TiVo Awarded Patent For Password You Can't Hack

Davis Freeberg writes "TiVo has always been known for thinking outside of the box, but this week they were awarded an unusual patent related to locking down content on their hard drives. According to the patent, they've invented a way to create password security that is so tough, it would take you longer than the life of a hard drive in order to figure it out. They could be using this technology to prevent the sharing of content or it could be related to their advertising or guide data, but if their encryption technology is really that good, it's an interesting solution for solving the problem of securing networks."

Comments

So....

[revlayle]

3-4 weeks tops?

Re:So....

[thrillseeker]

3-4 weeks tops?

At least ... it's triple rot-13 after all.

Re:So....

[Achoi77]

*in the underground lair of tivo*

tivo suit guy 1: Those lousy internet people keep cracking our encryption!

tivo suit guy 2: How do they keep doing it?

tivo suit guy 1: Because time is on their side, and they have no life! grr

tivo suit guy 2: How long can a 'really hard' encryption take?

tivo suit guy 1: I have no idea, maybe like a month? A week?

tivo suit guy 2: A WEEK? You can't be serious!

drive manufacturer suit: Well, if you can't beat crackers at their own game, what needs to get done is to beat them from a different angle.

tivo suit guy 1: what do you mean?

drive manufacturer suit: Think about it, every time you come up with a new password, it gets cracked in a week, there is no control over that. So, what needs to get done is to beat them where they have no control. TIME!

tivo suit guy 2: Time? And how do you expect us to control TIME?

drive manufacturer suit: Easy. Since we know that a password can be cracked within a week, what needs to get done is to prevent them from getting access to the password before that week. All we have to do is manufacture drives that will fail within a week!

tivo suit guy 2: That's brilliant!

tivo suit guy 1: Wait a minute. We can't have customer's drives dying withing one week. That's just no good for business.

drive manufacturer suit: Don't worry about it. We'll use flash drives. Flash ram wears out overtime. We can explain to the customer that the new flash drives will use less energy, have no moving parts, and are cheaper!

tivo suit guy 1: Will they really be cheaper?

drive manufacturer suit: only to you they will be. That way you won't have to pass off the savings to the customer. Plus, you can add in an additional subscription fee to have new flash drives mailed to them every week when they mail back their old flash drives! Think: netflix, but instead of dvds, flash drives. More money for you!

tivo suit guy 2: kinda like the photo-copier industry with their toners.. hrm, I like it!

tivo suit guy 1: Wait wait wait! Those drives will still cost us a pretty penny, so what's the secret?

drive manufacturer suit: *grins* we will be using _OLD_ flash drives. Just like the old flash drives that croaked so quickly. The manufacturing technology to build them was very cheap. We can churn those out like nobody's business.

tivo suit guy 1: hrm, so essentially they are disposable drives?

tivo suit guy 2: It's an excellent plan! We can add in the additional 'service' and bleed our customers dry!

drive manufacturer suit: soo, do we have a deal?

tivo suit guy 1 & 2: it's a deal! I think I'm gonna patent that idea!

*shakes hands, and the meeting is ended, tivo suit guys leave*

drive manufacturer gets on cell phone

drive manufacturer boss: so, how did it go?

drive manufacturer suit: They accepted project 'disposable drive.' Those fools have no idea we're playing them for our pawn.

drive manufacturer boss: Eeeexxxeeeelent~

drive manufacturer suit: Phase 1 is complete. I've finished talking to Apple and Creative already. I'm scheduled to meet with Sprint and Verizon tomorrow.

drive manufacturer boss: Once we have all the mp3 players, cell phones, and tivos supplied with our disposable drive, users will be upset that only after a week of use, their electronics became useless! This will soil the name of flash drives in a larger scale never seen before, and drive customer confidence towards flash down! They will be forced to lower their prices, and eventually perish under their manufacturing costs. Harddrives will RISE AGAIN! MUHWAHAHAHAHAHA!

And the password is...

[kihjin]

MDlGOTExMDI5RDc0RTM1QkQ4NDE1NkM1NjM1Njg4QzA=

Don't tell anyone.

Re:Scoff

[Anonymous Coward]

"Yeah right! I'll give it 5 years max."

Jeeze. You've been luckier with hard drives than I have, then... ROT13 would be sufficient to outlast some of them.

New Marketing Tool

[ProdigySim]

Make a security claim so wild that every hacker will buy your product to try to crack it. $$$$

Nothing Is Unhackable

[mmurphy000]

When I was a wee tot, I remember seeing a single-panel _Dennis The Menace_ cartoon. The cartoon itself had Dennis' father at a boardroom-type table with a few other people, his briefcase open, and various parts spilling out. The caption was something like "Gentlemen, our new bathroom scale did not pass the 'Dennis test'. We cannot refer to it as 'unbreakable'".

Since then, whenever I've heard about something claiming to be unbreakable, I picture a very broken bathroom scale...

Re:Really?

[kimvette]

TiVo has always been know for thinking outside of the box,

No they're not. They've always been known for seeking to keep everything IN the box.