HDCP Encryption/Decryption Code Released

rtj writes "We have released an open-source (BSD licensed) implementation of the HDCP encryption/decryption algorithms. The code includes the block cipher, stream cipher, and hashing algorithms necessary to perform an HDCP handshake and to encrypt or decrypt video. The code passes the test vectors provided in the HDCP specification and can encrypt video at a rate of about 180 640x480 frames/second on a 2.33GHz Intel Xeon CPU. This isn't quite fast enough to decrypt 1080p content in real-time on a single core, but decryption can be parallelized across multiple cores. There are also many opportunities for further optimisation, such as using SSE instructions. We are releasing the code in hopes that others will further optimize it and use it in their HDCP-related projects."

Comments

Obligatory

[Pojut]

Get it on a shirt, on Digg, and in sigs everywhere!

Re:Obligatory

[Anonymous Coward]

No one on Digg to see it anymore :)

Re:Obligatory

[gringer]

Don't worry, a couple of minutes with the HDCP Encryption/Decryption Code, and everyone will be able to see it again.

That was quick

[maroberts]

Only about a week or so since the master tables were released.

Re:That was quick

[d3ac0n]

Yep. Doesn't take long.

Any bets on when we see this implemented in more full-featured software suites?

I'm thinking maybe a month at the outside.

HDCP is dead. And nothing of value was lost. :)

Re:That was quick

[arndawg]

HDCP is dead.

Leo Strut.

Re:That was quick

[Anonymous Coward]

HDCP is dead.

Netcraft confirms it!

Re:That was quick

[d3ac0n]

Leo Strut.

Awwww Yeaaaahhh....

For some reason, "Leo Strut" always makes me think of the opening bars to "Stayin' Alive" playing as it's soundtrack. Does anyone else have that happen, or is it just me?

Re:That was quick

[Goaway]

Any bets on when we see this implemented in more full-featured software suites?

Never, as no software suites have any use at all for HDCP.

HDCP is used only for encrypting content as it travels across the cable to the display. Only devices connected to the display cable will ever see HDCP-protected content. Software players process the data before it is encrypted with HDCP.

The only thing this is good for is for wiretapping a display cable to capture uncompressed video, or for making a box that fools your paranoid computer into believing the display connection is protected.

Re:That was quick

[grub]

The only thing this is good for is for wiretapping a display cable to capture uncompressed video, or for making a box that fools your paranoid computer into believing the display connection is protected.

I can see use in non-CableCo PVR software. They've started flipping off Firewire output on certain channels (or turned it off entirely), this could make it easy to still record the shows you want with a non-CableCo box.

Re:That was quick

[Canazza]

if it was just you, it isn't now
*bana wah wah. wah. wowadah wowa da wah wah*

Re:That was quick

[Goaway]

Yes, that would fall under the first case.

(Also, I doubt it would be "easy", since the amount of data contained in an uncompressed HD stream is pretty daunting. Like they say, they still can't decrypt it in realtime, to say nothing of encoding it. Just getting it onto a disk fast enough might be a challenge.)

Re:That was quick

[dpilot]

How appropriate, because this code is BSD licensed. Netcraft-dead encryption code on a Netcraft-dead platform - kind of like the advertising blurb of the Betamax HD-DVD converter I've got clipped to my door.

Re:That was quick

[nabsltd]

(Also, I doubt it would be "easy", since the amount of data contained in an uncompressed HD stream is pretty daunting. Like they say, they still can't decrypt it in realtime, to say nothing of encoding it. Just getting it onto a disk fast enough might be a challenge.)

HDMI without HDCP is basically just plain DVI (yes, I know that technically DVI can also carry HDCP). There are DVI to component converters available, and there is at least one device that can record component video to MPEG-4 in realtime.

So, it's not really hard, but it might cost some money.

Re:That was quick

[radish]

If you're using digital cable as the source, why not just use a CableCard tuner?

Re:That was quick

[bufordt13]

Because i'm using linux on my DVR.

Re:That was quick

[SuricouRaven]

"The only thing this is good for is for wiretapping a display cable to capture uncompressed video"

No, it can't be used to do this. I think.

", or for making a box that fools your paranoid computer into believing the display connection is protected."

But that it can be used to do! You do need an FPGA and some really fiddley surface-mount soldering, but nothing the dodgy exporters of China cannot handle with ease. It also renders the first one possible in effect, because you can just use the box to get access to an unencrypted stream anyway.

Re:That was quick

[SuricouRaven]

It's not quite DVI, but it's very close. It's DVI with an extension to carry audio data as well as video. It's a backwards compatible extension though - a DVI port is still a perfectly valid (albeit audioless) HDMI port, just in a different physical connector. That's why it's possible to connect between them with a simple adaptor.

DVI was initially designed as a standard to connect PCs to monitors, and soon attracted attention as a way to connect PCs to TVs as well - thus the invention of HDCP to encrypt it. But it had a few minor flaws for consumer electronics use like an inability to carry sound, lack of control signals (eg, 'turn the TV to the right input when you turn on the cable box,) a quite fragile male connector and backwards-compatibility-for-VGA pins that added cost but were of little use to a TV. HDMI takes the basic electronics of DVI, corrects all those problems, and makes the HDCP support manditory rather than an optional extension.

Re:That was quick

[ncc74656]

If you're using digital cable as the source, why not just use a CableCard tuner?

Because CableCard tuners don't work with Linux, perhaps?

Re:That was quick

[bucky0]

I don't have a DVR, but a common complaint about CableCard is that a) many cable companies charge $5/mo for the card (which is as much as it costs to rent some of their DVRs), and B) CableCard is only supported using certain PVR software under windows (encrypted things have to be stored encrypted on disk). I could be wrong, but I think only MS's software supports it.

Though, honestly, with netflix and hulu, I don't see a reason to store gigs and gigs of video like I used to.

Re:That was quick

[bufordt13]

Not really a CableCard now is it? It will not decode encrypted channels.

Re:That was quick

[nabsltd]

HDMI takes the basic electronics of DVI, corrects all those problems, and makes the HDCP support manditory rather than an optional extension.

People keep saying that HDMI requires HDCP, but that's obviously not true in the real world. There have been many devices (most notably video cards) that have HDMI connectors but do not support HDCP over that connector.

I think people are getting confused because of the recent change in the HDMI spec that requires a device to fully and correctly implement HDCP if the device implements HDCP at all.

No hardware?

[gtvr]

So does this negate Intel's statement that you can only do this if you build a chip with the code in it?

Re:No hardware?

[d3ac0n]

Certainly appears that way.

Frankly, I always thought that That Intel statement was FUD anyway. Intel knew it could be software implemented. I doubt they thought it would be done this fast though. They really should know by now. NEVER underestimate a determined hacker.

Re:No hardware?

[Mathinker]

Intel's statement had to do with the security of the use case of HDCP: digital video encrypted with HDCP being transported over HDMI cables. In other words, the hardware Intel claims is required, is specialized hardware which interfaces with HDMI ports. This software implementation is not interesting for cracking encrypted video if it cannot communicate with the Blu-Ray or other media player in question in a way which tricks the media player into thinking that the computer running the software is a certified display device.

Re:No hardware?

[MichaelSmith]

That statement seemed pretty silly given that most applications will be to transcode the encrypted stream into something more portable, and transcoding doesn't have to be in real time.

Re:No hardware?

[jdimpson]

That statement seemed pretty silly given that most applications will be to transcode the encrypted stream into something more portable, and transcoding doesn't have to be in real time.

Too early to tell what "most applications" will be.

Re:No hardware?

[ciderbrew]

Well they can't do 1080p yet. So it's true for a few weeks more. Then after that some guy will write a 3D extension and soon after a 2k and 4k extension will be made - not that you can view it on a standard monitor; but that's not the point. All the videos want to be set free.

Re:No hardware?

[Thanshin]

Exactly my thought. I suppose he's talking about estimations on building a dedicated hardware HDCP decrypter.

Re:No hardware?

[jamesh]

NEVER underestimate a determined hacker.

Especially one who's been told it can't be done.

Re:No hardware?

[norpy]

Errrrr the point of this software is to perform the handshake which authenticates it as a legitimate source or sink device. The master key also allows you to simply generate a NEW device key if the one you are using happens to get blacklisted by a firmware update.

The reason this is useful is not for bluray, it is for first-run broadcast content.

Re:No hardware?

[icebraining]

But the sink keys they used could be banned, no? Having the master key means you can't ban them, because you can generate any possible key.

Re:No hardware?

[alexandre_ganso]

No, they can't do 1080p IN REAL TIME.

Re:No hardware?

[amazeofdeath]

As both cheap graphics cards and motherboards with HDMI outputs are very much mainstream nowadays, I think your use of the word "specialized" is inaccurate here.

Re:No hardware?

[KiloByte]

In other words, the HDCP hardware decryptor is more powerful than the main CPU. Even with the specialized-vs-generic advantage, just think about the power wasted encrypting/decrypting it for no reason but letting the cartel control the market market and the complexity of the electronics you have to buy with your own money.

Every HDCP device should be slapped with a huge carbon and recycling tax -- with an extra punitive rate, since the waste is introduced intentionally.

Re:No hardware?

[blincoln]

In other words, the HDCP hardware decryptor is more powerful than the main CPU.

I'm pretty sure it's not, given that the $50 video card I bought last week to run a second monitor at work has an HDMI port on it. If the chip were that powerful, it would be too expensive to put on a card that cheap.

I'm sure this is just a case where specialized hardware is able to accomplish the task a lot more quickly than the first version of some software running on a general-purpose CPU.

Re:No hardware?

[TheGratefulNet]

'special' in that it RECEIVES hdmi.

no normal pc does that. reminder: pc's SEND hdmi, not receive it.

Re:No hardware?

[Goaway]

In theory they could be banned, but in practice, due to sloppy distribution of keys, they can't ban them without breaking too many innocent devices, so they haven't.

Re:No hardware?

[Anonymous Coward]

who says the output of your card is HDCP encrypted?
HDMI != HDCP

Re:No hardware?

[Andy Dodd]

I think you greatly underestimate the advantage an ASIC has over a general purpose CPU (even the latest Intel CPUs with AES-NI) when it comes to crypto.

How about you RTFA:
"The HDCP cipher is designed to be efficient when implemented in hardware, but it is terribly inefficient in software, primarily because it makes extensive use of bit operations. Our implementation uses bit-slicing to achieve high speeds by exploiting bit-level parallelism. We have created a few high-level routines to make it as easy as possible to implement HDCP, as shown in the following example. "

Re:No hardware?

[ciderbrew]

I always thought if you added up the worlds extra CPU use just for encrypting/decrypting. The amount of power needed would cause so much CO2 that every country would ban it on the spot.
DRM is bad for the planet!

Re:No hardware?

[Iphtashu Fitz]

In other words, the HDCP hardware decryptor is more powerful than the main CPU.

Um. No. Not at all. CPU's are highly generalized computational engines. A CPU's instruction set contains every instruction needed to perform every operation by a computer, including I/O to peripheral busses, etc. A GPU is a highly specialized processor designed to complement a CPU and offload graphics-specific computations that requires a large number of high speed mathematical computations. It's only purpose is to take data from the CPU and render it quickly for a display. The functionality of a GPU can be implemented in a CPU, although with a huge degradation in performance. The functionality of a CPU can not be implemented in a GPU.

In summary:
1. A CPU is the brain of the computer and the GPU is only meant to complement it.
2. GPU's are specialized and cannot replace the function of a CPU.
3. CPU's can perform the functions of a GPU but at a much slower speed.

Every HDCP device should be slapped with a huge carbon and recycling tax -- with an extra punitive rate, since the waste is introduced intentionally.

What a crock. Thanks to technologies like CUDA you can write your own programs that leverage the GPU's in your existing video cards. It's likely only a matter of time before you start to see GPU-based implementations of this code, which means the nVidia or ATI card in your existing PC could easily decrypt HDCP content in real-time. So are you willing to pay excessive taxes for the video card in your PC? When implemented in existing DVI & HDMI chipsets, HDCP really doesn't require all that much more physical overhead, certainly not enough to justify an absurd carbon tax. Highly specialized hardware like that is significantly more efficient than even the GPU in your PC.

Re:No hardware?

[amazeofdeath]

Hmm, lost me there. Answer me this: What separates a HDCP capable computer without the software player from a HDCP capable computer with the software player? All the same parts, from Blu-Ray player to the graphics to the monitor.

Re:No hardware?

[loki_tiwaz]

yeah, the fact it takes a 2ghz cpu to decrypt standard definition fast enough should be sufficient to argue that it's not only a waste of time (keys are already cracked and now the algorithms are out in the wild) - the whole thing is defunct. it is only a matter of a very short time before they can't stop anyone plugging a computer into a hdmi output from an 'authorised' playback device and the computer pretends to be a monitor that knows the seekrits and voila, 100% pristine, unencrypted video dumped onto a hard drive (or piped into an encoder).

if only this was enough of a point to suggest they are wasting their energy and that any law that permits such stupidity is a bad law. let's not forget the stupid dvd/bluray disc is also encrypted and before it gets re-encrypted again, it has to be decrypted. that's three totally wasteful processing loads that are so big that for the same processing cost you could be decoding the whole stream in high definition if it wasn't encrypted.

i'll stop downloading bluray rips from the interwebs when they stop costing me twice as much electricity as is neccessary to decode their crappy movies. oh, and when they start realising that tiny little 2 metre high cinema screens, cruddy overpriced popcorn and no comfy seats and beers to drink are gonna make me think my 42 inch bravia and 8 channel surround system in my own loungeroom is much more pleasant. i'm sure i'm not alone and if the lawyers ever come to my house making overblown claims about how much i owe them i'll spend that money they are demanding on laywers to put them back in their place. not just violating the laws of cryptography but also the laws of free market economics. which on any other subject they will swear black and blue is 'The Way'.

oh and what are they going to do when high def eyegoggles finally hit the market? they better be hoping someone makes processors that are about 10x as calculation-per-second-per-watt more efficient than any portable media playing device can handle, cos otherwise the technology would be dead in the water.

Re:No hardware?

[Alphathon]

Actually, all HDMI ports have HDCP - it's a requirement of the spec. Of course there is nothing to stop companies or individuals from buying HDMI ports and just attaching them to DVI pins, but if they did that they wouldn't be legally allowed to advertise it or label it as HDMI (false advertising etc). Likewise, it also has to be able to output audio or it is technically not HDMI.

Re:No hardware?

[Amouth]

even in theory they couldn't be banned because they have the master key - meaning they can create any and all keys on the fly and at will - the only way to "ban" them would be to not use HDCP and use something else..

Re:No hardware?

[ledow]

Has no-one here ever used a SOFTWARE renderer in their games? Software on a general CPU is atrocious at accomplishing a task optimally. Hell, it sucked years before graphics required an extra card in your machine and it sucks even more now - how many "GHz" do you think your CPU would have to run at in order to match the performance of an average GPU by using software rendering? Probably a lot more than double what the best computer processor runs at now, or we'd be throwing GPU's away and buying quad-core's instead. Software implementations on a generic processor can't even come close to competing with a hardware device designed to do just that one task. Especially not on something that uses the x86 instruction set (go look at the speed of ARM chips compared to their heat / power / price).

Software implementations are basically emulations - take MAME or other emulators for example - you are software implementing a device that probably originally run at a handful of MHz and now requires a GHz PC to keep up with it, even if you remove quite a lot of the unnecessary interface logic. Now this is an entirely encryption affair here but even back in the days of VIA EPIA boards, VIA's on-chip encrypt/decrypt logic could outperform even the best Intel CPU.

It's a software implementation. Expect it to suck until it's optimised, and even then expect it to be way behind what a £10 FGPA could be programmed to do with the same base code.

Re:No hardware?

[Anonymous Coward]

"No Linux for the desktop"

I DARE YOU HACKERS !

Re:No hardware?

[KiloByte]

This is the "specialized-vs-generic advantage" I mentioned. You do waste a lot less power, but you still do waste it for no gain whatsoever.

A parable: a crazy dictator ordered his workers to make a huge earth mound and then to level it, with nothing but shovels. Another dictator ordered his troops to make a mound of the same size and then level it, but this time he granted them heavy machinery. Which dictator uses his people better?

Re:No hardware?

[SharpFang]

This.
Simple bit operations are vastly faster when implemented in silicon.
Think of it. A simple "&" is 8 logic gates in silicon. In CPU it's a fetch value into register, reroute ALU to the bit-and operation, route source to source registers, target to target registers, select word sizes, perform the operation, fill the flag register in...

Or take something else. Reverse order of bits in a word. First is last, last is first. A very common operation, and if I recall correctly, essential in FFT.

i = (i & 0x55555555) << 1 | (i & 0xaaaaaaaa) >> 1;
  i = (i & 0x33333333) << 2 | (i & 0xcccccccc) >> 2;
  i = (i & 0x0f0f0f0f) << 4 | (i & 0xf0f0f0f0) >> 4;
  i = (i & 0x00ff00ff) << 8 | (i & 0xff00ff00) >> 8;
  i = (i & 0x0000ffff) << 16 | (i & 0xffff0000) >> 16;

How many CPU cycles would that be...?

Now in silicon, it takes 0 transistors. You just connect first input pin directly to last output pin, second to second-to-last and so on - "twist the ribbon 180 degrees". Zero cycles, zero transistors, speed - as long as the impulse takes to traverse a featureless path in silicon between the steps before and after this one.

Re:No hardware?

[sootman]

Underestimate? I think he is totally unaware of what dedicated hardware can do. Does he know why CD players came out in the mid-80s but TEN YEARS LATER a PC or Mac with a CD-ROM drive would often crash while playing CD audio in software? Or when DVD players came out in the mid-90s and it wasn't until the early 2000s that you could watch a software-decoded DVD on a computer without pegging the CPU? Why the iPhone can play back H.264 video for several hours on a battery charge, but can only play certain games (or hell, run the camera) for an hour or two?

Re:No hardware?

[somersault]

The one with shovels, because it's more entertaining?

Re:No hardware?

[amazeofdeath]

Yes, and you don't answer the question. If I have two similar computers, both HDCP capable at least on paper, what's the physical difference? HDCP is meant to be fast in the hardware, but it doesn't mean that it's not possible to decrypt it in software; and more to the point, there is no physical difference as the GGGP implies: It's just the same hardware.

Re:No hardware?

[interval1066]

So, supposedly, implement this in Verilog on an fpga and you've got one efficient encryption scheme. Your handy video processor would still be faster without the encryption though.

Re:No hardware?

[hedwards]

The former, as it leaves them with less time and energy to plot, duh.

Re:No hardware?

[hedwards]

I don't fully understand it, but the point of HDCP is for the signal to not be unencrypted at any point in the journey from the disc to the viewer. That is except for the last hop from the video card to the monitor, and only if the monitor knows the secret password to identify itself as secure.

What this would theoretically do would be allow for a software program to essentially remove that requirement and decrypt it on its way from the drive to the monitor. If I understand correctly, you'd still need to have a way of making the drive cough up the stream.

Re:No hardware?

[Goaway]

Yes, but I was speaking only of the devices that were made before the release of the master key. I was probably a bit unclear there.

Re:No hardware?

[Kjella]

Yes, but I doubt most equipment will let you do HDCP handshake over anything but the HDMI(/DVI) port, so you still need to hook up the HDMI-out that you want to decrypt to a HDMI-in port. Can your regular graphisc card be rewritten to use the HDMI out port as an HDMI in port? If not, then the application is limited to the few that have HDMI capture cards. And even then you have to be able to inject the HDMI handshake into the capture card's driver. The easiest would still be to make a HDCP stripper adapter that does the handshake, decrypts the content and sends it on as a plain signal.

Re:No hardware?

[cynyr]

but still more power than simply not needing to encrypt video signals sent to sinks...

Re:No hardware?

[hey!]

NEVER underestimate a determined hacker.

Er...So that means we should *correctly estimate* a determined hacker, right?

Which groups of people should we estimate incorrectly? That's probably a shorter list to remember.

Re:No hardware?

[Xest]

Yep, but I think this much was obvious anyway.

Apparently Intel's content protection department aren't aware of what the rest of the company does- produces processing equipment precisely so stuff like this can be done with ease.

Re:No hardware?

[amazeofdeath]

This was addressed earlier in another post. You get the GPU-monitor and probably optical drive-motherboard (or GPU, if it's "direct" lane)handshakes made, there's (basically) no need for extra hardware, you just need the processing power to get the content decrypted.

We have seen plenty of specific HDCP breaks that can decrypt a limited set of movies; this is the general break, which does not care much about the HW and firmware (optical drive) details.

Re:No hardware?

[phoenix321]

Then all DVI to HDMI adapters are illegal stuff?

Re:No hardware?

[wvmarle]

This is not about video rendering, this is about decryption, where the data happens to be an uncompressed video stream. And the problem with that again is that uncompressed video is a hell of a lot of data.

Re:No hardware?

[Neil Boekend]

No, they contain the dedicated chip and use the line noise of the DVI connection to calculate what the sound should have been...

Re:No hardware?

[tapehands]

No. That's why there's DVI-A and DVI-D. DVI-A has no support for HDCP (as it is analogue.) DVI-D does (all digital..) If you're using a DVI to HDMI adapter, you can transmit the signal as much as you want, regardless of if it has HDCP or not....but if you don't do proper HDCP handshaking at some point (especially if you're going from DVI-A to HDMI), you end up with a useless signal (which generally will result in an error message on your display.)

Re:No hardware?

[Fast Thick Pants]

The shovel-ready mound will help the economy.

Re:No hardware?

[gnasher719]

We have seen plenty of specific HDCP breaks that can decrypt a limited set of movies; this is the general break, which does not care much about the HW and firmware (optical drive) details.

Still people who don't understand what HDCP does. It has nothing, nothing whatsoever to do with movies. It encrypts whatever your graphics card displays, and decrypts it on the monitor. If Windows bluescreens then the blue screen will dutifully be encrypted between your PC and the monitor.

Re:No hardware?

[wastedlife]

In order to receive HDMI through the video card, you would need specialized drivers to read input from the HDMI connection. Seeing as how difficult it is to get working open-source drivers in general for a video card, this seems extremely unlikely. Yes both input and output for HDMI are identical hardware, however the GPU is not programmed to act as input.

Re:No hardware?

[Anonymous Coward]

That's a clever argument: these chips do the job much more efficiently than CPUs, therefore they are free.

"I merely murdered the man; it's not as though I also raped his wife, shot his dog, poisoned his well, and burned the house down. You should let me go."

It's waste. If it served a useful purpose, perhaps it could be justified. Life is full of tradeoffs and we all value things differently. But in this case, the user payed for two chips (to encrypt and then decrypt) and electricity to run them, and got nothing for it. We're talking absolute zero here, without the faintest iota of mitigation.

And the user didn't get to shop in a free market where he could avoid this; a cartel made sure that he couldn't watch movies without this unmitigated waste. That is seriously fucked up and a legitimate basis for government action.

Re:No hardware?

[Anonymous Coward]

There are DVDI-I and DVI-D. The former has analog AND digital, the latter digital only. Either can transmit HDCP encrypted video over the digital channel, and as you state, HDCP cannot be applied to the analog video in DVI-I.

There is no analog only DVI. After all, it is the DIGITAL Video Interface.

Re:No hardware?

[adolf]

More to the point: I bought an upscaling DVD player 5 or 6 years ago which supported HDCP over HDMI at 1080i.

Even then, it was less than $50.

Frankly, I'm really not surprised that cheap, dedicated silicon can do a faster job of [insert random job] than a general-purpose CPU. But I guess it must be a new concept for some folks.

*yawn*

Re:No hardware?

[DrXym]

The reason this is useful is not for bluray, it is for first-run broadcast content.

I expect most modern STBs watermark the content leaving the TV in addition to HDCP protection. Therefore anyone stupid enough to release content they've captured on P2P can probably kiss their service goodbye as well as opening up the possibility of prosecution. Just saying.

Re:No hardware?

[Panaflex]

Again, the point being that specialized, dedicated circuits can far outperform software on a predetermined algorithm. HDCP is a subset of the AES cypher, and is pretty heavy on the CPU. I've implemented AES on nVidia's CUDA and it would be difficult to get better then 50MB/sec. A 1080p30 stream should use a little less than 60 MB/sec - so it's going to be work, but considering HDCP is less complicated, it should be doable.

Re:No hardware?

[Alphathon]

HDMI port != HDMI cable. The active hardware has to output audio and be HDCP 1.1 compliant to be HDMI. An HDMI-DVI adapter is not active hardware, but a cable (or dongle; but as far as the tech goes they are the same anyway) so is not subject to the same standards. However, I am fairly certain that such adapters cannot be HDMI certified, therefore cannot display the HDMI logo (but can be labelled as HDMI, since saying that it converts DVI->HDMI or vice versa is not false advertising).

Now I think about it, I don't know if HDMI outputs are required to have audio, but certainly all inputs are required to accept at least stereo LPCM (which is why HDMI equipped monitors have audio-outs), so I may have got a little muddled up there.

Re:No hardware?

[Anonymous Coward]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DVI-A

Re:No hardware?

[Score Whore]

Indeed. Even at the "free" price point, nobody seems to want information... unless it has boobies.

Re:No hardware?

[wastedlife]

Okay, show me a white paper or proof of concept or anything where this has been done, or even where someone with expertise on this talks about how it could be done. Hell, even an argument on why you think I am wrong would be something. A one-word AC response is, frankly, bullshit.

Re:No hardware?

[makomk]

Yes, but I doubt most equipment will let you do HDCP handshake over anything but the HDMI(/DVI) port, so you still need to hook up the HDMI-out that you want to decrypt to a HDMI-in port.

The HDCP handshake happens over a low-speed link. If you can capture raw HDMI video at all, in theory it's not that much more work to add HDCP support on top of it.

Re:No hardware?

[kumanopuusan]

Capture from multiple sources and check for differences. It should be easy enough to find watermarks and not terribly difficult to edit them out automatically. If there's a unique identifier, it can't be in two sources.

Besides which, making imperceptible watermarks than can survive arbitrary lossy compression techniques is hard. If a person can't see a certain detail, a good video compression algorithm should throw it out. Just saying.

Re:No hardware?

[anUnhandledException]

How long before someone created a virtual video card adapter which software based Bluray players see as a valid HDCP compliant video card.

The virtual video card driver simply decrypts the HDCP stream and dumps it to a disk.

Re:No hardware?

[Amouth]

no problem - i didn't realize you meant that either.

Re:No hardware?

[MoonBuggy]

Surely one could use this code to create a dummy display driver that dumps an unencrypted video stream?

Computer's internal blu-ray drive happily handshakes with the virtual monitor and sends it the stream thanks to the master key, whereas before it would've just thrown an error or given a degraded stream. This stream can then be passed unencrypted through the graphics card, or saved for later viewing. Of course, it seems like a resource intensive method of ripping, and you'd need to re-encode the stream to something more manageable in size (at some loss of quality), but it seems like a technically plausible use of this software.

I do agree, however, that a little black box with an 'encrypted in' and an 'unencrypted out' would be a whole lot more useful for most real-world applications.

Re:No hardware?

[wastedlife]

Hardware-wise, HDMI receivers and transmitters are identical. Now, for a GPU to utilize the HDMI as input, if possible, would at least require significant changes to the drivers and possibly firmware of the unit. I should have stressed that I meant that specialized drivers would be the bare-minimum of changes that would need to take place. You cannot just use a piece of software to start recording from HDMI.

Re:No hardware?

[SuricouRaven]

I'm pretty sure it's not, given that the $50 video card I bought last week to run a second monitor at work has an HDMI port on it. If the chip were that powerful, it would be too expensive to put on a card that cheap.

Powerful, but highly specialised. Silicon designed for a single purpose will be able to do it at far lower cost than a multipurpose processor. That's the point of the video card itsself - it contains a processor that is specialised for a single task, video rendering, and can do so a hundred times faster than a general-purpose CPU that costs far more. The HDCP encryptor is an even more extreme example. It isn't even a processor, really - I doubt that part of the die is turing complete.

Re:No hardware?

[Locke2005]

Couldn't the HDCP authentication handshake already be circumvented by an HDMI Y-Cable? Connect one side to legitimate HDMI monitor, the other to your recording device, and you get a valid handshake. Seems like a huge gaping hole if you don't also encrypt all content.

Re:No hardware?

[wastedlife]

Thanks for clarifying, I had been told at some point that they were identical and that communication was done as equal peers, similar to Firewire. Is this at least partly true? For example, a PS3 (normally the output device), can receive commands from a Sony TV (normally the input device) over the HDMI connection. Or is this a case of Sony using chips that can switch between source and sink in both devices? Thank you again for correcting me, and I apologize that we got off on the wrong foot.

Re:No hardware?

[amazeofdeath]

Why don't you start by explaining how HDCP content over HDMI is different in Windows as compared to Linux?

Re:No hardware?

[anUnhandledException]

You are missing the much easier solution.

The software Bluray player sends data to video card. What if it sent it to a virtual video card driver by "mistake"?

Oh wait it can't because it attempts an HDCP handshake the video output device (normally your HDCP compliant video card). If in the past you tried it w/ a virtual video card it would fail (you get error message in your software Bluray player about playback on noncompliant device).

How long before someone makes an HDCP compliant (w/ random valid HDCP sink key) virtual video card driver you install in windows that appears to other software as a valid HDCP compliant video device. The driver could be written to decrypt and write the stream to a disk.

Re:No hardware?

[amazeofdeath]

Are you being dense on purpose? Please explain the difference the main differences in hardware in HDCP-capable hardware running Windows vs. the same hardware running Linux. It's fully a software problem, and you can do format shifting and outputting the result to a screen on the fly, too.

The code is about breaking all handshakes in HDCP content protection, so you might there goes your argument in any case.

Re:No hardware?

[DrXym]

Capture from multiple sources and check for differences. It should be easy enough to find watermarks and not terribly difficult to edit them out automatically. If there's a unique identifier, it can't be in two sources.

And who is going to have two raw streams to compare? If the sources are compressed then any differences are meaningless since there will be so many. Even if two people had exactly the same codec and exactly the same settings the files not be the same unless they started at the exact same frame.

Besides which, making imperceptible watermarks than can survive arbitrary lossy compression techniques is hard. If a person can't see a certain detail, a good video compression algorithm should throw it out. Just saying.

Watermarks are designed to be robust which is the point. You'd probably have to degrade the image so much that it wouldn't be worth bothering at all and even then you wouldn't know for sure unless you have a tool to detect the watermarks.

A much more interesting class break would be if someone cracked DVB-CSA. Then people could rip content straight from the cable / satellite / receiver without any trace of where it came from.

Re:No hardware?

[MostAwesomeDude]

Are you saying that my Core i3 is plotting against me? Well. Good thing I burdened it with continuous recompiles of OpenOffice. Let's see it rise up against me now!

(For added fun, re-read in Adam West's voice. Hell, read all of Slashdot in Adam West's voice. It's great.)

Re:No hardware?

[wastedlife]

Bluray itself has long been cracked, it would be far simpler to just strip the DRM from the data on the disc than to try to capture the playing video in real-time. HDCP being cracked has far more implications for recording broadcast media instead of fixed media like bluray. It does reopen the "analog hole" for newer formats until they are broken though. However, there are no HDMI input devices for computers that I have seen.

Re:No hardware?

[TheRaven64]

Intel didn't say that you could only do this with a chip, they said it was only useful to do it with a chip. Doing it in software is a vaguely interesting academic exercise, but it's not really a useful thing to do. The most useful thing you can do with this key is make a cheap HDMI to DVI or HDMI to HDMI adaptor so a paranoid source (e.g. Windows or a BluRay player) will let you view the non-degraded version of the content on a slightly older monitor.

Re:No hardware?

[wastedlife]

What? My point was that at the very least, the drivers would need to be heavily altered or replaced to use the GPU to receive through HDMI instead of send. The AC later went on to explain why that is not possible or at least is incredibly unlikely that there is receive-capable HDMI hardware in the video card. None of this had anything to do with Linux vs. Windows and I have no idea what gave you that impression.

Re:No hardware?

[wastedlife]

Thanks again! Is there anywhere you would recommend reading up on so I can educate myself on this further? Wikipedia's HDMI entry lacks much information on how this all works in hardware, although it does have information on CEC which I should have read before asking about how the devices control each other bidirectionally.

Re:No hardware?

[Mathinker]

How long before someone makes an HDCP compliant (w/ random valid HDCP sink key) virtual video card driver you install in windows that appears to other software as a valid HDCP compliant video device. The driver could be written to decrypt and write the stream to a disk.

I have to admit that I didn't think about this use case for HDCP, and you may be correct. OTOH, isn't Microsoft into only letting vendor-signed drivers run under modern versions of Windows? In that case, the Bluray player might also be able to check that the video card in question had a signed driver from a whitelist of allowed vendors.

Re:No hardware?

[anUnhandledException]

I agree Bluray is currently broken and that decrypting the source is superior but sometimes that can be problematic.

Some BD+ titles give AnyDVD trouble (at least until AnyDVD is updated).

Also a couple of BD (and likely more in the future) titles now use Cinavia protection. While AnyDVD will copy the disc it leaves the Cinavia timebomb inside when a Cinavia protected player (such as PS3) sees the Cinavia watermark on an unprotected (decrypted) disc it stops audio playback. Right now only some players are Cinavia protected but expect more in the future.

So it is nice to have a backdoor. Since HDCP protects the raw bitstream once it is compromised any source level protection can simply be bypassed.

Right now a backup of a Cinavia protected disc can't be played on a PS3 even when using AnyDVD. The same disc output and copied via HDMI can.

Re:No hardware?

[amazeofdeath]

So, what's stopping Linux from using the HDCP-encrypted content then, if the hardware (regardless of the OS) does all the job?

Re:No hardware?

[Alphathon]

As mentioned in the other thread, I wasn't talking about the interconnects. Being an adapter, rather than an output device, it isn't quite the same thing. To say that something outputs HDMI is not the same as this connects DVI equipment to HDMI equipment.

Re:No hardware?

[anUnhandledException]

Right now Microsoft does allow unsigned drivers however you are right it is their goal eventually for only signed drivers to be ever installed.

Microsoft working w/ software companies could likely expose an API (I don't believe one already exists) which indicates if a driver is signed.

Like mosts things it likely will be a back and forth war.

However I have faith in the Chinese. They have for years made devices which are "compliant" only to be easily non-compliant. DVD players that have a DVD region code but for which an easy unlock exists to make them region free.

HDMI capture cards exist right now but they aren't HDCP compliant. All a company has to do is produce an HDMI capture card which is no compliant but "just so happens" can be easily flashed to be HDCP compliant w/ a random valid HDCP key.

Re:No hardware?

[wastedlife]

Good point. Just curious, is it known how the watermark is implanted into the video? Is it something that later versions of AnyDVD could detect and remove?

Re:No hardware?

[anUnhandledException]

As of yet no. It isn't a single "mark" but rather a continual non-audible pattern in the audio track.

The one thing I just realized is it is possible than Cinavia watermark could survive decompression and recompression. After all the "watermark" is sound it just happens to be sound humans can't hear. It might even survive digital -> analog -> digital conversion.

Doom9 forums have some information on Cinavia. Currently it is only on a few titles. "The Losers" is first mainstream Bluray to use it.

Re:No hardware?

[wastedlife]

If part of the compression scheme trims inaudible sound ranges (I think MP3 does this), it could remove the watermark.

Re:No hardware?

[shutdown -p now]

And the answer was:

"It rans fine on my desktop. WORKSFORME/PBCAK."

Re:No hardware?

[wampus]

Sure, just like you can share my internet connection by splicing a Y onto my network cable.

Re:No hardware?

[jamesh]

The keys were SHA256 hashes based on the customer ID and some salt, I wished him good luck with that.

The difference between a determined hacker and a determined idiot is sometimes difficult to determine. Fortunately, even idiots get lucky sometimes :)

Re:No hardware?

[thunderclap]

There is no difference to the human eye between 1080p and 720p

Re:No hardware?

[EETech1]

There was a link to an HDMI capture card in the article about the key being published. Im reading /. on my phone, or i'd try to find it.

Re:No hardware?

[wastedlife]

HDMI capture cards exist right now but they aren't HDCP compliant. All a company has to do is produce an HDMI capture card which is no compliant but "just so happens" can be easily flashed to be HDCP compliant w/ a random valid HDCP key.

They could accomplish this by selling hardware-identical HDCP and non-HDCP compliant devices. That way if they are questioned on why it is able to be flashed to contain a key, they can say it is to cut costs by having only one hardware revision.

Re:No hardware?

[Lord of Hyphens]

I'd briefly consider crackpots and wingnuts on that list, for certain values of "estimate".

Congrats!

[amazeofdeath]

Great stuff! Shows Intel's representative's earlier comments about software implementation not being feasible quite wrong.

Re:Congrats!

[imbaczek]

76fps on a 2.5GHz Core2 isn't impressive TBH, and they say decryption is 7x slower (which means ~15fps). Optimizations will help, but until they figure out how to make it at least 60fps, it's really not feasible.

Re:Congrats!

[amazeofdeath]

Core 2 Duo P9600 has 2 cores; we have moved much past that stage with six core CPUs and advancements in CPU architecture after C2D, and like mentioned, the code presented is pretty much an early alpha.

Re:Congrats!

[Bert64]

It just means you can't do it in realtime on a 2.5ghz core2... Nothing to stop you dumping the encrypted data somewhere and decrypting it later.

Also consider a 2.5GHz Core2 isn't all that modern, and it doesn't even specify wether this cpu is dual or quad core. With 6, 8 and even 12 core processors available, plus the possibility to parallelize over multiple processors 60fps is quite achievable today.

There is also the possibility of using a GPU to do this.

Re:Congrats!

[norpy]

Not quite.

They said decryption of 1080p is 7x slower than 640x480, not that decryption is slower than encryption. This makes sense as 1080p is approximately 7x more pixels than 640x480!

Re:Congrats!

[cbope]

60fps, why? That is 2x real-time, or a bit more than 2x if the source is 24fps. Once they are able to break 30fps decrypting in real-time, this is golden. It's only the first step, but it's an important milestone.

Re:Congrats!

[l_bratch]

Running the built in single core benchmark on my Core 2 Duo E8500 running at 3.7 GHz gets 351 FPS. If 7x slower for 1080p decryption is accurate, that'll give about 50 FPS on a single core. I'm sorted.

Re:Congrats!

[Gates82]

Question: 60fps, why?

Answer: Stereoscopic or 30fps x 2 streams

--
So who is hotter? Ali or Ali's Sister?

Re:Congrats!

[Joce640k]

Nothing to stop you dumping the encrypted data somewhere and decrypting it later.

You've got a disk which can store decompressed 1080p in real time? Please let us in on the secret...!

Re:Congrats!

[Malc]

Blu-ray supports 720p at 59.94 fps. That's a greater amount of data than 1080p at 24 fps. 720p59.94 is also one of the Blu-ray 3D supported resolutions (i.e. doubling the differences with 1080p24 further).

Re:Congrats!

[cynyr]

a raid 5.1 of 10k rpm sas drives say, 12 spindles, should be enough. maybe 4 500GB SSDs would be as well.

So no i don't have A disk that can do it, but you can do it with a few disks.

Re:Congrats!

[cynyr]

i get 129fps @640x480 on my AMD Athlon X2 BE-2400+ (2.3ghz 4gb DDR2 dualchan ram) according to the test operation suppled with the program.

Re:Congrats!

[mad_minstrel]

While that is true, the data transmitted over HDMI is indeed not compressed. You'd need a drive solution that could store data at almost 5 Gbit/s for 1080p, including sound.

Re:Congrats!

[cynyr]

and 17fps @1920x1080 so... as it will scale to 64 cores, it should be doable on an X4, or an i7Q or even a lowend gpu.

Re:Congrats!

[AusIV]

But ripping discs isn't really the target here. There are already tools available which can rip BluRay discs in software, without having to read a disc and play them over the wire in real time. More practically, this is targeted at streaming video sources such as video from your cable company, or perhaps for ripping from your cable company's DVR. Those streams are seldom (never?) higher than 1080i or 720p at standard frame rates, so 30fps in real time gets the job done.

I'm not saying 720p at 59.94 is worthless, but 30fps would support the majority of use cases.

Re:Congrats!

[Just Some Guy]

You've got a disk which can store decompressed 1080p in real time?You've got a disk which can store decompressed 1080p in real time?

It's my understanding that many new-fangled media devices have "pause" buttons that would enable you to break the task into manageable chunks.

Re:Congrats!

[Cajun Hell]

Until it's decrypted, it contains virtually maximum entropy. You're not going to find any way to compress it. You might get lucky and reduce it to 99.95% of its size, but you probably won't.

Re:Congrats!

[Score Whore]

Where you going to get the data from? Being able to implement an algorithm is a far cry from being able to sense and apply a voltage on an HDMI connector. The current HDMI capture cards do not provide access to the raw data stream.

Re:Congrats!

[Malc]

BD+ represents moving goalposts, so on the BD front, this represents a way to rip titles sooner. For those people who want their zero day thing.

But you're right. This basically renders any existing content protection schemes moot. It doesn't matter how the content is encrypted or protected as at some point it will go over HDMI to the display. Anything is now rippable.

Re:Congrats!

[anUnhandledException]

Blurays are 1080p24 thus you only need 24 fps throughput.

HDTV is 1080i60 which contains no more pixels/sec than 1080p30. Once you can get

Currently they can process about 23 million pixels per second (640x480x76). HDMI encrypts each pixel separately.

Once someone optimizes the code, parellelizes it to 2+ cores, or moves it to a GPU so that throughput exceeds 62 million pixels per second you can decrypt 1080i60, 1080p24, or 1080p30 in realtime.

Re:Congrats!

[anUnhandledException]

More than enough.

1080p contents on blurays are 24fps.
1080i content (HDTV, cable, sat,etc) is actually 60 fields (each field is 1920 x 540 pixels) a second

1080i60 has same number of pixels per second as 1080p30. So any system capable of more than 30fps can decrypt all known HD content.

Re:Congrats!

[anUnhandledException]

Such a disk exists right now.

Yeah HDMI has a theoretical MAX of 10Gbps but current content uses nowhere near the max.

1080p24
1920 pixels * 1080 pixels * 24bits per pixel * 24 fps / 8 bits per byte = ~150MB/sec

1080i60 (1080i60 is 60 interlaced frames per second which is equivelent to 1080p30)
1920 pixels * 540 pixels * 60 bits per pixel * 60 frames per second / 8 bits per byte = ~186MB/sec

Every form of consumer content available can be capture by a drive that can sustain ~186MB/sec.

Re:Congrats!

[anUnhandledException]

I single drive can do it.

1080p24
1920 pixels * 1080 pixels * 24bits per pixel * 24 fps / 8 bits per byte = ~150MB/sec

1080i60 (1080i60 is 60 interlaced frames per second which is equivelent to 1080p30)
1920 pixels * 540 pixels * 60 bits per pixel * 60 frames per second / 8 bits per byte = ~186MB/sec

Technically a little more for audio but safely a drive which can sustain 200MB/sec could store all known content.

Re:Congrats!

[cfrankb2000]

What about a computer with 16+ GB of ram? The data could be saved in system memory and then compressed back to disk.

Incoming lawsuit in...

[Haedrian]

3...2....1....

GPU Implementation

[Alias14]

I guess the next logical step would be a GPU implementation....

Re:GPU Implementation

[Anonymous Coward]

but how are you going to get the HDMI output of your DVR into your GPU?

without doing the handshake right, there will be no stream to decode later on.

people will need to build an FPGA implementation of this, maybe parallel, to strip the HDCP.
by programming the FPGA with loads of possible sink key's they can switch as soon as one is blacklisted.

I don't know if there are any HDMI grabbers out there, but i don't think they're HDCP compliant.
i do know there is a component one that does 1080P, so maybe a HDMI->Component converter can be built.
(i know these exist already, but they might be blacklisted. i don't know if any device can have it's key updated, but this implementation will)

Re:GPU Implementation

[Bengie]

Read data off a BlueRay, Decrypt it, re-encrypt it internally, send to video drivers, decrypt it, send to display port, re-encrypt it, send to another receiver, use video card to decrypt it, compress it, view it, encrypt it, send to your monitor, decrypt it, display on monitor...

I love DRM.

Re:GPU Implementation

[werfu]

I was going to say this myself. This is the kind of stuff that could be done in CUDA easily. If it can be highly parallelized than its meant for the the GPU!

Re:GPU Implementation

[Abcd1234]

but how are you going to get the HDMI output of your DVR into your GPU?

without doing the handshake right, there will be no stream to decode later on.

Huh? I think you misunderstand. If you can do this handshake on the CPU, you can, in principle, accelerate it in the GPU.

The idea isn't to use the GPU to display the video. The idea is to (mis-)use the GPU as a high-speed vector processor for doing real-time decoding.

Re:GPU Implementation

[mrmeval]

Lattice has the Brevia dev kit for $29

http://www.latticesemi.com/products/developmenthardware/developmentkits/xp2breviadevelopmentkit.cfm
1 Mbit SPI Flash Memory, 1 Mbit SRAM, jtag, serial, etc

I'm just getting started with FPGA and do not know if this has the horsepower but it's cheap.

Re:GPU Implementation

[Alias14]

Mmm, I've already started looking at the OpenCL spec.

Transforming the numbers (Re:Congrats!)

[Eivind Eklund]

Those rates are for a single core. They say that decrypting 1080p is ~7x slower than 640x480, which correspond well to 1080p having 6.75x more pixels.

However, there's no reason for this to be restricted to run on a single core or a single machine. If somebody were to use this for distributing a real time stream (e.g, a sports broadcast) there's no particular reason to not just have each recipient of the stream do their share of the decryption.

Running the number, getting 60 frames of 1080p from the Core 2 requires 5.33 cores, which would correspond to three dual-core machines. This means you can't, with today's machines, just share it with your friend if you both have dual core Core2 machines - but with two friends it should work, assuming enough bandwidth available from each of the friends: 3Gbit/s for the full unencrypted stream, plus 1Gbit/s down for the stream to be decrypted, plus 1Gbit/s up for the part of the stream decrypted on that machine.

You'll also get real time decryption on a single Gulftown CPU: E.g, a Core i7-980X runs 3200MHz and has 6 cores.

Re:Transforming the numbers (Re:Congrats!)

[norpy]

Just wait for someone to figure out how to run this code at a decent speed on some affordable FPGA dongle that can then be sold unprogrammed with a hdmi-in and hdmi-out for stripping the HDCP encryption.

It will be welcomed by anyone with a hdtv that doesn't play well with hdcp sources, or doesn't support HDCP at all.

Re:Transforming the numbers (Re:Congrats!)

[Nevo]

This is exactly what I thought of when the announcement of the key was first made. I imagine this could be done with ~$30 worth of commodity hardware.

Re:Transforming the numbers (Re:Congrats!)

[Cajun Hell]

Just wait for someone to figure out how to run this code at a decent speed on some affordable FPGA dongle that can then be sold unprogrammed with a hdmi-in and hdmi-out for stripping the HDCP encryption.

Surely you're confused about the primary purpose of such a device. The primary purpose of such a device would be to add HDCP to your computer's video output so that terrorists can't spy on your online banking.

Now wait a minute, before you say that is utterly 100% totally and absurdly useless bullshit application, remember that millions of media players on the market are already doing exactly that. If Intel's lawyers were to say that encryption is not a believable use (why would you want to encrypt your computer display?) then they'll be admitting HDCP does not effectively protect content.

Re:Transforming the numbers (Re:Congrats!)

[Cajun Hell]

You'll also get real time decryption on a single Gulftown CPU: E.g, a Core i7-980X runs 3200MHz and has 6 cores.

Is this going to be the next decade's bragging rights? "My Tivolike's capture card continuously draws only 130 Watts whenever something is on! (not counting all the case fans)" "Oh yeah? Well mine only uses 73 Watts!!"

(Just kidding; I get it that we're talking proof-of-concept.)

Re:Transforming the numbers (Re:Congrats!)

[anUnhandledException]

Actually it is less.

1080i60 is actually 60 interlaced fields. 1920 pixels x 540 pixels (even pixels) then another field 1920 pixels x 540 pixels (odd pixels).

1080i60 has same pixels per second as 1080p30. You just need >= 30 frames per second throughput to decrypt either 1080i60 (HDTV) or 1080p24 (Bluray).

Re:Transforming the numbers (Re:Congrats!)

[Eivind Eklund]

I assumed 1080p60, as the highest standard that seems relevant for today, and as fitting with the descriptions that were given.

Anyway, the main point is that decoding HDCP in real time is possible with the posted implementation today, even for high resolution streams.

Eivind.

What would be the issues with a hardware version?

[91degrees]

If any...

I can see how this might be very useful for someone with an older HDTV that predates HDCP. Personally though I'd prefer a small box over a big case with a multi-core CPU. I imagine the scheme was designed with efficient hardware implementations in mind.

Re:What would be the issues with a hardware versio

[mike260]

There are already bootleg hardware HDCP strippers on the market. It used to be possible to shut down these devices by revoking their keys, but that's now gone out the window with the master-key leak. Expect the next generation of devices to let you upload new keys to them, or maybe generate new keys themselves.

Software decryption is kinda interesting but you're right, hardware is where it's at.

Re:What would be the issues with a hardware versio

[AndrewNeo]

Probably none, this game is just getting started. There are already HDCP strippers out there, anyway, intended for just that purpose (or HD projectors with DVI but not HDCP support) but they're super expensive (likely due to supply and demand)

Re:What would be the issues with a hardware versio

[Nimey]

It's easier for Intel et al to go after people who are selling a product, especially a physical device. Much easier for a software author to be safely anonymous so the DMCA can't touch 'em.

BluRay Braille Reader!

[bill_mcgonigle]

Nice, a Braille reader for BluRay subtitles should now be technically possible. BluRays make decent eBooks with the right software.

(HDMI neglects to ship closed-captioning data so you *have* to capture/diff/ocr from HDMI rasters to extract the text).

dencryption consumes 1% of US power

[Anonymous Coward]

When you watch a DVD or Bluray, the content is decrypted, then encrypted and decrypted again for HDCP.

A significant amount of energy is devoted to protecting the pre-internet business model.

This will only get worse over time, as media gets larger and media companies more aggressively cling to the old business model.

It took more than 100 years for the world to really adjust to the printing press. I assume at least the same time period for the Internet, before we can have our enlightenment period.

Re:dencryption consumes 1% of US power

[Cajun Hell]

This will only get worse over time, as media gets larger and media companies more aggressively cling to the old business model.

Don't you mean abandon the old business model? The old business model was that you sell un-DRMed content and make a billion dollars. This was deemed unacceptably profitable.

Don't think of DRM as clinging to the past. The past already proved that DRM is undesirable from the seller's point of view. The new business model is to tell people, "No you can't do that if you buy this; if you need to timeshift your TV, play your Bluray on an unapproved display, etc. then go download the pirates' version instead."

Doesn't matter if you can do it in real time ...

[Joce640k]

If you can't recompress it in real time then there's not much point in decrypting it in real time either. Just dump it to disk and process it later.

Re:What would be the issues with a hardware versio

[hedwards]

As others have said, somebody will almost certainly port the code over to CUDA or in some other fashion use the GPU to do the work. Hardware solutions probably aren't going to be around too much longer, although, as full dubbing facilities, they may have some utility.

DRM is so costly, it should be forbidden.

[wvmarle]

DRM must be really really costly. And the bad thing is we're all paying for it - the honest customers even more than the "pirates" against which it is supposed to protect.

When I see how much computing resources it takes just to en/decrypt a stream - OK it's a general purpose processor, not something dedicated - I am thinking of the cost of those resources in all the devices we have. After all your BluRay player has to read the BR disk, decrypt the content, then encrypt it again to an HDCP stream, which is sent over to say a TV, which then decrypts it again to make it a watchable image.

Now if only we wouldn't need that encryption.

BluRay itself is (all but) cracked, that's one decryption step that can be done away with.

HDCP transfer is now done with; that's another two steps of en- and decryption that can go.

That is at least three pieces of beefy hardware. That's three chips that won't come for a few pennies each. That's three chips that will be wasting significant amounts of energy.

Plus of course the huge upfront cost to develop all that: to develop the algorithms, set up the secure key supply, designing the dedicated de/encrypt chips and writing all the software around it to make it work.

And all of us are paying for it. It makes BR players and disks and HDCP compliant hardware more expensive than necessary, it even increases our power bills unnecessary. I really wonder when this madness can come to an end.

Re:DRM is so costly, it should be forbidden.

[dpilot]

Years back I saw a chip-level presentation on the topic. It wasn't just a matter of decrypting the Blu-ray and reencrypting HDCP. Every content signal that came to a chip I/O was encrypted. The intent was that you wouldn't be able to buy hardware, open it up, hang probes on any chip, and capture "their" content.

Way more encryption hardware than you've suggested, but it's also specialized encryption/decryption engines, not GP processors.

Re:DRM is so costly, it should be forbidden.

[Timmmm]

"BluRay itself is (all but) cracked"

Lies. AACS hasn't been cracked at all, and the last freely available processing key was found many months ago (AnyDVD has the latest one). BD+ also hasn't been circumvented (except maybe by AnyDVD - not sure about that).

Re:DRM is so costly, it should be forbidden.

[cdrguru]

I really wonder when this madness can come to an end.

Every journey starts with a first step. In this case, you can be the first step. Go in to your employer and tell HR that you like it there so much that you want them to stop paying you. This will enable whatever that company does to move closer and closer to being free.

When enough people like you in the media creation business do likewise, all this stuff we are paying for today will be free and DRM will be completely unnecessary.

Simple. You just need to take the first step. Because until that becomes popular, companies are going to need to pay employees and they are going to have to have someone pay for their products. I can assure you that without DRM making things more difficult nobody with an ounce of brains would pay for anything anymore.

Think about it. If it wasn't for the cameras and security guards wouldn't you be stealing from stores? Well, even with this there are plenty of people that do - it works out to about 10% of the customers. So in the privacy of their homes and no cameras or guards why do you think anyone would pay if they didn't have to?

Re:DRM is so costly, it should be forbidden.

[andi75]

While I think most of the original post is pure trolling, this line got me thinking...

> Think about it. If it wasn't for the cameras and security guards wouldn't you be stealing from stores?

No, I wouldn't. First, I haven't seen any security guards in the stores in town all (and only few cameras, mostly in the big grocery stores). Also, about half the farms around here are selling stuff (milk, eggs, vegetables, jam, cheese, etc.) without any security measures at all. It works like this: You enter the store room, grab what you want, write it down on the list, and put the money in a jar.

Re:What would be the issues with a hardware versio

[LocalH]

I'd love to see a device that generates a new key every time it boots up. The ultimate unblockable device, no matter how many keys get revoked.

Remember Macrovision scrubbers?

[Stavr0]

The same thing is happening for HDCP. How long before someone codes this as FPGA logic? Then anyone will be able to pump out HDCP scrubbers for a few bucks, no need to license an decryption key.

Re:Remember Macrovision scrubbers?

[scourfish]

I'd imagine you'd need a pretty fast FPGA, which can be fairly costly if you're just a basement dweller.

Re:Remember Macrovision scrubbers?

[EmagGeek]

An FPGA with that kind of performance would cost quite a bit more than "a few bucks."

Re:Remember Macrovision scrubbers?

[weapon]

Not necessarily,

Previous posters have mentioned that a lot of the costs in the software version is bitwise operations (reversing buses and the like). These are very expensive in software, but in hardware they can be implemented very cheaply. Encryption is particularly efficient on either a dedicated chip or a FPGA because it is a reasonably straight forward (if complicated) process. There is no need for the branching and general purpose processing of a computer, on a FPGA you could set up the decryption in a pipeline so that you can be decrypting multiple words at once - basically what you are doing is reimplementating the ASIC (Application Specific Integrated Circuit) chips that are already in use on a FPGA. Granted a FPGA won't have the same performance of a ASIC, but I would imagine that the HDCP ASIC are not very big.

I'm waiting...

[bjwest]

China. Where's my pass-through video card I can put in my MCPC to overlay text and graphics on my TV? I want to feed my TIVO into my MCPC so I can control my own PIP and overlays. I couldn't care less about pirating the stuff myself. If I want a local copy of something, it's already out in the wild - I'll get it that way. I just want to be able to control my media and view what I want how I want.

I see what you did there! :)

[bornagainpenguin]

NEVER underestimate a determined hacker.

Especially one who's been told it can't be done.

No, they can't do 1080p IN REAL TIME.

I see what you did there...and I approve ! ;)

I just worry this is like invoking Godwin's law and could backfire on us somehow...

--bornagainpenguin

Re:So I have to ask

[jack2000]

We just hate the RIAA and the MPAA in our guts.
They pump out shit day after day, for some it's just a game of one upping the other. They couldn't care less for the content that is protected. if there is encryption they view it as a challenge.
I myself don't give a dime about all of this. The things they are trying to encrypt, I don't want.

Re:So I have to ask

[cheekyjohnson]

"never pays for anything"

I pay for physical goods that aren't in infinite supply.

"and complaining when companies try and protect their revenue."

Sorry, but when it hurts legitimate customers in the process, it's not worth it. DRM, HDCP... it's all the same annoyance. Eventually (often extremely quickly) it will be bypassed by the pirates and it will only hurt the legitimate customers (some will either be angry and stop buying future media, and others may even turn to piracy because still want the media). In the end, their 'protection' only hurts themselves and actual customers, not pirates. So, yes, people are going to complain.

What about an OpenCL implmentation?

[stupkid]

Could this decrypting take place on the GPU making it usable on more modest hardware?

Re:What would be the issues with a hardware versio

[awshidahak]

Problem with this: Your other devices will eventually get restrictions on them that only allow a certain number of new devices to be connected to them before they fry. Every new key counts as a new device.

Audio watermarking? Eh.

[Mathinker]

Cinavia is audio watermarking. Considering that they aren't quite as braindead as the SDMI developers so that they haven't posted a public oracle for their watermark, I would guess that Cinavia has a chance of surviving for quite a bit longer. But I wouldn't bet on it surviving a very long time if it becomes a nuisance.

There are few details about this watermark on the net, currently, and the information which there is gives one the impression that it is currently designed to prevent movies which have been taped in a movie theater from being played at home. I don't find anywhere that it would prevent copying/backup of media designed for home use.

Frankly, I'd be totally OK with that. That's not the kind of abusive DRM which inconveniences the paying consumer. It's also a use case which is a lot easier for protecting a watermark, because one only gets one instance of the watermark for every film which is released. My bet is that it will be cracked by someone analyzing the detection algorithm rather than by comparison of watermarked/non-watermarked audio streams. That is, assuming that someone doesn't just come up with some kind of processing paradigm which manages to remove the watermark without even figuring out how it works exactly.

Re:Audio watermarking? Eh.

[anUnhandledException]

It INITIALLY was deployed to movie theaters but it has no been deployed to at least 4 recent Blurays. "The Losers" release just last month contains Cinavia watermark.

A ripped copy will not play (well audio shuts off after 20 minutes) on a Cinavia compatible players (including PS3). There is currently no workaround.

You can rip the movie just fine but the watermark survives and a compatible player when it sees watermark + lack of AACS (encryption) refuses playback after 20 minutes.

Now the "flaw" in the system is it requires compatible players. Older players will play it just fine. However there is a push to make this or something like this part of the BD spec thus all future players would not play back watermarked content (when encryption is missing).

Well

[fireylord]

It is possible to install unsigned drivers to Windows 7with the right settings, windows will complain very violently (with a RED dialogue box- which of course makes all the difference security wise!) however whether or not the drm in the kernel will stop these drivers from playing ball with hdcp is another matter, although that's not to say there aren't relatively easy ways around that issue too.

Re:So I have to ask

[f8l_0e]

I purchase my music from amazon.com/mp3 (their 32 bit deb package will run on 10.04 x64 with some work). I buy my directly on my nook. I buy DVD movies. So, while I can't speak for everyone else here, I answered your question. No, not EVERY slashdotter pirates all their content. By the way you got modded though, it sure seems like a lot do.