DVD Security Group Says It Has Fixed AACS Flaws

SkillZ wrote to mention an article at the IBT site discussing a fix to the security breech of the HD DVD and Blu-ray media formats. "Makers of software for playing the discs on computers will offer patches containing new keys and closing the hole that allowed observant hackers to discover ways to strip high-def DVDs of their protection. On Monday, the group that developed the Advanced Access Content System said it had worked with device makers to deactivate those keys and refresh them with a new set."

Comments

i'm not so sure...

[User 956]

Makers of software for playing the discs on computers will offer patches containing new keys and closing the hole that allowed observant hackers to discover ways to strip high-def DVDs of their protection.

Do they not understand, that if you can view it, you can copy it?

On the other hand, maybe they do understand, and HD-DVD/Blu-Ray 2.0 will offer only un-viewable content. Step 3, profit!

Re:i'm not so sure...

[Anonymous Coward]

Look, they're running a business, so they're not aiming for perfection, just profit. The protection is supposed to keep your neighbor from putting a HD-DVD and a blank into a computer and getting a perfect copy half an hour later. It is not supposed to keep a group of Chinese from remastering the disc with professional equipment. The industry can deal with professional piracy in different ways because that kind of piracy has to move big numbers of copies. The industry can not come to your neighbor and check that he legally owns all his HD-DVDs, so they make it inconvenient for him to create illegal copies. There are enough keys that they can keep revoking them until kingdom come without running out of keys. Hackers can probably get the new keys after a short while, but everybody who wants to make copies has to get updated illegal circumvention software everytime the keys are changed, which is impractical if you just want to make a quick copy of a rented or borrowed disc. People in the real world value their time, so you only have to make the time cost of copying high enough to make the legal offering more attractive.

What about the other holes?

[Tragek]

"AACS is a high-profile technology and is protecting high-profile content, so we fully expect there will be future attempts," Ayers said.

How about future successes ?

Re:What about the other holes?

[Anonymous Coward]

You are entirely right. The volume key hack is pretty solid. In fact, if the Microsoft HD-DVD player were to be revoked and require a firmware patch to the existing runs of drives to play new discs, it really wouldn't make any difference at all. See the thing is, now that it is understood how to bypass AACS through the volume key, AACS could in fact keep revoking keys until they're blue in the face, but the process of extracting the volume key is already known, so it makes no difference.

Also, let me point out, I haven't read the code in its' entirety yet, but if I understand correctly, the volume key crack should actually be immune to key revokation, based on my understanding of AACS, key revokation should only effect device ids and once a method of extracting a volume ID is known, the revokation mechanism just no longer matters.

Of course, I'd also like to point out what others have already said. If a program exists that can read the data and decrypt it, then it's 100% obvious that the program can be reverse engineered. This is not an opinion, it's fact. I have on many occassions bypasses hardware dongles, FlexLM, trial periods, etc...

bypassing hardware dongles requires that you reverse engineer the driver to the dongle, this is just plain easy, all you need to do is find a disassembler that can handle the format, or if it's a kernel mode driver, then you just use a kernel mode debugger... not an issue. when you locate where the driver is being attached to from the program itself, then you just emulate the hooks. Even the most advanced dongles are easy to hack this way.

FlexLM... well... come on... this one is just so easy it's not worth talking about

Trial Periods... they can vary... depends on how obscure people want to make the code. But for the most part, they're not that hard. For example, I found a function reference in a DLL on PcAnyware (don't remember the version) called "TimeBomb()" which returned a boolean value. Not really that hard huh?

As for HD-DVD and BluRay... if all else fails, run the player (really really slow) through an emulator like QEmu and trap all IDE calls. Log the previous 1000 instructions run before the hook and then log until the first picture comes up. Then just review the log and read the source code left in the log. Hardest part is making it pretty enough to read... but if it means that much to you... well no problem.

- So... in brief... copyprotection is just a joke... laugh at it!

security breech

[caitsith01]

security breech

Is that like a chastity belt? Or maybe an adult diaper?

Re:Give it time...

[pookemon]

Yeah - but who wants to wait a whole day for that to happen...?

Even more reason to have nothing to do with it

[Marcion]

I read this bit:

"New high-def DVDs will include updated keys and instructions for older versions of the PC-playback software not to play discs until the software patch has been installed."

No one gives my computer instructions but me. So I will have nothing to do with either of these formats at all. I am just gonna say no and take my business elsewhere.

DVD is quite fine, and where it doesn't then there are hard drives. Hollywood can give me movies in a format I'll accept or they can e2fsck off.

Re:Even more reason to have nothing to do with it

[ppanon]

Nah, it takes 150 Million dollars to make a Hollywood blockbuster where you spend 1/3 on whiz-bang special effects, 1/3 on salaries for "star" actors and directors, 1/4 for advertising, and the rest for actual preparation of sets and filming. You can still make decent movies today for about $10 million or less; it's just that you then need actual solid plotting, scripting, and acting because you don't have $140 million to paper over crap.

And as the price of Pro HDTV cameras and computers + digital editing S/W drop, you will be able to do a pretty decent all digital-straight to video for a lot less. Sure, you'll still have substantial costs for lighting equipment, audio equipment, makeup, getting filming permits, and so on. But you won't necessarily need to spend money on film and film processing. That's going to open the door to a lot more student and amateur film-making efforts. And yeah, it will still meet Sturgeon's Law, but there *will* be a lot more good stuff mixed in the avalanche of garbage that will fill sites like YouTube.

Re:Even more reason to have nothing to do with it

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

You can still make decent movies today for about $10 million or less; it's just that you then need actual solid plotting, scripting, and acting because you don't have $140 million to paper over crap.

Indeed.

Look at Infernal Affairs - the original from which "The Departed" was remade - done in Hong Kong it had a budget of roughly 5M USD at the time. The Departed had a budget of roughly $90M and that does not take into account advertising. That's almost a 20:1 ratio and many people argue that "Infernal Affairs" is still the better movie.

Look at "Il Mare (Siworae)" - the original from which the recent Keanu Reeves/Sandra Bullock "The Lake House" was remade - a budget of under 2M USD versus roughly $40M for the remake and if IMDB's ratings are anything to go by, the original was better. Again a 20:1 ratio.

Furthermore, South Korea regularly turns out top caliber movies and yet the most expensive film they've produced, The Host, had a budget of $10M. Most South Korean productions are well under half of that, often closer to $2M, and their quality easily surpasses most of what Hollywood does.

South Korea is one of the few markets in the world where local productions regularly beat out Hollywood for ticket sales (in part because of screen quotas, but that changed recently due to the US State Department doing the MAFIAA's biding and it still didn't put a dent in local cinema). These movies focus on story rather than flash, so there are less special effects. But otherwise the movies look just as good as anything from Hollywood - professionally lit, professional wardrobe, make-up, cinematography, and of course the most important part -- great story telling.

While production costs are cheaper in South Korea and Hong Kong than they are in Hollywood, they are not necessarily less than for a lot of "run aways" where Hollywood outsources various parts of the production to cheaper parts of the world.

So, yes it is easily possible to outdo Hollywood and even produce 'blockbuster quality' (if quality is the right term) movies for far far less than Hollywood does right now.

Respin

[ewhac]

"Makers of software for playing the discs on computers will offer patches containing new keys and closing the hole that allowed observant hackers to discover ways to strip high-def DVDs of their protection. On Monday, the group that developed the Advanced Access Content System said it had worked with device makers to deactivate those keys and refresh them with a new set."

No no no. Let's just tidy that baby up a bit:

"Makers of software for playing the discs on computers are requiring consumers to download patches that will re-apply the product defects that computing professionals had removed in the weeks prior. Despite the fact that nothing is technically wrong with the older versions of the software, it is being intentionally rendered obsolete to force the update -- no new movies will be viewable on the old software."

Schwab

They didn't fix anything

[hyrdra]

They didn't fix any flaws. They just deactivated old keys and issued new ones. Supposedly InterVideo will be patched to be more secure (aka try to hide the new key). Maybe that is what they are talking about but it still does not fix any flaws by a long shot. Just look at all the cracked versions of software out there that have all kinds of fancy safety and protection mechanisms and are still cracked daily. As long as its in memory in unencrypted form for any amount of time, it can be obtained.

What they have done is analogous to re-keying a lock that is susceptible to being picked -- it's only a matter of time before it is picked again. Lather, rinse, repeat. And how long before a hardware player is cracked? If I had one I'd bust into it to see what kind of flash it has. It probably has an on-board JTAG or other programming port to dump the memory like most consumer devices which are mass produced and then flashed assembly style, making obtaining the key quite easy. When the players come down in price I fully expect them to be cracked on a daily basis.

Already hacked via Xbox 360 add on VID

[appleguru]

From Engadget:

In parallel efforts, hackers in both the Xboxhacker and Doom9 forums have exposed the "Volume ID" for discs played on XBOX 360 HD DVD drives. Any inserted disc will play without first authenticating with AACS, even those with Volume IDs which have already been revoked by the AACS LA due to previous hacking efforts. Add the exposed processing keys and you can decrypt and backup your discs for playback on any device of your choosing. Now go ahead AACS LA, revoke the Toshiba-built XBOX 360 HD DVD player... we double-dog dare ya.

Sources:
http://www.xboxhacker.net/index.php?topic=6866.0
http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?&t=124294&pa ge=6
http://www.engadget.com/2007/04/10/aacs-hacked-to- expose-volume-id-windvd-patch-irrelevant/

analogous ?

[fahrbot-bot]

What they have done is analogous to re-keying a lock that is susceptible to being picked...

I'm sorry, but this is /. and we only allow automotive analogies here. Please rephrase.

Re:"Fixed Flaws"?

[ZorbaTHut]

For a system which is fundamentally doomed to failure, AACS is pretty well-designed. :)

Re:Give it time...

[SnowZero]

I've got mod points but I'll save them, since I know you're going straight to +5 funny anyway.

I hope you are proud of yourself; You're what's known as a "tightmod".