymous Coward]

After careful consideration of both parties' arguments, the court finds that your objections consist of unreasonable doubts. The ruling stands: you were pwnd.

dang, you all run into the trap

[Anonymous Coward]

that is "if we cant sell it with copy protection, we have to find some dummies who break it, afterwards we can sue them anyway"

its the same old story - without copying content, the hardware wont sell, if the hardware doesnt sell, not enough content get sold

just drop this shit and let them run into a wall!

we dont need hdmi with hdcp, nor do we need to waste energy on cpu cycles for aacs and other drm!!

What would they do with a broken player key?

[HydroPhonic]

...it would just mean that the hackers would keep the keys to themselves, publishing them only to small groups of trusted friends -- all of whom would be ripping movies like mad and making torrents available so that everyone else can get them.

Excellent post. But if they couldn't trust anyone with their compromised player key, they could just release a slew of Title Keys and let someone else spend the bandwidth to seed torrents.

Yep, it will become easier and easier to do...

[Joce640k]

Changing a players code to obfusticate it "a bit more" will only change a tiny percentage of the overall code. Crackers will be able to zoom in on it easily.

After a few updates the process will be mostly automatic.

Again, all DRM will hurt is the legitimate people who'll keep waking up to find non-working players on their PC.

Something I've Always Said

[Skudd]

No matter how "strong" the security, there will always be a way around it. Even if the movies were to be locked behind 4-foot-thick steel walls, and this enclosure stood watch by 20 armored guards, there would still be a way in.

I know that's "physical" security, but virtual security is probably weaker.

You fail it!

[Anonymous Coward]

Doesn't look like it withstood much to me..

Why not? Re:Will they actually do it?

[lpq]

It's software -- they can insist the software be patched. Provide a several month window -- problem solved.

Keys from software players should be (unfortunately) a "no-brainer" to update. You want MS updates? They validate licenses via continuous internet access. Why not with software players?

Original spec I saw for hardware players had them requiring an internet connection -- like Tivo - so they could reprogram the hardware at will, update keys, and detect newer methods of getting around the encryption.

On of the reasons for not allowing MS-Vista in virtual machines -- in a virtual machine, you are back to the original problem had with unknown hardware -- you have no reliable "TPM".

Maybe they'll soon require virtual machines have direct access to the host TPM to allow key storage for HD video and such...

But how long in the future will it be before discs are "quaint" -- and content is downloaded "online" (including, possibly from library or other no-charge sources), but with that will also come requirements of access to your machine from the internet (or your machine accessing the internet every time you want to play something).

Frankly I'm surprised this isn't in the first generation of players -- from what I remember reading in the first Blue-Ray write-ups, an internet connection was to be required from day one to verify licenses, online. I didn't think it would sell from a practical standpoint -- and maybe that's related to why they've temporarily backed off.

But how long before people will consider it "normal" to have DVD players (already true with Tivo like devices) require an internet connection?

So true...Paying more for Less (functionality)

[acomj]

The content providers should wake up. Nothing irritates a consumer more than buying something like a DVD and having to jump through hoops to get it play on ones ipod/laptop/ car cd-mp3 player. specially when those pirating the same stuff don't have these problems.

Consumers love paying more for less!

O/T Re:Will they actually do it?

[hysma]

Actually anyone can take a safety course with a deactivated firearm. The government mandated Firearm Safety Course and Restricted Firearm Safety Course is available to any Canadian of any age. With proper supervision, there's no reason these courses could not be offered in a school environment.

One still has to apply for their PAL after completing one or both of these courses before being allowed to own or handle a real firearm.

The key difference is the dongle

[davidwr]

With most existing DRM platforms, the key-decryption box is either in software, which means it's open to snooping, or it's in embedded hardware, which means canceling a device's authority can be a very expensive proposition for a lot of people, including future owners of the canceled device.

By moving the "lock box" to a low-cost, almost-disposable device, you can easily repudiate keys and allow "innocent victims," such as people who buy a used computer and get a canceled dongle that comes with it, to replace their key at little cost. The industry can even bribe people into tattling by offering free replacement keys if they trace the person they obtained the canceled dongle from.

By the way, when I say "canceled" dongle, it will only be "canceled" for media that published after the dongle was canceled or which checks for a current canceled-dongle list before playing. This is similar to what is done today: The recently-broken DRM for HD-DVDs and BlueRays can cancel DVD players but the deactivation only applies to new movies, not your existing collection.

"users won't stand for it"

[Anonymous Coward]

uhhh... iTunes?

Re:"users won't stand for it"

[rtechie]

uhhh... iTunes?

Exactly. iTunes, despite all the hype, isn't a major source of music in the United States. Nor is any downloadable music store. And one of the big reasons many people I talk to reject iTunes (and the Windows Media stores) is the fear that Apple, etc. could remotely "turn off" access to music they've purchased. That's why "exporting" is such a bug issue for iTunes users.

Of course, it doesn't have to be this way. What iTunes SHOULD be is an account on a server somewhere with ALL vital information linked to that account and a custom encryption key. The individual track in locked to that key which is locked to that account (which has your credit card information, so hopefully you won't give the tracks and key away). With such a system even if your computer was completely destroyed you could re-download ALL of the music you've purchased.

I don't have to speculate about this system, I've worked on it. It was called Liquid Audio. Your tracks were tied to a "Passport" (basically a keyfile) that was tied to your credit card and account information. In your account a complete record of every track you purchased was kept, so if for some reason you wanted to re-download a track at any time, you could do so. As long as you remembered your login (and even if you didn't, customer support staff would help you) you could get complete data recovery. Users raved about this feature.

The only reason iTunes does it differently is to fuck people over and force them to repurchase tracks.

And no, we couldn't turn off the tracks. The tracks were tied to the Passport, which didn't expire. This was by design. The labels wanted "self-destructing" tracks, like you see in iTunes. If you leave a system with Apple DRM-protected tracks disconnected from the Internet long enough (I think it's a year) your tracks will automatically break.

I just ran into this issue

[tacokill]

I just ran into this problem. I bought a 37" Westinghouse 1080P monitor and hooked it up as a second monitor (via DVI). I can play every type of video on the second monitor....except HD-DVD and Blu-ray.

Why? As I understand it, its because the Westinghouse is not HDCP compliant and all of the players (WinDVD, PowerDVD) require HDCP compliant monitors in order to play Blu-ray/HDDVD. So, an ordinary DVI link, like everyone and their brother has, won't work. Just like your 30" Dell.

Re:I just ran into this issue

[(H)elix1]

Yup - welcome to my boat - exactly the same issue. All the commercial players require HDCP encryption to display the 'native' resolutions. Lets hope they thoroughly crack the encryption and make a player which is not bound to the Blu-ray/HDDVD licensing terms. A Blu-ray/HDDVD decoder in VLC would be perfect for me.

Re:I just ran into this issue

[MojoStan]

I bought a 37" Westinghouse 1080P monitor and hooked it up as a second monitor (via DVI). I can play every type of video on the second monitor....except HD-DVD and Blu-ray.

Why? As I understand it, its because the Westinghouse is not HDCP compliant and all of the players (WinDVD, PowerDVD) require HDCP compliant monitors in order to play Blu-ray/HDDVD. So, an ordinary DVI link, like everyone and their brother has, won't work.

All the commercial players require HDCP encryption to display the 'native' resolutions. Is it so bad to play HD DVD and Blu-ray content through an analog connection in full 1080p resolution (until ICT is implemented by the studios)? Unless I'm mistaken, you should still be able to play in full 1080p using the VGA connection (or DVI-I to VGA converter) on the video card and display. VGA quality has gotten pretty good on current LCDs, although I haven't seen it on 30+ inch displays.

You do have that right.

[Anonymous Coward]

"we should at least have the unfettered right to attempt it"

Who has "fettered" you, junior? You can put on whatever copy protection you want.

The thing is, as soon as I take it into my home, it's mine, and I can do with it as I want. Or do you think that you get to control how I use it? If you think the answer to that is "yes", then we have a disagreement... one that I'll win.

I'm over it. Hopefully, you are as well by this point.

Media DDoS?

[Azuma Hazuki]

You know, one major problem I see with this (DRM schemes) is that if enough keys are found, especially Device or Player types, it could essentially DDoS the industry. If I were one of these hackers I would do my damndest to find as many keys as possible in as short a time as possible and get them revoked immediately, thus causing the maximum amount of damage in terms of disgruntled customers whose media will no longer play. Every extra moving part is another chink in the armor, another point of failure....

VLC is key

[tacokill]

A Blu-ray/HDDVD decoder in VLC would be perfect for me.

Bingo. That is the answer for me. If VLC could play .evo files, this is a non-issue. But so far, VLC doesn't play those, even if they are unencrypted (I wouldn't expect VLC to play encrypted content).