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AACS Cracked Again
EmTeedee sends us to a blog post for a summary of the latest results in cracking AACS, from the Doom9 forums (as the earlier cracks have been) — after the DVD Security Group said it had patched the previous flaws. From the DLTV blog: "This time the target was the Xbox 360 HD DVD add on. Geremia on Doom9 forums has started a thread on how he has obtained the Volume ID without AACS authentication. With the aid of others like Arnezami they have managed to patch the Xbox 360 HD DVD add on... It appears that XT5 has released [an] application that allows the Volume ID to be read without the need to rewrite the firmware. This would mean that anyone could simply plug in the HD DVD drive and obtain the Volume ID from any HD DVD without the hassle of flashing it."
Owned.
No more movies! Ever! We quit!
The movie industry.
Sometimes the best solution is to stop wasting time looking for an easy solution.
It seems that the /. crowd, and the tech industry in general, knew well before AACS was ever released that it would be a flop. We knew it would do nothing to prevent disks from being copied, we knew it would do nothing but hurt the consumer, and we knew it was an utter waste of money.
Yet the movie industry pushed forward, and look where it got them... exactly where we said it would, nowhere.
I can't wait until they realize that it's not worth it, and just stop concerning themselves with copy-protecting their media and instead focus on creating good movies.
Sometimes the best solution is to stop wasting time looking for an easy solution.
Someone really needs to fire whomever the MPAA uses for deciding on security for these things. Haven't they heard the golden rule of computer security? "Security by obscurity is no security" and that's all they are doing is trying to hide a key. Find the key... no security. Sheesh....
I'd try to crack the stuff from a number of different fronts, but keep quiet until I've cracked a few. With several cracks and exploits found, I'd be able to start working on higher level cracks, due to understanding the system.
Then I'd start releasing the cracks, starting with some of the simpler ones, only releasing another when they patch the exploit I released, resulting in an ongoing sense of futility as every time they fix the holes, I point out another.
Best exploit I think? Stealing or cracking the key to every code created for the discs. That way they'd have to throw the whole system out in order to achieve 'security' again. No current players would work. While a massive beowolf cluster cracking the whole thing would be neat and worthy of the NSA, I think that's unlikely. More possible but still pretty much 'mission impossible' would be a physical theft. If only the DVD Security Group protected those keys like government officials protect our information*...
hm...
*Yes, I'm still a bit irked about having my info stolen at least three times
I don't read AC A human right
I was reading parent post and did a double-take, as what I got of it was:
...which in a way seemed to make total sense, there is a perverse part of myself that thinks that this is almost where we are headed.
"I can't wait until they realize that it's not worth it, and just stop concerning themselves with creating good movies, and instead focus full-time on copy-protecting their media."
Z.
The race is on, let me tell you from the perspective of online gaming and the cheat vs cheat detection wars:
;)
The hackers have the edge.
But if you develop the AACS standard at least you have job security
...this is just barely 24 hours after they announced it was fixed? Great work to those involved. Hell I can't get a change approved in 24 hours!
That really wouldn't be the worst thing in the world. There's a huge demand for movies, but they're expensive to make and the current movie industry sucks up most of the available investment dollars. There's no "secret sauce" involved in making a movie; it's just very, very expensive, and the people with enough cash to bankroll a film would rather go with an established, sure bet, rather than taking a chance on someone or something new.
If the current players just decided to pack up and go home, the new industry that would rise up in its place would doubtless be a lot more creative -- at least in the short term -- and we'd probably see a lot of new material out of it. In time, it would probably stagnate, too, because that's the way of things.
The main problem with the current situation is that the dinosaur companies have bought protection for their business models from the government, and essentially have propped themselves up. There's nothing bad with companies getting big, but there's also nothing that says they have a "right" to stay in business, either. Failing business models deserve to die, and the companies that rely on them deserve to die, too; when they don't, you're stopping what ought to be a natural economic progression.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
While I think everybody has been making good points so far, you have to remember that in the long term copy protection is actually winning. While these measures might be meant in name to stop piracy, their true value is in taking out fair use as collateral damage. The goal of DRM is not to stop piracy, but to make it difficult enough that Joe User will not be able to convert or make backups through a point and click interface. If this copy protection has done that, then it is making them money.... shame all it does is hurt the people who legitimately buy their products.
The Russians have won. They have made the world a cesspool of distrust, greed, fear and hate.
I know what your saying and I agree with it, but having the legal right to make a copy doesn't mean that they don't have the right to try and stop you. I just wish that they would realize that most people like to buy stuff, I know I like to buy DVDs it makes me feel warm and fuzzy to be like "Hey I bought the whole (insert show or movie) series". But the truth is that its too expensive to buy everything I would like to. Production costs at this point of the DVD release have usually been covered(excluding making the menu releasing extra content and having a commentary that I never listen to except on south park dvds) the packaging and DVD for a season of south park is about 50 dollars canadian when it comes out. It probably cost them 5 dollars to make(my guess and some might say it was high some might say it was low theres 3 dvds in there with graphic lables and casing and maybe shipping not sure if the store pays for that or not) so lets say the store like HMV or Best Buy makes about 10 dollars off of the sale. Thats 35 dollar profit for the manufacture. Lets say you pay Matt Stone and Trey Parker to do their commentaries for it, they probably get a % of sales. so if you sell 100,000 dvds of one season you get 3.5 million dollars, say matt and trey take 10% each the studio is left with 2.8 million.
if you reduced the cost so that a box set costs 40 dollars using the same numbers you end up with 2 million. This gives you less profit right? Well if people are more willing to buy a dvd at 40 dollars and you get 150 000 dvd sales you end up with a final profit of 3.75 3 million dollars. Your making more money. I know nothing and I'm bored so don't take me too cereal. I know people will still pirate dvds but people will always pirate dvds, you won't stop them. Use the money that your putting into research to reduce the cost of the product and sell it and I bet you will have less people pirating or at least buying a legit copy after pirating or before making a backup. I know I would.
I find it bad form that I've paid 8*45+20(best of volume was cheaper) for my south park dvd collection. Thats almost 400 dollars. come to think of it that seems insane, and thats not my only collection. Most people can't aford that and I can see why they pirate or make backups. Would you want to go out and spend that again if your DVD got wrecked by a scratch?
Actually.. that was disproved on Mythbusters.. you _can_ teach an old dog new tricks.
Maybe there's still hope for the MPAA... *cough*
Another Aacs Crack Soon
Here's an outlandish idea:
Microsoft and Toshiba screwed this up on purpose to undermine the AACS. Defective by Design, sure, but this is probably one of the few times that it ROCKS.
Viable Slashdot alternatives: https://pipedot.org/ and http://soylentnews.org/
Might even make sence for them to produce two versions of the movies:
of course pirates would still try and rip the add free discs, and or remove the ads from the free version, but it might remove the incentive for many people to pirate the non free disks. I mean, most still watch tv with ads, instead of tivo-ing it and skipping the commercials or downloading it without commercials, right?
Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
This is some sweet hacking.
How ironic that we need to hack hardware that we ourselves own.
There are plenty of entertainment options. You can watch regular TV, videos on YouTube or just take a walk in the park. Why go out of the way to patronize people who are not willing to serve content the way you like it?
They don't care if it gets cracked. They only care how difficult it is to keep up with the crack-patch cycle. Their goal is to make it difficult or risky for John Q. Everyman to copy movies and music.
They have to know that all their security measures will be broken. They can win by attrition.
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If someone really wanted to hurt the AACS system they would find and release the playback keys for the top 10 standalone players preferably after one of the formats has achieved success. If the top 10 players suddenly couldn't play the discs anymore and a lot of people had the players, the difficulty in reflashing all those players by the common public would either hurt sales SEVERELY or cause them to not revoke the players for fear of the damage it would do to the reputation of the hi def format.
So if you really want to hurt them, pull out your soldering iron and pull those keys from the standalone players.
Money doesn't guarantee a movie will be good, but it does heavily indicate the movie won't be appallingly bad.
Except for Van Helsing. Sadly, I watched the entire thing because of a promise - trying to disprove a comment of "this movie has no redeeming value whatsoever"; I didn't think it was possible to spend $200 million and not have SOMETHING worth seeing.
I spent the last 90 minutes of that atrocity thinking up unique and interesting ways to gouge out my eyeballs.
Endless arguments over trivial contradictions in books written by ignorant savages to explain thunder in the dark.
I know what your saying and I agree with it, but having the legal right to make a copy doesn't mean that they don't have the right to try and stop you.
Actually if you were to follow the spirit of copyright law, they do not have that right at all.
After a certain time (Despite the fact right now its 100 years after the death of the copyright holder) their work MUST enter the public domain. That is the cost and price of getting a copyright on the work in the first place.
If they do not wish to pay the costs involved with getting a copyright, then I do not wish to grant them the rights a copyright would give. It's as simple as that.
Before DRM, it was morally tricky to assume that they had no intent to pay for their copyright by putting it in the public domain later. Unless you can see the future, there's no way to know for sure ahead of time.
DRM is exactly the proof that they have no intention to play by the spirit of copyright however, so they do not deserve a limited monopoly over distribution from the start.
If the public can not benifit from their creation, screw them, nether can they.