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Doom9 Researchers Break BD+
An anonymous reader writes "BD+, the Blu-ray copy protection system that was supposed to last 10 years, has now been solidly broken by a group of doom9 researchers. Earlier, BD+ had been broken by the commercial company SlySoft." Someone from SlySoft posts a hint early in the thread, but then backs off for fear of getting fired. The break is announced on page 15.
A hearty congratulations to the brilliant programmers of Doom9, including Oopho2ei - who claims not to be a "professional programmer".
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Unfortunately this will probably just mean that a ton of consumers will be SOL when they implement new encryption schemes on BluRay that aren't supported by some existing players.
The best part of all: the DMCA makes it perfectly legal to use with Linux since OEMs don't provide linux codecs.
Sony isn't having a ton of luck building an installed base of users of BD, even after buying their competition into submission. If they obsolete their installed base they have to start over again with thet negative examples of HD-DVD and the additional strike of cyclic obsolescence against them. It would be too obvious that the purchase of their content is actually a short term lease. That would be the death of BluRay before it's even well started, and it wouldn't even buy them an additional year before it was cracked again.
It's more likely that we're nearing the end of this DRM nonsense forever. Finally!
Or am I too optimistic of their intelligence? History does weigh heavily against my hopefulness here.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
...start reading on page 15, it'll discuss (a) what they did and (b) how resistant it is against potential counterattacks by the BD+ people.
Mind you, the idea was not to break the underlying encryption scheme (breaking AES could still turn out being hard for the next couple of years...), but rather disable the BD+ security layer.
I don't really care if I can copy my BluRay disks or not (I'm too lazy to back up my movies - if I break a disk and I like the film, I get a new one).
But I would love to be able to play my legally bought films under Linux without having to reboot (or having to go to jail for that matter). Maybe one day. :)
> That being said BluRay burners are expensive enough, and the blank media is expensive enough that I'll probably
> still buy my BluRay movies on Amazon.com.
Which is perfectly good. I didn't buy my first DVD though until the protection was broken and I have no intention of buying anything BD until it is broken. I'm sure I'm not alone in this. Who wants to buy a BD movie until they can pull a copy to a DVD for portable players off in the rest of the house, the in car players, etc. Until we can yank clips out of one. Until we can play then on our non-Windows machines.
Once stable build of mplayer support this stuff and the battle of key revocation settles down I'll think about investing in the stuff. Not before.
Democrat delenda est
I think a quote from a famous internet wordsmith is in order here:
gadgetophile.com
Therefore if there's an available software that can decode the encrypted content it must be possible for open software to decode the encrypted content.
Possible != Feasible. It is possible for me to brute force AES-256 but it isn't feasible for me to do so.
Reading code is like reading the dictionary - you have to read half of it before you can go back and understand it.
A lot of people are just not buying content - even though they would like to buy content - because they know that money spent that way is wasted and they don't want to throw their money away again.
At the risk of my karma, I'm going to mention that no one I know seems to fall into your generalization of people not buying Blu-Ray discs or players because of DRM. The most commonly cited reason for discs is lack of ubiquitous players (in cars, portable players, friends houses, etc) and the most common reason cited for players is the expense of a Blu-Ray mechanism. In fact, breaking the DRM makes Blu-Ray riskier for investors and therefore likely will increase costs (higher risk means higher cost) in the short term.
All in all, because Blu-Ray is 10x the bandwidth of any online "HD" movie source (and I use that term loosely for online offerings) and because online DRM is so much worse, I don't see it going away. Instead I see it likely to win over DVD-- DRM or not-- but not until manufacturing costs ramp down due to better technologies and economies of scale.
Consider this. Is a DRM-free H.264/AAC mp4 file more convenient, or is a DRM-laden disc that you can play in your car, computer, PS3, portable system, or friend's house by carrying around a 16 gram disc? I suspect for geeks it's the former, but for most consumers it's the latter, and it's really just about making players ubiquitous. The odd player out is, of course, the iPod. It's the one thing that is both ubiquitous and doesn't favor the disc. If the Blu-Ray consortium came to some agreement with Apple there it would go a long way towards gaining acceptance.
E pluribus unum
no one I know seems to fall into your generalization of people not buying Blu-Ray discs or players because of DRM.
We shall see. Most people don't know really why they're not trusting of innovation in content technology. The advantages of open content though are immediately obvious and so when the content owners open up the content it starts flying out the door.
All in all, because Blu-Ray is 10x the bandwidth of any online "HD" movie source (and I use that term loosely for online offerings) and because online DRM is so much worse, I don't see it going away. Instead I see it likely to win over DVD-- DRM or not-- but not until manufacturing costs ramp down due to better technologies and economies of scale.
"Never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of backup tapes." Technology has passed this one by, but the truth of it remains. Content providers would do well to sell the right to the content separately, and let people figure out how to get the content on their own. If they must, they can offer content at kiosks you take your external hard drive to. The tree huggers should like the idea of transport-media free content distribution at the very least - that's less mylar disc in the landfill.
Consider this. Is a DRM-free H.264/AAC mp4 file more convenient, or is a DRM-laden disc that you can play in your car, computer, PS3, portable system, or friend's house by carrying around a 16 gram disc?
For the car and portable system a downrezzed movie that fits on an 8GB SDHC card are sufficent, and that form factor is considerably more convenient than a disc that doesn't even fit in your pocket - and is too fragile to carry that way anyway. People do this on their EEE all the time. A 360GB external 2.5" USB drive is bigger and heavier but smaller than a BD with case so it still fits in your pocket, is less susceptible to scratching, fits multiple movies on one disk, and has many other advantages.
Open content means you can make backups. You can convert to your target platform. You can move your content to where you want it and any technology that can play it will continue to play it for all time. DRM content does not have any of these advantages. Most importantly that last one.
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Therefore if there's an available software that can decode the encrypted content it must be possible for open software to decode the encrypted content.
Possible != Feasible. It is possible for me to brute force AES-256 but it isn't feasible for me to do so.
The point is, the 'legitimate' (w/ DRM I use that term loosely) doesn't brute the key, and the legitimate software can be watched in action. That means that reverse engineered Free software can be created to do the same thing.
Hardware trickery to make it harder to do that also increases the incentive to find a way. Somebody somewhere will find a way to dissect it.
The job is even harder since it will always be a plaintext attack.
Subj.
Samsung has a $200 player which comes with 4 free movies. Given that the movies retail for $35 a pop, that is $140 in free movies with a $200 player. The rumors is said player will go for $150 on Black Friday. A player for $150 with $140 in free movies is a pretty good deal.
The biggest problem with BluRay is retail stores charging $35 for movies. DVDs are often selling for $10 or less. Knock BluRay prices down to $25 a movie or less and I'll bite.
Gotta be careful with that math. The movie is WORTH $10-$15 (based on DVD pricing and people's apparent willing to pay that), so it's $60 worth of movies claiming to be a $140 dollar value, just like the blue-screen commercials where they give away the '$100 value' worth of the stuff they couldn't sell in the last blue-screen ad and really just don't want cluttering up their warehouse (here, you throw this away!).
Millions bought our "shiny penny" for $100 and millions more bought our "crisp 10 spot" for $150, but if you act RIGHT NOW, you (yes, you) can have BOTH for the low low price of $99.95! You know It the deal of a lifetime BECAUSE I'M SHOUTING!
"The content must contain sufficient information for the content to be decoded. Anything one software can do, another software can do (see Knuth, et seq)."
From the copy of "Beneath Apple DOS" (copyright 1981) that happens to be on my shelf, page B1;"It seems reasonable at this time to say that it is impossible to to protect a disk in such a way that it can't be broken. This is, in large part, due to the fact the diskette must be bootable; i.e. that it must contain at least one sector which can be read by the program in the PROM on the disk controller card. This means it is possible to trace the boot process by disassembling the normal sector or sectors that that must be on the disk."
So they have been flogging this dead horse for 27 years. High marks for persistence, low marks for, well, everything else.
Second, you need to understand what the remedy is for a patent holder whose patent is violated. There are no "patent police" who go out and look for patent violators. Patent owners have to keep their own vigilance, and when they think their patent is being infringed the remedy is to sue the infringers. The result of such a suit is usually an injunction to force the infringer to stop selling his competing products. (Probably the most famous case of this was Polaroid v. Kodak, where Kodak was forced to abandon their entire line of Polaroid-like instant cameras, of which they had sold millions.)
Now bearing this in mind, exactly what would Sony or Fox or whoever get by suing Doom9? They aren't making money off of this, they just gave it away. Injunctions notwithstanding it's almost impossible to stop the dissemination of software whose authors have deliberately tried to make it available for free. There are no profits to seize, and any effort to show a dollar amount for damages would be very iffy. Patent infringement is not fraud and is not criminal, so there is no risk of anybody going to jail. All in all, there's not much the patent holder can do in this case except suck it up and go on to the next project.
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