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New AACS Crack Called "Undefeatable"
Tuoqui writes "With all the focus on the infamous hexadecimal number, people may be ignoring a bigger weakness in the AACS armor, which emerged two weeks ago. Some hackers have figured out how to crack AACS in a way that cannot be defeated, even by revoking all the keys in circulation."
Nothing for you to see here. Please move along.
Huh, looks like the new strategy is issuing DMCA Takedown orders against anyone who suggests that it is undefeatable...
Summation 2
Blu-ray will be effected too, since it uses AACS. Of course, Blu-ray has an added layer of protection which they've never actually used before. This will prompt Sony to tout Blu-ray to studios as a solution to the crack. It will also prompt Sony to cry when, exactly 5 minutes after it's first used, a hacker cracks it too.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Basically this crack relies on using a Microsoft HD-DVD drive for the XBox 360, with a special firmware patch (which requires you to remove the firmware chip, flash it, and then solder it back in). With a hacked drive, you can apparently get the Volume ID, which is one of the parameters used in the encryption, directly off of the disc. Normally the Volume ID isn't passed to the host computer, I think.
Anyway, in the bizarro-world that the people who write DRM systems inhabit, I think that this will probably just push them to make the drives harder to "tamper" with; I fully expect that they'll eventually just pot the circuit boards in epoxy or something, to keep you from desoldering the chips.
So if you're interested in this stuff, you might as well go out and get one of the MS drives or other first-gen drives, because I suspect the hacking possibilities may decrease over time; it's going to be these early drives which are the most hackable.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
All apologies to those who feel that DRM is still a relevant freedom related issue... But I honestly feel that discussing this is just a drain on resources that could be directed towards more fertile topics.
... we were getting so close to a breakthrough there, I don't know how we got off-track.
Yeah, like arguing the relative merits of Linux versus Windows, or Apple versus MS
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
you are attempting to control the flow of ones and zeros in a world where an electronic communication system designed to withstand a nuclear attack is now ubiquitous
you should give up. you've lost, and will keep losing. it's just silly to keep going down this path. there is only more pain in store for you
people will still make movies. people will still make music. it's just that your particular pre-internet business model is now obsolete
go ask the aztecs or the incans if the appearance of new technology was fair to their empires
it wasn't. but it didn't stop technology in the form of gunpowder and sailing ships and metal armor from rendering them obsolete
so it is with you and the internet
sorry
reality is a bitch
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Keep your eyes to the sky.
I think you mean "effect," as in "Grammar Nazis are very effective at repelling women."
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
You're missing the point here. Everybody doesn't have to do this. One person does this and posts Volume Keys for each new release, allowing everyone else to simply decode with the volume key. If this truly can't be revoked, then it doesn't matter it they make it inaccessible tomorrow. Not until every existing modded player breaks beyond repair would it be secure again.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Them: "Hey, want to buy a movie?"
You: "Sure, how much?"
Them: "$100,000,000.00."
You: "F*** off."
Them: "Sorry, that was the price to purchase all rights to the movie, including redistribution and royalties. Would you like to buy a subset of those rights instead?"
You: "Sure, like what?"
Them: "How about, the right to public exhibition, and reproduction of media for sale, but no royalties? That'll be just $5,000,000.00."
You: "No thanks, too much."
Them: "How about, the right to public exhibition? Just $500,000.00."
You: "Do I look like I'm made of money?"
Them: "Sorry. How about, the right to private exhibition? Only $5."
You: "Now you're talkin'!"
Them: "So we have a deal?"
You: "Yep." [you hand them a fiver, and they hand you a DVD.]
Them: "Have a nice day."
You: "Hey, wait, this DVD is copy-protected! I want to copy it!"
Them: "Yes, sorry, we didn't sell you the right to do that. If you have more money -- equal to the amount we'll lose on average for each copy-producing customer -- you can buy that right too."
You: "But I paid for this!" [you shake the DVD at them]
Them: "Do you understand that you paid for limited ownership, and that you consented to the limits stated and known to you at the time of sale?"
You: "No, I'm too dumb-stupid to grasp that. I can only handle concrete meanings of the idea of ownership."
Them: "Yeah, we figured. You probably also think HOAs are usurping your god-given right to paint your house pink, eh?"
Certainly the movie studios are obnoxiously attempting to prevent format-shifting, in order to sell you the same movie twice. But that doesn't mean they are violating any of your rights.
FATMOUSE + YOU = FATMOUSE
Developing an overblown DRM system: Millions of dollars.
Hiring consultants to tell you it'll really, really work this time after firing all the ones who informed you copy protection is a cryptographic impossibility: Thousands of dollars.
Paying lawyers to send cease-and-desist letters to thousands of websites after the key leaks: $500/hour.
Watching yet another DRM scheme go up in flames shortly after its release: Priceless.
To fight the war on terror, stop being afraid.
Or, there's always "Hey, I want to exercise my rights under fair use laws, which have always existed and which you don't have to pay a penny for." Or "Hey, I want to exercise my private-exhibition right (which I paid you for) on a platform of my choosing." Or "I want to make a backup of this, so I can continue to exercise that private-exhibition right (which, again, I paid you for) if my kids scratch the crap out of the original." It's not quite so black-and-white as you put it there.
To fight the war on terror, stop being afraid.
Except for one thing... That's not what they're selling.
They are selling you an entire physical copy, which you can do whatever the hell you want, short of selling copies.
Look at their advertising. They don't say, "Purchase a license to private exhibition today!" They say, "Own it on HD-DVD, today!!!".
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
I own 2 legitimately, untampered-with DVD players, several computers with DVD drives, and an old XBox. When I rent or purchase a DVD that I am unable to play on any of these devices, nothing makes me more livid (especially when I'm already moody because I'm hungry and planned to eat while watching the DVD). It's actually to the point now where I look at the back of the DVD to see who the publisher is before renting or purchasing it, because I've found my devices especially have trouble with Sony DVDs, of course. I've never even made a copy of a DVD or pirated any DVDs, but I can honestly say that as it becomes more painful for me to legitimately watch my DVDs, I will eventually be driven to circumvent their DRM entirely as that would be less painful of a process. It just pisses me off, but there are some movies I would really enjoy watching and owning a legitimate copy of, but I simply won't spend a penny of mine if Sony's name is on it. Furthermore, Sony's BS about hardware manufacturers needing to keep up-to-date with their latest DRM mechanisms doesn't bode well either - I'm not replacing any of these devices which work perfectly fine with the exception of their purposely fouled media.
Them: "Do you understand that you paid for limited ownership, and that you consented to the limits stated and known to you at the time of sale?"
No because it was never explained to anyone buying a DVD nor is it printed in legible and readable size fonts on the DVD. Also the Advertising done for said DVD is the reverse of that by proclaiming "OWN IT TODAY!"
therefore, your contract is null and void because it was not presented at the time of sale AND your advertising suggest the reverse of what you claim your contract to say.
I would give THEM the benefit of the doubt if they made that fact clear. They do not because they know for a fact it will significantly impact DVD sales in a bad way.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Wrong. See USC title 17 sections 107 thru 109.
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?p=987050#pos t987050
Strangely, this was announced April 9th, while the article was published April 15th.
http://www.mhall119.com
The sky above the port was the color of bittorrent, tuned to a dead tracker.
"It's not like I'm leeching," MPAAse heard someone say, as he shouldered his way through the crowd around the door of Reality. "It's like my body's developed this massive plot deficiency." It was a Slashdot voice and a Slashdot joke...
Apologies to Gibson.
Reading the slashdot summary, and even the article itself, you may not realize that the Volume ID is just one piece of the puzzle.
The Volume ID is a small bit of data that's stored partially in the lead-in section, and partially in some other non-data area physically on the disc (which I don't fully understand, and apparently isn't available in the public HD-DVD documentation and is only available under NDA). Compliant drives only read and provide the volume ID after completing a cryptographic handshake, which hasn't been broken yet. So now they've made a firmware patch so the drive reads the Volume ID without authorization, without going through the as-yet-uncracked crpyto authorization process.
The purpose of the Volume ID is to prevent copying a disc by simply copying all its data. Because the Volume ID isn't stored within the data sectors, it can't be read normally. Well, that is, without impersonating the software (which hasn't been accomplished yet), or without a modified drive that doesn't require the software to authenticate before reading and returning the data.
That's all. Just one piece, not a full crack of AACS.
PJRC: Electronic Projects, 8051 Microcontroller Tools
Comment removed based on user account deletion
i wonder why they didnt use a zero knowledge protocol http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero-knowledge_proof to defend them disks, bundling the keys with the cds is only delaying the inevitable
Most users wouldn't be satisfied with being able to prove mathematically that the movie they wanted to watch really was on the disk, but still have zero knowledge of what it actually looked and sounded like.
I have mod points, but what the heck. The slashdot editors strike again - posting stories without checking their facts. I've been following this since the muslix64 hack, so I do know what I'm talking about. I'm quoting the 'hacker' (arnezami - great guy) mentioned in the Ars Technica article:
QUOTE - Original post
In order to decrypt a disc you need the keys the content is encrypted with. These we usually refer to as Volume Unique Keys (although technically VUKs give Title Keys which are used to decrypt the content but this amounts to the same thing). What is important is that VUKs cannot be revoked. In other words: once we have a VUK for a disc then the AACS decryption-protection is broken for that disc. AACS cannot undo this.
So how can we get VUKs?
There are several ways to get VUKs for discs. But none of them are permanent solutions for retrieving all VUKs for all discs (released in the future).
* Get the VUKs out of "old" versions of a Software Player * Get a Volume ID (unique per movie) and a Processing Key (unique per Media Key Block version) and calculate the VUK.
The first method will expire quickly: we can now use WinDVD to retrieve VUKs out of its memory. But when new discs come out they won't work with this old version of WinDVD so you would have to install a new version. Therefore making this method obsolete for new discs.
The second method requires not one piece of information (like taking a single VUK out of the memory of WinDVD) but two pieces of information. We have several techniques now for a drive to reveal the Volume ID of a disc. So this part of the method is permanent. However the Processing Key will change every time they change to a new MKB version. And since we also need this second piece of information to calculate a VUK for a disc we always need to get the new Processing Key out of some player (whether its a Software Player or a standalone). The Processing Key (or better a Device Key) is very powerful though: if found it makes it possible to decrypt all discs released so far (assuming we can also retrieve the Volume IDs of those discs).
UNQUOTE
Moral of the story: We still need the processing key and that can be changed by the AACS, or by the abuse of language, "revoked". So the new AACS Crack is not "Undefeatable".
The only development since the time this article was written is that the firmware doesn't need to be changed anymore for the drive to reveal the VolumeID. There are some standard commands which get the job done.
Wow, at least half the replies are trying to be funny. What happened to Slashdot, when did it become a standup comedian-wannabe forum?
It's cool to have some fun, but when everyone is cracking lame jokes about any theme, it just becomes tiring. In most threads, I have to skip about 5 to 10 "Funny" comments to find an "Insightful" or "Interesting". When did everyone become a comedian?
Preferences > Comments > Reason Modifier.
-5 Funny.
There you go.
Not to be outdone, the MPAA is working with filmmakers to ensure that movies encoded onto BlueRay disks will be undesired long before Sony has managed to kill their superior format through stupid business practices. Leading the way is George Lucas who's company, LucasArts, has been the driving force behind many of the technological innovations in movies over the past 30 years. Says Lucas, "Our initial testing has been very positive. Test films like "Episode I" were almost unwatchable. And while the addition of a semi-coherent plot weakened the protection scheme from the two subsequent sequels, we've learned our lesson."
Lucas claims that his proprietary JarJar technology is showing incredible promise and that many of the summer's biggest blockbusters are planning to include this protection scheme. Yet the technology is not only effective for new movies. "One of our biggest markets is in the protection of older movies as they are released onto the higher definition formats. For example, we've added a 10 minute scene to 'Forrest Gump' featuring a conversation between JarJar and the title character which test audiences have indicated is 'more painful than child birth', as one woman put it."
Security Through Format Undesirability
Stasis is death. Embrace change.
A French grammar nazi! They had a word for people like you, collaborator.