MIT Hacks XKCD Talk With AACS key

Reader Hanji alerts us to a hack pulled off when Randall Munroe, author of the popular webcomic XKCD, spoke at MIT by invitation of the Lab for Computer Science. MIT hackers dropped hundreds of labelled playpen balls onto the audience from hatches in the ceiling. The labels bore XKCD's logo as well as the recently discovered 16-byte AACS processing key. At another point in Munroe's talk he was stalked by remote-controlled mechanical velociraptors; but fortunately he had been supplied with a squirt gun full of grape juice.

thats better than

thats better than being stalked by remotely controlled mechanical MPAA lawyers

Re:thats better than

Can you imagine the cease and desist letter from the MPAA?
"We demand that all AACS keys are removed from all PLAYGROUND BALLS immediately and no legal action will follow"

Re:thats better than

Do not taunt Happy Fun Ball!

Americans demand tougher sentencing for hackers!!!

Ask a liberal to define the word "hacker" and he would probably give you a rose-tinted answer. To the liberal, a hacker is a harmless tinkerer. It's unlikely that a FBI agent would agree; nor would anybody who has to commute by air, drive a car, raise a family or pay their taxes.

All sensible patriots should demand [shelleytherepublican.com] that these atheist hackers are sent to prison. (At the very least, they are suspicious and should be reported to the FBI for going to a "technology" college instead of Bob Jones University!!). I have a modest proposal to go further than the sober ideas presented in that beatiful and well researched article: those who have inflicted cyberterrorism on our great nation by illegally watching HDDVDS should be given the death penalty. This is the only way we can live through these troublesome times, when the rapture is near [shelleytherepublican.com], without losing to inferior and dangerous communist [shelleytherepublican.com] computing [shelleytherepublican.com] products [shelleytherepublican.com].

Re:Americans demand tougher sentencing for hackers

What was the name of that Internet "law" (more like an observation) that once you reach a point far enough to the political right, your viewpoint becomes indistinguishable from satire?

I assume you posted this in honour of the late Jerry Falwell.

Re:Americans demand tougher sentencing for hackers

Extremisim in any form is pretty tough to distinguish from satire. For instance, it's hard to tell if the thousands of the inane "OMG Linux+OOo+Beryl rocks M$ is the sux0r!" posts here are satire or not. I hope at least some of them are.

one of my favs,

http://xkcd.com/c202.html [xkcd.com]

Don't miss..

Don't miss the alt text.

LSC != LCS

The xkcd talk was hosted by the MIT Lecture Series Committee, not the MIT Labratory for Computer Science (which was merged with the AI Lab to form CSAIL a few years ago, and thus no longer formally exists).

So that's what Randall Munroe looks like

For some reason, I expected him to be really thin, and wearing a black hat.

tags: encryption, humour

how odd we don't see the two tags together more often

Re:tags: encryption, humour

You don't see them because the humor tag is usually encrypted in another one, like "itsatrap".

it's

It's a little late to be jumping on the spread-the-AACS-key bandwagon, isn't it?

Re:it's

Honestly, I wish the DRM enthusiasts of the world would get a clue. There is nothing you can try to protect digitally that someone can't break digitally. It's bits of data and there is always a combination of 1 and 0's that will open Pandora's chastity belt.

The greatest mistake anyone can make, is underestimating one's enemy.

The RIAA is not stupid. They, of anybody, have money to burn on purchased expertise. They already understand that bits are inherently copyable. And they've been told many times that crypto will always fail in finite time when Eve is given the ciphertext, the plaintext, and the key.

What DRM is, is their attempt to tilt the economics of copying in their favor. In the same way that we are attempting to tilt the economics of spam in our favor. In both cases, the root problem (copying or spam) is intractable... but it can be satisfactorily tamed by a change in the economics.

By raising the cost (i.e. the hassle, the legil peril, the hardware requirements, the software expertise, etc.) of copying, and of receiving copies, above the price of retail media, they'll solve the problem enough.

Yes, you've told us a thousand times that the problem cannot be conclusively solved, but everyone already knows that. They aren't seriously trying to do that. They're just trying to tame it, and they're succeeding. You are blind to this because you've underestimated them. You hang out here on slashdot talking about how stupid they are, but meanwhile BluRay is taking over the world, and most of your and my friends have closed down their bittorrent servers in fear.

Re:it's

The RIAA is not stupid. They, of anybody, have money to burn on purchased expertise.

However large amounts of money with no in-house expertise also tends to attract large numbers of sellers of snake oil. Which has been amply demonstrated by a number of rather silly DRM implementations we've seen floated around so far.

Re:it's

It's a little late to be jumping on the spread-the-AACS-key bandwagon, isn't it?
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0

Not if you realize how hard is it to write "09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0" on thousands of playground balls and them load them into chutes in the ceiling!

Some notes

• It was LSC, the Lecture Series Committee, not LCS, the Lab for Computer Science (now known as CSAIL) that invited him. They're a student group that shows movies and sponsors talks like this.
• /. linked to the second page of photos; The first [mit.edu], which isn't entirely obviously linked from the linked page, has some excellent photos of the balls falling from the hatch.

A squirt gun?

Pfft, everyone velociraptors fear nothing besides traffic cones.

Hack? Not really...

Mr. Moose [wikipedia.org] did this first, and better [youtube.com].

Wish I were at MIT for that

Genericon is trying to get him to come to RPI next year, so with any luck I may get my chance to meet him. Until then I'll just keep plastering comics on my door.

References

The playpen balls [mit.edu] were a reference to one of xkcd's more popular comics, Grownups [xkcd.com]. The message on the playpen balls was a reference to some of xkcd's comics "My hobby...".

I pine for the day...

...that someone, SOMEONE, comes to my local city to chat that is even 1/2 as interesting. It has been YEARS since I was at a guest lecture... seem some good ones (esp Douglas Adams - talking about his book Last Chance to See). Wonder how you get on a mailing list...

10-250 blows

They really need a new lecture hall. Most uncomfortable seats ever!

An acquaintance's video

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jOWntIdegws [youtube.com]

Now I know

Now I know why the XKCD site is sooo slow. I just discovered it yesterday and was going through the back posts. Little did I know the site had been slashdotted.

Velociraptors

For those who may have missed the Velociraptor [xkcd.com] joke, another one here [xkcd.com], and one more for good measure [xkcd.com].

I love xkcd!

It's quite popular, but why?

You'd think that a comic like this would appeal only to those of the dorky persuasion, but I think I know why it has broader appeal. (I know at least one non-dorky person who doesn't know the technical background of the jokes, but still really likes xkcd.) It's because the comic isn't really about dorky things; it uses dorky jokes to talk about themes like loneliness which even non-dorks can appreciate, and does this often enough that many non-dorks find it worth the time to read. Compare this to, for instance, Schlock Mercenary, which has its appeal pretty firmly limited to dorks.

come on, I know you're out there...

LSC..

Re:come on, I know you're out there...

... sucks!

I say =)

Having only recently been introduced to xkcd (and having read the entirety of the strip in one sitting) I have to say this entire thing is quite amusing. The balls, the raptors... obviously the folks who pulled this have read and understood the strip.

If you haven't read it yet, I highly recommend it. Geek humour at it's finest (and sometimes most touching)

Hey Rob, where's my 20 questions with the xkcd author???

XKCD: Hover over the comics

The comics have the Title attribute defined. For example http://xkcd.com/c253.html [xkcd.com]. I read them all and noticed this a week later and then had to go back and read them all again.

I love xkcd.

Get the Long Titles extension.

Firefox doesn't show the whole titles (i.e. hovertext) without the Long Titles extension. Get it. Enjoy it. :D

That's a hack? Not a prank?

Sorry, I'm obviously new here. Please explain how this is actually a hack.

Strange

I support free speech and think the MPAA is overreacting. But at the same time, this guy (and everyone else who has plastered the key everywhere) is acting in a provocative manner. This whole argument is starting to sound like the brother/sister act of "I'm not touching you". Maybe if both sides grew up and actually tried to understand the other sides argument, this type of thing could be resolved.

Richard Stallman

It's a good thing with all the patent issues that Richard Stallman now has his very own katana.
http://blag.xkcd.com/2007/04/19/life-imitates-xkcd -part-ii-richard-stallman/ [xkcd.com]

Heh

So, like 27 people link to the playpen balls comic, but no one mentions that someone actually baked him a cake shaped like the internet [mit.edu] - a deliciously(!) multi-layered reference to XKCD?

Re:Wow!

Learn your history [mit.edu], n00b.

Re:Wow!

Yeah arent college pranks supposed to be stuff of legend?

"Lets drop some things and then set our overpriced RC toys at him!"

"Genius!"

"Yep, we're MIT students!"

Re:Wow!

They chose velociraptors [xkcd.com] for a reason [xkcd.com].

Re:Wow!

Nice ideas, but IMHO this would be blown way out of proportion and not necessarily the right kind of thing for this occasion. xkcd can have quite complex humor but is also quite pragmatic and simple.

Also, if you don't already know, being afraid of and protecting yourself from velociraptor attacks and playpen balls as sexual innuendo are a common meme at xkcd and on its forum. Simple things like releasing playpen balls and stalking Randall Munroe with velociraptors seem to be the perfect hack considering the general spirit of the comic. In the end, the sophistication doesn't matter if it completely misses the joke and just doesn't feel right for the occasion. There's a right time and place to show off your tech skills, but this one just wasn't.

Re:Wow!

Actually, there's a reason [xkcd.com] behind the playpen balls (not pens). It's a reference to the strip.

Re:Wow!

and the velociraptors http://xkcd.com/c87.html [xkcd.com]

Re:A hack?

In MIT-speak, a "Hack" is a prank.

I can't say whether that is related to "Hack", as in to program, or "Hack", as in to exploit software.

Re:enough already!

You must be attending Clarkson!

Re:enough already!

is downright insulting to the rest of us.

Really? I didn't see anything in TFA calling me a poophead.

Re:Not to be contrarian, but

The term 'hack' has long been applied to various pranks on the MIT campus. Please read this article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MIT_hack [wikipedia.org]

Re:Not to be contrarian, but

Playpen balls are an xkcd in-joke.

http://xkcd.com/c150.html [xkcd.com]

Re:enough already!

Why is it that whenever anything even remotely of interest happens at MIT, it immediately shows up on the front page of Slashdot, Digg, and Boingboing?

I'll gladly admit that xkcd is a great comic, and that there are plenty of smart students and professors at MIT. However, the disproportinate amount of press coverage that MIT (and the Ivies) receive is downright insulting to the rest of us.

Wow. You sound JUST like the people that bitch about how much press Apple gets...

Re:enough already!

Well shit, I'm sorry. If anyone at your school bothered or thought to stage a similar event, it might have gotten coverage. But nobody did. And maybe there's a reason for that.

Re:enough already!

So go do something worth mentioning at your school.

The students at University of California Santa Cruz (Go Slugs!) did the bit with post-its and got blag coverage just fine.

boingboing [boingboing.net]
/. [slashdot.org]
digg [digg.com]
(and in the blue [metafilter.com])

Parent should stop whining on /. and go actually DO SOMETHING!

--
But to spit on the very act of creation is cheap nihilism.
    -Metafilter

Re:enough already!

If you can't appreciate what is special about an MIT prank, fine.

But if you can't appreciate what is special about XKCD, then you have some reading to do. Start here [xkcd.com]. And don't forget to read the TITLE text by hovering over the images. (Not ALT text, as others have mislabeled it.)