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TiVo Awarded Patent For Password You Can't Hack

Posted by Zonk on from the un-hack-able dept.

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."

5 of 291 comments (clear)

  1. Scoff by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Redundant

    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.

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

  2. The password is... by hawks5999 · · Score: 0, Redundant

    09 f9 11 02 9d 74 e3 5b d8 41 56 c5 63 56 88 c0

  3. Hack by normuser · · Score: 0, Redundant

    Hacked in 3...2..1

    --
    09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
    XXX#######
  4. People seem to not get it by cdrguru · · Score: 0, Redundant

    The problem is that content costs money to create. Everyone wants something for nothing. It is certainly possible to put the content producers out of business, probably pretty soon. If that is what people want to do.

    Will that lead to no content? Of course not. It will lead to an explosion of unprofessional, low-cost content. It will lead to content produced by people that think they have something to say and want to get it out to the world. Think about American Idol tryouts - these people believe they have something to say and want to get it out to the world. They utterly outnumber the finalists by 100 to 1. This is where low-cost content is headed.

    So, we can have high-cost content that people pay for, or low-cost content that most people aren't going to want. I think the media companies are just about ready to give up fighting protection of their assets and going to throw in the towel. We will see where music sales go in the next 12 months and this is likely to be the deciding factor for movies and other stuff.

  5. Clone the drives ? by the_masked_mallard · · Score: 0, Redundant

    Why cant the drives be cloned, so as to effectively increase the time available for hacking the encryption ? It may be good enough for the lifetime of one drive, but how about 10 drives being hacked in parallel ?