AACS Revision Cracked A Week Before Release

stevedcc writes "Ars Technica is running a story about next week's release of AACS, which is intended to fix the currently compromised version. The only problem is, the patched version has already been cracked. From the article: 'AACS LA's attempts to stifle dissemination of AACS keys and prevent hackers from compromising new keys are obviously meeting with extremely limited success. The hacker collective continues to adapt to AACS revisions and is demonstrating a capacity to assimilate new volume keys at a rate which truly reveals the futility of resistance. If keys can be compromised before HD DVDs bearing those keys are even released into the wild, one has to question the viability of the entire key revocation model.'"

Re:Activity time!

[Ksevio]

with 18,446,744,073,709,551,616 numbers and we'll say 8 Bytes per number, that would be a 128 Exabyte file - not the most reasonable file to host all over the place

Re:Which C64 games had copy protection

[Anonymous Coward]

Many, many later 64 programs had copy protection. Often this involved boot sequences that checked for the existence of error tracks on floppy disks that could not be copied via normal means - written outside the normal head range on the 1541 drive. The GEOS boot disk used this, as did some video games. It was really frustrating for several reasons, one because I tended to use the disks so much that they wore out, and two because the 1541 drive variant in the SX64 was different enough that these measures would cause the disks not to boot at all. Most cracking groups had very little trouble bypassing this silliness, something which obviously has not changed.

Re:DRM

[Mr2001]

Not quite. The encryption on DVDs is a copy protection measure, and so is the encryption on HD-DVD and Blu-Ray discs (AFAIK - I'm not as familiar with their technical details).

People who don't understand how it works usually come back with the response, "But you can just make a bit-for-bit copy!" Well, no, you can't, unless you work in a DVD manufacturing plant. With consumer-grade burners and media, it's impossible to burn a working encrypted disc, because you can't write to the area where the keys are supposed to be stored; the only way to make a working copy of the movie is to decrypt it first.

Re:The ever heard of cost vs benefit?

[rossz]

I corrected your formula:

ProfitA = $MEDIA_INCOME - piracy loss - DRM R&D - DRM content - lawsuits - alienated customers - recalls (i.e. rootkit)

ProfitB = $MEDIA_INCOME - piracy loss

Re:Extremely Limited Success?

[Intron]

Netcraft confirms it, the movie industry is ...

Oh wait, Spiderman 3 [boxofficemojo.com] seems to have done over $150M on it's opening weekend. Perhaps I won't start crying for them yet.

Re:waste of time

[Drooling Iguana]

Unfortunately, movies tend to be projected in the normal visible spectrum, and I don't think the screens they use reflect X-rays, so even if you had X-ray vision it wouldn't help you to see the movie.

Re:DRM

[TheRaven64]

You can make a bit-for-bit copy of DVDs, you just can't burn it to a DVD (unless you buy more expensive DVD-Rs for authoring). I watch most DVDs on my laptop. Because the machine gets very hot with the DVD drive spinning (especially on a lot of newer DVDs with the hole slightly off centre, so it wobbles a lot while spinning), I often rip them first. I make a disk image using Apple's Disk Utility and I can then play them back with Apple's DVD Player.

I can copy the disk completely without interference, using officially supported tools. I can't, however, transcode the movie for playing back on my Nokia 770 without breaking CSS. I also can't watch DVD's from the USA. I can make working copies, and if I wanted to I could easily distribute them, or archive them and sell the DVDs. CSS limits my ability to use the disk, not my ability to copy it.

Re:waste of time

[Lumpy]

If you have a older DVD player that is decent quality.

Press upon insertion of the disc and it has identified it.

Stop-Stop-Play

the movie should start and bypass all the crap. Newer dvd players disabled this feature as well as most Disney DVD's as they play tricks when they make the discs.

Better yet, get AnyDVD and rip the movie to a recordable and store away the expensive DVD origional.

that way you have benefits of being a violent felon!

Re:The ever heard of cost vs benefit?

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't forget customer support costs. For DRM'd music, three out of four support calls were due to the DRM.

Re:Umm...

[Jesus_666]

Daft Punk did this with Discovery. You got a "membership card" that contained an access code for their "Daft Club" website containing a lot of remixes of songs from the album. Of course they still required you to install some silly Win-only program the purpose of which I never found out (as the files on the site were unprotected MP3s), but it was a nice gesture.

Later they opened the site to everyone, which was much better. But buyers of the album got there first (provided they were Win users and didn't mind installing random crap on their machines).