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Next-Gen Ultra HD Blu-Ray Discs Probably Won't Be Cracked For A While (arstechnica.co.uk)

Posted by BeauHD on from the all-in-due-time dept.

DVDFab, a software tool for ripping and decrypting DVDs and Blu-ray discs, will not be upgraded to support newer Ultra HD (4K) Blu-ray discs. Fengtao Software, which makes DVDFab, said in a statement that it "will not decrypt or circumvent AACS 2.0 in the days to come. This is in accordance with AACS-LA, (which has not made public the specifications for AACS 2.0), the Blu-ray Disc Association and the movie studios." AACS-LA is the body that develops and licenses the Blu-ray DRM system. AACS 2.0 has a 'basic' version that sounds quite similar to existing AACS, but also an 'enhanced' version of DRM that requires the playback device to download the decryption key from the internet. There might still be a hole in the AACS 2.0 crypto scheme that allows for UHD discs to be ripped, but presumably it'll be a lot tougher that its predecessors.

13 of 244 comments (clear)

  1. We've heard this before... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

    You know...before the encryption was cracked by a 15 year-old using a Pentium III desktop.

    1. Re:We've heard this before... by Blaskowicz · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Our machines are faster but not 2^64 faster

    2. Re:We've heard this before... by delt0r · · Score: 4, Insightful

      And yet the internet if full of blue ray rips. DRM doesn't work. You can't keep something locked up while at the same time give everyone a copy of the key. Or a key. If you can watch it you can crack it, without all that much encryption cracking.

      --
      If information wants to be free, why does my internet connection cost so much?
    3. Re:We've heard this before... by tlambert · · Score: 4, Informative

      Correct me if I'm wrong, but so far there have been a total of zero successful attacks against AACS (the Blu-Ray encryption system). Everything so far has been built around using known decryption keys extracted from BluRay players and playback software.

      Obviously, that doesn't stop your from emulating an LVDS flat panel and taking your output from after the stage where it has been decrypted and now thinks it's talking to a flat panel display, but is instead talking to your electronics instead.

      It's unlikely that a television owner will accept the equivalent of an "error 53" on their very expensive display panel, so third party repairs will most likely remain possible. At which point we can know there is no security association between the flat panel itself and the separate decode hardware stage.

      So basically: if people can see it at all, it's possible to get it in cleartext, even if you may eventually have to resort to tempest-level eavesdropping on the flat panel itself.

      Now while it's true that these things might be watermarked in the decode process... it's possible to use sampling with multiple sets of hardware, and then use differential analysis on the images to remove, or at least obscure, andy electronic artifacts designed to identify the source of the video. Not that it's not actually going to be the same way most movies get released these days: someone gets a hold of an awards ceremony DVD by doing dumpster diving, or some member of the academy just releases it, or the pressing factory in China just runs a "third shift operation".

      Frankly, however, I can't see them being successful in requiring going to the Internet; it's not like the Internet can tell if it's a legitimate disc in the first place, if it's a bit-identical disc that was run off by the factory that ran off the legitimate copies. It's basically a repeat of the DIVX (DIgital Video eXpress) fiasco if they go that route anyway. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... -- nobody wants to rent the videos they buy, and potentially later lose access to them, when you replace a player, or a key that happens to be for your brand of player gets invalidated, or the studio goes out of business, or gets bought by a religious organization that thinks R-rated movies are somehow "Against God".

      And if you think that can't happen: It's Chick-fil-A's nationwide policy to be closed on Sunday because of its managements religious beliefs.

    4. Re:We've heard this before... by dgatwood · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Additionally, most movies just don't benefit from Ultra HD.

      You misspelled "" (the empty string). As in: printf("Additionally, movies ""just don't benefit from Ultra HD.");

      Fewer and fewer people are buying physical media at this point, choosing to pay a small fee to Netflix et al for a continuous supply of new content. The few who still do buy physical media are mostly those behind the technology curve, which means they mostly don't own Ultra HD TVs or players. As a standard, Ultra HD is basically stillborn.

      Sure, many people buy an Ultra HD TV if they're replacing hardware, simply because other aspects of the image quality make them a better purchase. (The resolution is irrelevant at normal viewing distances, and this is true regardless of the size of your TV, because your eye exhibits angular resolution.)

      Similarly, many people will eventually buy an Ultra HD Blu-Ray player as they displace the standard models price-wise. Unfortunately for the studios, almost nobody will replace their existing players until the hardware breaks, which means that it will be a really, really long time before the studios can stop shipping new movies in normal Blu-Ray format, which will still be rippable. And most people will continue to buy their movies in that format, rather than have to deal with multiple copies of each movie for their various players.

      This brings me to the main reason why these discs won't be cracked for a while: nobody actually cares. Everybody knows that there's little real-world benefit to the extra resolution, and the extra size of the underlying data can be considerable, depending. This means:

      • No movie pirates will care whether it is possible to rip them, because they'll prefer the smaller and less battery-draining (but otherwise functionally equivalent) Blu-Ray format anyway.
      • Nobody who buys movies and wants to make backups will buy the Ultra HD discs in the first place, so they won't care about whether they can back them up. (And even if they did, assuming the new Digital Bridge feature catches on, this isn't likely to be a significant target market for ripping software.)

      In short, these companies are engaging in an insane cat and mouse game to "protect" intellectual property in a format that is likely to be purchased by a fraction of a percent of movie viewers even in the best-case scenario, and that would still be watched by about that same fraction of a percent even if the movie studios made unencrypted Ultra HD ISOs available for free in torrent form. Nobody cares about Ultra HD.

      --

      Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.

  2. Blueray by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative

    I still haven't left DVD, like I needy another type of crappy optical disc.

  3. Pointless by Diac · · Score: 5, Insightful

    As long as you can capture the raw video and audio output you can copy anything into your own format.

    1. Re:Pointless by ichthus · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Or, as the saying goes, "If you can play it, you can copy it."

      --
      sig: sauer
    2. Re:Pointless by DMJC · · Score: 4, Informative

      Yeah, don't use this: https://www.hdfury.com/shop/ot... combined with this: https://www.thestreamingguys.c... Now you know how not to combine a HDCP 2.2 decrypter and a capture card to not record the raw 4k stream.

    3. Re:Pointless by ITRambo · · Score: 4, Funny

      Thanks for not sharing this information.

  4. Making Consumption Harder For Consumers... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    This is one more case of DRM making life harder for the consumer. I live in a country with spotty, slow internet access. If I can't watch my movies without getting online, then I won't buy them.

  5. Oh, just great.... by sbaker · · Score: 5, Insightful

    So now my DVD player has to be connected to the Internet? Now we have new and exciting routes for evildoers and opportunities for adverts and other junk to be inserted into our media. Then you have the joy that if the DVD manufacturer goes broke - or just decides not to keep supporting the format some years from now - then all of your DVD's would just stop playing?

    The entire POINT of physical media is that I can play it anywhere - and that I own the content forever. If you break either one of those (and they just broke both of them) - then I might as well stream content online and save the need for a rack with 200 disks in it cluttering up my media room.

    Forget it. If I have to put up with all of those things, I might as well use Amazon/Netflix/whatever to get my content.

    --
    www.sjbaker.org
  6. Not yet used and additional notes by Zargg · · Score: 5, Informative

    Some notes from someone in the industry...

    The 'enhanced' version is not yet used, everything out so far is using the basic AACS2, it is unknown exactly when the enhanced will be available for use. Knowing how past AACS requirements have never materialized, I actually wouldn't be surprised if this never really takes off. Also Fox is really the only studio I know of that is interested in this. They are also the only one I can think of that uses BD+ regularly, and are more technically minded than other studios.

    Streaming is no where near the quality of these discs. Someone posted that Netflix streams 4k at about 16Mbps, while the video on these discs will be over 100. Also the bigger aspect of video on the UHD discs is bt.2020 HDR color space, which I don't think Netflix does yet. M-go is the only place I know of that has similar quality video, Fox tries to use the same encode on the UHD BD as they do for their "Vidity" downloads on there. Also if sound is important to you, I don't think anyone streams Dolby Atmos or DTS:X audios.