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Blu-ray BD+ Cracked
An anonymous reader writes "In July 2007, Richard Doherty of the Envisioneering Group (BD+ Standards Board) declared: 'BD+, unlike AACS which suffered a partial hack last year, won't likely be breached for 10 years.' Only eight months have passed since that bold statement, and Slysoft has done it again. According to the press release,
the latest version of their flagship product AnyDVD HD can automatically remove BD+ protection and allows you to back-up any Blu-ray title on the market."
This is completely bogus marketing on Slysoft's part. They have "broken" the current titles by extracting the code from each one, but BD+ relies on code being downloaded from the disc itself to decode the data. The bar will just be raised now and new code will be added to newer titles.
They know damn well that no DRM is ever really secure. But the bread and butter of these companies is to sucker the studios into thinking otherwise. So they don't make such statements because they actually believe them, but to sell their DRM scheme. By the time it gets cracked (usually about 5 minutes after anyone bothers to try), they've already made their money and can laugh all the way to the bank.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
It however does a few things...
1. It tells that Blu-Ray is already supported enough to buy a player now
2. It allows you to even if Blu-Ray ends up failing, you can rip your Blu-Ray movies to the new format (and don't expect media storage to be made as long as VHS and DVD did anymore...)
3. It will allow various third-party projects to soon take advantage of this (even if right now it only lets you make backups) and add Blu-Ray support to media players on OSes such as Linux.
There is no "disagree" moderation, and troll, flamebait and overrated are not valid substitutes
I agree that is the reason for the vast majority, but there are some cases where people have a legitimate reason. I'm in the process of ripping my 600+ DVDs to an increasingly large hard drive array so I can access them all around the house without the need to get the discs. I know it's unusual but there are legitimate reasons.
It's all fun and games until a 200' robot dinosaur shows up and trashes Neo-Tokyo... Again
Let's face it, no matter how difficult the DRM becomes, there's always, always going to be the analogue component to deal with - the physical images which our eyes see, and the physical sound waves which our ears pick up. Capturing both outside of a digital signal is ALWAYS going to be possible - it's obviously the worst case scenario, and it might not be as elegant as capturing a digital signal directly, but you'll still get the content one way or the other.
:)
The only way I can see this being defeated is if the content providers forced people to bypass these analogue pickups by connecting directly to one's brain. Fucked if I can think of anyone daring enough to then install cracks to bypass the copy-protection in their brain - what if they comes with a trojan?
Or a root-kit? In a brain... Shit, maybe Sony have ulterior motives darker than anyone predicted.
The only bad thing about BD+ being cracked is that it didn't happen sooner. A naive faith that it would be secure may have been one of the factors in studios throwing their weight behind Blue-ray instead of HD. Now that HD seems to be going down the pipes, it leaves blue ray in a monopoly position, free to keep their prices high. Okay - it's not quite a monopoly position as they still have to compete with traditional DVDs. But it's a worse situation for the public than if HD were still around. Still, every little crack helps.
Aide-toi, le Ciel t'aidera - Jeanne D'Arc.
I do this at home already, and it's wonderful. My intentions are this: I have a two young kids who like to watch movies and I'm protecting my investment by putting the legally acquired discs on the top shelf of my closet where peanut butter covered fingers can't get them. They get an easy way to watch movies through a client, I get to protect my investment from the inadvertent damage of my kids.
We're all hypocrites. We all have hidden parts, it's the contrast between them that make us more a hypocrite than others
Spelling/grammar nazis welcome (English is not my first language and I am trying to improve my spelling/grammar)
Yes, and this makes me wonder if his crack was a futile attempt to make the folks bring back his favorite of the two formats. He inadvertently helped put the nails in HD DVD's coffin, now hes trying to make up for it. Well its too little too late I think, but its interesting and he probably had the crack all along for bluray, he probably just thought that releasing the HD one would drum up more interest in the format and kill off bluray....in the end it ovviously backfired.
Be assured it was this argument that Sony brought to the studios to get them to kill the (IMO better standard) of HD-DVD since it has already been cracked. Also, be assured that Sony knew their argument was bullshit. Sadly, it was this lie that killed the standard, not a few thousand people skewing consumer purchasing towards BD. Ca va...
...and it should be known by now
How about the most important 'legit' reason (for me anyway): being able to play blu-ray media on Linux?
#1 is crucially for me. I've consolidated all of my media for convenience. I don't want bookshelves full of plastic boxes - my house is only so big. Furthermore, when I play my media, I don't want to sit through corporate marketing and propaganda. I just want to play my movie. So I *always* rip and encode a movie, and never bother with the DVD player software. If media companies can't bring themselves to sell me the product that *I* want, then I'm going to put a little effort into converting the product into something that *I* want. The free market should be about empowering consumers.
#2 is also important, because it limits the amount of price gouging that media companies can engage in. DVDs are "good-enough", and will keep price pressure on blue-ray. In the distant future, movies will only be released on blue-ray, and we need to keep the price pressure.
Furthermore, a lot of media is simply overpriced. There's a glut of it on the market - so media companies *must* be making money out of it. I wouldn't bother with torrents at all if I could pay $1-$2 for a legit download. Watermark it if you want, but let me take control of the media, so I can use it however I like.
Regardless of torrents, I spend a certain amount of media each year. Trying to control the distribution channel is a vain attempt to artificially keep prices high.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
Since I bought a copy of The Shellcoder's Handbook Amazon keeps trying to get me to buy other cracking books, for instance :
Hello, Dr Skwid., Amazon.co.uk has new recommendations for you based on items you purchased or told us you own.
Reversing: Secrets of Reverse Engineering
Buffer Overflow Attacks: Detect, Exploit, Prevent
Rootkits: Subverting the Windows Kernel
The Database Hackers Handbook: Defending Database Servers
Sockets, Shellcode, Porting, and Coding: Reverse Engineering Exploits and Tool Coding for Security Professionals
Professional Rootkits (Programmer to Programmer)
Now that the UK & Germany has outlawed knowledge it's like a trap!
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
The Wikipedia article is out of date then. Slysoft's old crack did what you say. The most recent update fully removes the BD+ bullshit.
Here's something I've wondered about. It seems to me one could make a highly difficult media if media included a small write-once track somewhere. So I wonder why the manufacturers don't do this. Sure it would not have been possible to retrofit DVDs given the installed base but why not Something that was being designed from scratch with the hindsight of DVD, that is blue ray. The write-once track would not have to contain much data and so it could be quite a sub-optimal density that might be writable with modest changes to the lower power read-laser, and not require expensive added components. Or probably even better some sort of electrically addressable (eprom-like) chip on the disk. This would permit various modes of protection. For example, each disk could be given unique information during manufacturing. Or if that proved to be too slow for some reason, then the disk could be modified by the first player to play it. I think this could be used either 1) produce media that if you figured out a security code for one disk, would not work on another copy of the same disk. 2) or produce media that could be locked to a single player Not that I really want to see this, but given that this seems possible I wonder why it not done. ----- Also does anyone know if the new crack is a "master-key" kind of crack or a "player-key" kind of crack that they can if they want de-activate. ---
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
I will give BD+ credit though, it managed to hold them off for 8 months
Nope. 5 months.
According to the link they sat on this for 3 months for strategic reasons, waiting for the format war to end.
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- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
If you knew your recent history about hacking DRM, you would know that DirecTV is a perfect example. Their older cards had a weak DRM scheme where it would validate PPV requests at a certain time in a sequence. If you dropped the voltage at just the right time, you could make the set-top box think your PPV request was valid. There was also an easier way where you could clone a valid card. DirecTV had as many as *1 million* people stealing their service, so they did a 10+ million card swap. Expensive for them, but their new card had a good challenge-response scheme in the chip. Their new chips might be hacked, but not by many. I don't know a single person who hacks DirecTV anymore (and believe me, my nerdy Slashdot-reading 'friend' had a lot of customers). All the old boards like alt.dss.hack are all but dead because most people have just moved on (or starting hacking Dish :P).
So although DirecTV didn't produce an uncrackable system, it's 'sufficiently hard' for most people. Hence, they succeeded.
I don't know about satellite TV in the US, but...
Virtually every satellite TV encryption system available has been broken, often many times over. These range from simple hardware hacks, such as subscribing to all channels then sticking a resistor in the decoder to prevent the card's EEPROM from being changed then unsubscribing again, through complete reverse-engineering of the cards. Cards were routinely modified to recieve all channels, card details were copied onto deactivated cards, and some were even re-implemented from scratch using a PIC soldered onto a PCB, or even using programmable cards.
These systems relied on security through obscurity - the pirates didn't know how the cards worked, so there was no way they could compromise them. Yeah, right...
This continued until very recently. Most newer encryption systems follow the pattern that BSkyB used with their analog and digital encryption systems. BSkyB's analog system relied on replacing the cards. Each time a revision of the cards was breached, they would issue a new one that fixed the holes in the last, and often fundamentally changed the way the card worked. Sky retired the system before it was fully compromised, but other providers kept using it. They had to face the fact that computing power had advanced so much that it was possible to brute-force decode the signal in real-time with no card.
Most modern cards are programmable, as are the CAMs (the modules that talk to the card, and pass the final decryption keys to the STB). So the current encryption systems change the firmware in both card and CAM periodically. Any breach will only work for a limited time. Even after all these years, the arms race continues - pirates have found all kinds of creative ways around these things, such as sharing a single card across the internet.
It's also possible to buy a PCI satellite card that allows a PC to recieve satellite TV. Combine that with an official card and CAM, which work as normal. You can't change the card, but you can do whatever you like with the decryption keys it generates, or the decrypted TV signals. That includes recording it, and uploading it to the internet. You could even do that in real-time if you wanted to.
The continual update thing is what Sony are trying with BD+. The idea is that the BD+ portion contains code, unique to each disc, which verifies that the player is authentic and hasn't been compromised. Once it's done that, it provides decryption keys to the player.
The general idea is that, while it may be possible to compromise AACS in the same was as CSS, each BluRay disc will contain unique encrpytion code for that disc. The idea is that each disc will need to be cracked individually, just like PC games. And we all know how well that approach works in practice.
This assumes that each BluRay disc will have completely unique BD+ code, and that's just not going to happen - they have to maintain compatibility with existing players, which means the BD+ code has to be extensively tested. Hackers can move much more quickly - even if they did have to crack each batch of BluRay discs individually, they'll be able to update their decryption tools much quicker than Sony can update their BD+ code.
It also assumes that nobody knows how BD+ works (security through obscurity), and that nobody will be able to independently implement a BD+ VM that pretends to be a real player. That's exactly what SlySoft have done. Their VM isn't complete yet - it only implements the portions of BD+ that current discs are actually using. It is known not to work on one disc (Hitman, I believe), simply because it uses parts of the BD+ VM that they've not implemented. Yet.
The point is that the pirates are far more agile than Sony, and have unlimited time in which to devise a solution. There is no such thing as making it too much effort. At least with the satellite TV analogy, you can't keep using a hack once the hole it exploited has been patched, so there is a time factor. There is no time factor with BluR
If they are abridging your rights, why don't you, or one of the many other people who hate DRM, or the EFF, sue them for abridging your rights?
The bill of rights doesn't say "The government shall make no law abridging the rights of the people to transfer video content from their TV set to their computer or portable media player." Perhaps it would have if they could have conceived of such problems.
If you're referring to fair use, that's for purposes of criticism, not for purposes of changing devices. I'm not aware of any right of yours that DRM abridges.
I hate DRM and find it both annoying and yet still ineffectual, but I don't think it's abridging my rights.
Now, laws that institutionalize DRM and make circumvention illegal, like the DMCA, I believe those ARE abridging my rights. They abridge my right to private property by telling me what I can and can't do with something I purchased and own. It's abridging my freedoms without my consent.
Unfortunately, private property rights are, as far as I can tell, more of a common law tradition in the US that an explicit legal guarantee. The existence of private property is implied, but not spelled out at all, in the 14th amendment.
I think DRM is a stupid and annoying waste, but I don't think I have some sort of right to prevent them from trying it; quite the opposite, they have the right to develop and sell whatever products they wish, I can't tell them what sort of programs or encryption or compatibility they should put into their products, and short of copyright violations (distributing their copyrighted works), I'm free to do whatever I want with the stuff I bought from them. It's freedom that I don't want to see abridged; their freedom to make and sell products as they see fit, and our freedom to do as we like with the things we own.
Can anyone tell me how to set my sig on Slashdot?
I would say that you are only half right. If Dish is easier to hack, saying that DirectTV is unhacked is like saying that my front door is secure because it's easier to throw a rock through the 4x8 window right next to it. Largely pointless for the conversation. After all, have you succeeded if the hacker is still getting the data through another channel? Then there is Netflix. Most of the people I knew that hacked DirecTV did were subscribers to DirecTV. They hacked the system for the PPV channels. At $19 a month for way better selection, I know a lot of people switched from hacked DirectTV to Netflix because it was a better value.
Although you have some good points, there seems to be something you are missing. Have you ever actually downloaded one of those re-compressed hi-def movies? I have. The file was 9 GB. As far as I can tell it was the original resolution. So it has been *hugely* re-compressed. I was expecting it to be a huge mess. But you know what? It wasn't. Yes, there were numerous compression artifacts, but I was too distracted by the fact that the overall image quality and detail and dynamic range were about 1.78 gazillion times better than standard def DVD. It was one of the first hi-def movies I have watched on my computer and I was not at all disappointed. Would the original Blu-Ray or HD-DVD that it was derived from have better image quality? I have no doubt. You can't just throw away 60% or 70% of the information in an image and expect to retain the same quality. Is the difference noticeable? Almost certainly. But that doesn't change the fact that even at a reduced quality the re-compressed hi-def material is vastly superior in terms of the subjective viewing experience compared to the only other drive space friendly alternative, regular DVD. In fact I feel like throwing all of my DVDs in the trash. To me the difference seems that huge.
Generally speaking I do see myself as a videophile, as someone who cares very much about a small difference in image quality. But until hard drives become vastly larger I simply will not have enough space to store hi-def movies at the original quality. So, as much as it disturbs me, I am going to have to compromise. The re-compressed hi-def files are still an order of magnitude improvement over DVD. To me, the difference between regular DVD and hi-def is a much larger jump than between laser disc and DVD. I suppose it might more approximate the jump between VHS and laser disc. So as a videophile without infinite hard drive space (and without much money or an HDTV) I am quite happy with our new format and with the people responsible for cracking BD+.
Although I don't really claim to understand how it is possible to re-compress so much without completely degrading the quality to an unwatchable level, I am wondering if studios have really outdone themselves. Maybe they just have so much more space and the newer compression algorithms are so good that they are able to encode their film transfers at a bitrate that is nearly without artifacts, a format truly made for videophiles. Of course the irony is that they are doing this to try to tempt us all (not just videophiles) away from the fully cracked and easily copyable DVD format into their spider web of uber advanced DRM that is BD+ (and AACS). Call it what you will but it *is* much more advanced than DeCSS. Especially Blu-Ray.
But it probably takes a lot of extra storage space to get rid of that last 20% of compression artifacts (or whatever). So a non-perfectionist can still have relatively breathtaking video quality at a much smaller size if he is willing to make some visible but acceptable compromises. I am guessing that each video has its own sweet spot in this regard, a point where video quality starts to degrade sharply. That's the point that the re-encoder has to find.
Quite an experience to live in fear, isn't it? That's what it is to be a slave.