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Encryption Security Your Rights Online

HD DVD's AACS Protection Bypassed 161

Mr. BS writes "Playfuls.com is running a story how HD DVD's AACS protection has been compromised. Although the video of the hack leaves much to be desired, the source code has already been made available. Feel free to start backing up your HD DVD's whenever you feel the need."
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HD DVD's AACS Protection Bypassed

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  • Dupe (Score:5, Informative)

    by rrohbeck ( 944847 ) on Sunday December 31, 2006 @05:15PM (#17418394)
    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by nacturation ( 646836 )
      Half-dupe. The last story said source coming in January. This one provides source.
       
    • by Aladrin ( 926209 )
      While this is partly a dupe, at that time, the source code had not been released. It has now. So the headline really should have reflected that, instead.
    • We've cracked the copy protection on Slashdot articles!
      • by Lectrik ( 180902 )
        perhaps Slashdot should attempt some form of copy protection... it is retaining all of our copyrighted material after all. and I hate having to dupe my comments for every dupe article. so much extra work
    • No DRM! (Score:2, Funny)

      by cciRRus ( 889392 )
      That's what happens when Slashdot articles are not protected by DRM. You get dupes, lots of them!
  • Dupe (Score:2, Funny)

    by dominick ( 550229 )
    This also just in...

    slashdot seems to be posting stories more than once to demonstrate
    the real effect of deja vu on the jolt drinking, halo playing, pornography
    downloading whacked out crowd it caters to.
    • It also caters to my insanely short attention span (brought on by the jolt/halo/porn):

      "hey, cool, the new-fangled dvds have been cracked, I'll read about it now.. Oh wait, the youtube video in the next tab is starting"

      (2 minutes later)

      "That sure was funny, now back to the porn"

      (two days later)

      "hey, cool, the new-fangled dvds have been cracked..."
  • by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 31, 2006 @05:16PM (#17418398)
    I guess HD DVD just won the war against blu-ray!
    • And it will be locked out of many things forcing Blu-ray to the top.
    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by Workaphobia ( 931620 )
      Why?

      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AACS [wikipedia.org]

      "The specification was publicly released in April 2005 and the standard has been adopted as the access restriction scheme for HD DVD and Blu-ray Disc."

      Blu-ray IIRC had room for additional DRM methods as well.
      • Bluray has as you said an extra layer of gunk before you get to the content: B+

        As far as I can tell it's an extra bunch of code that can be used to further check the player for compliance before finally decrypting the AACS title key.

        That means that bluray is more complicated to play because you have to implement an extra virtual machine to fool the B+ code into thinking that it runs on a real player.

        The reason that HDDVD will win, is that it's easier to play for Open Source players and other user-loyal play
  • by plover ( 150551 ) * on Sunday December 31, 2006 @05:17PM (#17418404) Homepage Journal
    The source code provided is simply code to decrypt the stream. It's an implementation of the AACS published standard for decrypting a stream. What it does not do is provide a way to extract the keys from the disks.

    The author is waiting till some time in the new year to reveal how he got the keys, but the evidence suggests to me that he used some kind of debugging hook into Power HD-DVD.

    • Right, it's not even "breaking" or "cracking" the encryption if you *have* the key. DeCSS didn't crack CSS; it simply applied a key that they obtained elsewhere to decrypt the dvd normally. In contrast, something like libdvdcss will make use of the fact that CSS keyspace is extremely small, and brute-force it (if the library was not compiled with a player key).

      On that topic, would anyone happen to know why libdvdcss successfully brute-forces some titles, but halts and fails on others? I ran into that proble
    • It does not even contain the actual decripting code, but simply calls some system routines.
  • by jakedata ( 585566 ) on Sunday December 31, 2006 @05:22PM (#17418430)
    How about AACS-Hole?
  • by Swimport ( 1034164 ) on Sunday December 31, 2006 @05:24PM (#17418444) Homepage
    Feel free to back up your hd-dvds once you get some.
  • by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 31, 2006 @05:25PM (#17418448)
    When you have Alzheimer's, dupes are fantastic!
  • by Maxo-Texas ( 864189 ) on Sunday December 31, 2006 @05:48PM (#17418558)
    the mfg's won't understand of course.
  • by Anonymous Coward
    It's right here: http://malfy.org/ [malfy.org]
  • Par for the course (Score:4, Insightful)

    by fireproofjew ( 1042650 ) on Sunday December 31, 2006 @06:06PM (#17418624)
    Every encryption/DRM scheme that the companies think up will inevitably be cracked/hacked. All they need to do is realize that and then they can save money instead of pursuing a futile effort. I, for one, would buy the stuff if it was worth the money they charge.

    Maybe they could charge less if they didn't take the time or spend the money developing newer DRM?
    • by Anonymous Coward
      "Every encryption/DRM scheme that the companies think up will inevitably be cracked/hacked. All they need to do is realize that and then they can save money instead of pursuing a futile effort."

      I agree. That's why I've stopped trying to secure my Linux server.
    • Coming in the near future...

      It will require a drop of your blood to authenticate the customized drm. As an added bonus, it will also perform a pregnancy test, which will be handy seeing as how you've just been fucked...
    • by arminw ( 717974 ) on Sunday December 31, 2006 @07:13PM (#17418952)
      .....Maybe they could charge less if they didn't take the time or spend the money developing newer DRM........

      Maybe the movie and music moguls are duped by the inventors and purveyors of these harebrained copy protection schemes. The latter KNOW that the laws of physics and mathematics GUARANTEE that *any* copy protection scheme WILL be broken. After all, in order to use the content, the key has to be given to the consumer in order to play it. There is NO way to hide a key, if it is needful to be able to use it at some point in order to view the movie or play the music. Perhaps some sane crypto expert can convince the content producers that they have been lied to by these crooked, money grabbing "experts" who know deep down that none of their schemes can ever work for long. The hollywood and the music industry have been sold the equivalent of a certain bridge labeled DRM by these companies who make money selling their DRM schemes to the content producers. Content makers would likely make more money if they did NOT pay these liars a dime.
      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by rob_squared ( 821479 )
        The point has never been to make an unbreakable DRM scheme. The point is to use in in conjunction with the DMCA to get more control. DRM and the DMCA go together like bullets and handguns. The bullets (DRM) are useless themselves, but with the handgun (DMCA) they can get you to follow any restrictions they want.
        • by arminw ( 717974 )
          ....The point has never been to make an unbreakable DRM scheme.....

          True. However anyone who wants to, can back up their DVD or play it on some other playback device, because the encryption scheme has been broken. I like to be able to watch a movie on my laptop, the DVD drive of which doesn't always want to give the disk back. Therefore I copy the decrypted DVD onto an external HD connected to a desktop system. After that I can copy it to the HD on the laptop. After I am tired of watching (usually once) it g
          • ...anyone who wants to, can back up their DVD or play it on some other playback device, because the encryption scheme has been broken.

            Well, not quite. Granted, nearly all of us use DeCSS to do our (fair use!) backups. But it is quite possible to back them up without any decryption at all, so saying the backups are possible "because" of the crack is not quite right.

            • by arminw ( 717974 )
              .....But it is quite possible to back them up without any decryption at all,......

              Really? Does this work on Mac? I tried making a disk images of movie DVDs, but when mounted, would not play like a real disk. Only Mac the R1pper would make a playable copy.

              Content makers have always figured out eventually how to make money from the new technologies. In time, DRM will become extinct. Someone will figure out how to make their content available more conveniently for a fair price. This someone will make a killi
      • There is NO way to hide a key, if it is needful to be able to use it at some point in order to view the movie or play the music.

        Tell that to people trying to pirate DirecTV signals. Have the P4, D1, and D2 access cards [wikipedia.org] been broken yet?

        • by arminw ( 717974 )
          ....Tell that to people trying to pirate DirecTV signals.....

          The difference here is that the keys can be changed and are being changed constantly, whereas once a DVD is recorded and/or a player is sold, nothing can be changed. That is why the new HD players have revokable keys. However I doubt whether the content providers will mess with a huge number of installed players. If millions of Joe consumers get a popular movie DVD as a gift or purchase and then cannot play it, then the producers will not be happy
      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by gutnor ( 872759 )
        "The latter KNOW that the laws of physics and mathematics GUARANTEE that *any* copy protection scheme WILL be broken."

        Ah, they don't want the protection to be completely unbreakable. They just want to make breaking the protection costing too much for average Joe to make copy of DVD to his friends.

        The real value of a DVD for Joe user is something along the line of 20-50$ to purchase and will cost probably around 5$ to rent. If the protection is worth more than 5$ of pain for Joe user, then the mission is alr
        • by arminw ( 717974 )
          .....Joe will take its car to walmart and buy the DVD.....

          And then copy it to play it so he/she can watch it on the laptop or iPod on that plane trip or or other place away from the big screen TV in the living room. Most copying of legally purchased DVDs is done for the purpose of device/place shifting. Few DVD's are copied onto other disks and passed around to others.
      • by GWBasic ( 900357 )

        The sellers of DRM are trying to guide the MPAA/RIAA in a feasable direction. The problem is that the RIAA/MPAA control so much content! It's impossible to invent any kind of playback device without their blessing.

        Want to sell a non-DRM internet-based movie service? All you'll be able to carry are indie movies that no one's ever heard of.

        My employer, (which is involved with DRM,) tells us that they are patiently trying to explain to the MPAA/RIAA that "pay" media needs to be easier (and cheaper) then p

        • by arminw ( 717974 )
          ....I interpret this to mean that eventually pay downloads will be so cheap & easy that P2P networks won't be worth the time & effort......

          Probably the present generation of those running the content business will have to die off first. They will be replaced with people who grew up with the Internet and try new things. Among those new things will be DRM free content paid for by viewers. For generations now, the public has lived with content supported by advertising. Perhaps ad supported downloads m
          • by GWBasic ( 900357 )

            Probably the present generation of those running the content business will have to die off first. They will be replaced with people who grew up with the Internet and try new things. Among those new things will be DRM free content paid for by viewers. For generations now, the public has lived with content supported by advertising. Perhaps ad supported downloads might work also, just as ad supported "free" over the air broadcasting has been with us for years now. This would be used by those who now watch regu

  • by Jugalator ( 259273 ) on Sunday December 31, 2006 @06:17PM (#17418676) Journal
    Feel free to start backing up your HD DVD's whenever you feel the need

    Not only do we skip RTFA quite often, the article submitters seem to as well.

    What he says in that quote is simply not possible; you still need the keys, and that hack doesn't cover that problem.

    We may have something for that too in the future, but this is not the hack for piracy-at-will.
    • We may have something for that too in the future, but this is not the hack for piracy-at-will.

      You mean this is not the hack for extracting your legally purchased content into a sensible format that allows you to skip all the mandatory previews etc. and actually watch it without shackles.

      • by shaneh0 ( 624603 )
        Actually, FWIW, an HD-DVD starts playing the movie immediately. You can then, if you wish, access the menu features.
        • by jZnat ( 793348 ) *
          Will they always be like that? Because that's actually a pretty good thing going there improvement-wise.
          • by shaneh0 ( 624603 )
            Yes, from what I understand. It is very nice. Every HD title I have (all 7 of them so far) the movie plays instantly.

            It's funny, I first heard about this feature when watching a regular DVD a few months ago. The dvd plays, and a preview starts for HD-DVD. One of the big things they featured is that the movie starts playing immediately. So basically they were saying "Upgrade to HD-DVD and you won't see any of this crap."

            However, I think that previews can/might/will still be added to the movie. But I think th
    • What he says in that quote is simply not possible; you still need the keys, and that hack doesn't cover that problem.
      Any software player also needs keys in order to play it. Until the time comes that hardware decryption is done in the video card itself, it'll always be possible to hack the software and get the required decryption keys.
       
      • Until the time comes that hardware decryption is done in the video card itself, it'll always be possible to hack the software and get the required decryption keys.

        Windows Vista has a mechanism where media files can request decryption in the video card. See Protected Video Path User Accessible Bus [wikipedia.org].

  • But sometimes people miss stories. Now, if it is a dupe of a dupe, then that's something else (it does happen). It should be no surprise the copy protection is broken. For every team of programmers coming up with this stuff, there are 40 million teenagers in basements hacking it. Law of averages says someone will stumble on to something. The crack is not very good right now. So what? Someone else will refine it. The chain gun was once a flintlock. If the associated groups were smart, they would do away wi
  • Oh, wait, there isn't any! Nevermind.
    • Re: (Score:1, Redundant)

      "Oh, wait, there isn't any! Nevermind."

      You're the fifth person in this thread to bitch about the dupe, hypocrite.
  • Marketplace http://marketplace.publicradio.org/shows/2006/12/2 9/PM200612294.html [publicradio.org] No excuse for the Big Media companies not to know - DRM will not work!
    • No excuse for the Big Media companies not to know - DRM will not work!

      because this so-called "hack" is based on the published algorithm for AACS decryption? what matters is where and how he got the keys.

      • because this so-called "hack" is based on the published algorithm for AACS decryption? what matters is where and how he got the keys.

        That will come later. Each piece of AACS shall be disclosed and disseminated in its own time, on a schedule that limits the ability of the MAFIAA to enforce the standard form contracts [wikipedia.org] encoded in the DRM system against customers.

  • by kimvette ( 919543 ) on Sunday December 31, 2006 @07:01PM (#17418896) Homepage Journal
    Now that it's cracked, I might consider buying your media in HD-DVD and Blu-Ray formats, since now I can take care of Fair Use when it comes to format shifting and making backups. Until it was cracked there was absolutely ZERO possibility that I would ever consider purchasing HD-DVD and Blu-Ray media.

    Don't you think it's high time that you quit trying to block Fair Use now, especially since the real pirates in China are totally unaffected by DRM in the first place?

    Thanks for listening.

    Signed,
    A paying customer
  • by derrickh ( 157646 ) on Sunday December 31, 2006 @07:12PM (#17418948) Homepage
    Unlike DVDs, HD-DVD's have dual keys, 1 for the title, and 1 for the player. At the most, this guy has managed to make 3 titles playable on a single player. What will happen next is Cyberlink will have it's PowerDVD keys revoked and new keys will be provided with a patch.

    So at most, you'll be able to 'back up' (or Pirate) the current batch of Full Metal Jacket HD-DVD's to play on an older version of PowerDVD.

    So dont go around yelling about how HD-DVD is cracked, cuz it's not.

    Here's an article that has a few more facts and less sensationalism.
    http://videobusiness.com/article/CA6403011.html [videobusiness.com]

    D
    • by Utopia ( 149375 )
      Actually DVDs also have title keys and player keys.
    • by DamnStupidElf ( 649844 ) <Fingolfin@linuxmail.org> on Sunday December 31, 2006 @08:14PM (#17419212)
      Unlike DVDs, HD-DVD's have dual keys, 1 for the title, and 1 for the player. At the most, this guy has managed to make 3 titles playable on a single player. What will happen next is Cyberlink will have it's PowerDVD keys revoked and new keys will be provided with a patch.

      And when PowerDVD is re-released it will have to load its brand new decryption key into memory and use it to decrypt the data from the disk. If they're smart-asses, they'll only use the decryption key for key setup or even completely skip the AES 128 key and directly build the AES decryption key schedule by some other obfuscated process. If they really want to get wild, they'll continually decrypt and reencrypt the key schedule so that its never fully intact in memory at any given point in time, and integrate the last decryption steps into the first huffman decoding steps for the mpeg process (since it's just a bunch of XORs) to further annoy crackers. Unfortunately, the fact that unencrypted material ever exists in PowerDVD proves that they must have the entire AES decryption key schedule available for any given decryption, and it will be relatively trivial for crackers to pull the key schedule out and just pick the first 128 (or 192 or 256) bits of the key schedule which is the original AES key. Trying to hide encryption keys within an executable's memory space is probably one of the silliest ever conceived. All an attacker has to do is try every K-bit (K is the size of the key) sequence of memory as a test key at several points in the program. That is in fact what this article's attack accomplished. The key schedule can be dynamically encrypted and decrypted as each word is required, but this is just a stopgap measure and slows encryption down significantly.
      • by r3m0t ( 626466 )
        "Trying to hide encryption keys within an executable's memory space is probably one of the silliest ever conceived."

        Except with Trusted Computing.

        Memory Curtaining allows a program to protect its memory from being read by other processes and the kernel.

        If a driver has to be signed to be loaded (as in 64-bit Windows Vista*) then none of the drivers will be able to look at the curtained memory (unless you're able to pay Microsoft some money /and/ slip the debugging functionality of your driver past their nose
        • Ok, so the o/s won't let me read the memory. If I run a TC o/s in a virtual machine, I can read it, no?
          • by GiMP ( 10923 )
            I believe that with Trusted Computing in a virtual-machine, the TC commands must be passed back to the hardware. At least until someone comes up with a software emulated TC chip. However, I'm not an expert on this -- the whole idea just makes me sick.
        • There's more to this, such as HDCP, prevention of screenshots, etc.

          HDCP is cryptographically broken to begin with, and there are already consumer devices available to output HDMI from a supposedly secure HDCP device.

          Memory Curtaining allows a program to protect its memory from being read by other processes and the kernel.

          If a driver has to be signed to be loaded (as in 64-bit Windows Vista*) then none of the drivers will be able to look at the curtained memory (unless you're able to pay Microsoft som
    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by supersat ( 639745 )
      That article is wrong is one regard: "CSS relied on a single set of keys that were used to encrypt every DVD and were provided to every DVD player, both hardware and software."

      CSS also uses different player keys. The three big differences between AACS and CSS is that AACS has many more player keys (CSS only had ~400), once one player key was discovered, you could easily discover all of the other player keys, and weaknesses in the encryption algorithm made it possible to discover the title keys without any p
    • The article in Videobusiness is correct in what can be done to revoke keys, but it's wrong in what that means.

      It only takes a single compromised player to copy content, and once compromised, that player can be used in perpetuity to rip any and all disks published up to that point. There is no way to undo that.

      Furthermore, if players like this get compromised every few months, we know that it's a fairly high probability event. Together with the previous observation, that means that pretty much every disc w
    • by Kjella ( 173770 )
      So at most, you'll be able to 'back up' (or Pirate) the current batch of Full Metal Jacket HD-DVD's to play on an older version of PowerDVD.

      No, the title key is sorta the holy grail for that title. It means that anyone with access to the encrypted file (i.e. anybody) can decrypt that HD-DVD and any from the same batch, for all intents and purposes irreovcable. And if they got it for that key, they presumably got it for all past and current keys. It is not broken in the sense that all future keys are broken
  • Feel free to start backing up your HD DVD's whenever you feel the need.

    Is it really cost-effective to do so at this point? HDDs seem to be at around $0.25/GB best case, so we are talking about $7+ per movie. That means 1/3 of your collection would have to be destroyed just to break even, assuming you value your time outside the office at $0/hr.

    Maybe people are backing these up for other reasons such as skipping the 10 second FBI warning or saving the 20 seconds it takes to locate a disc and physically place it in the player?

    I really don't see the utility, especially when

    • You could just back them up to regular DVD. Given that BluRay is better quality than DVD, you could probably reencode it to DVD size without losing much over the DVD. You could even use MPEG4 to back it up, and store HD content on the DVD, you would probably have better quality than the DVD. You can't back up to BluRay for a good price, but a back up to DVD is better than no back up at all.
      • by donaldm ( 919619 )
        If you can see it and hear it you can copy it, however the copied result may not have the same quality which may not be an issue to some people.

        Since HD-DVD and Blueray are proposed for High Definition TV's (720 and 1080 using interlace or progressive scan) you will notice the difference between Standard Definition TV and HDTV. Consider a small HDTV (normally 720i,p) at approx 12in (30cm) you can hardly tell the difference between SD and HD content but now consider a 40in (101cm) and above HDTV (720p,i or 1
        • From my personal perspective if I watch a movie on DVD then it would be rare for me to ever watch it again

          From my personal perspective it is more likely than not that you do not have single-digit-year-old children. They tend to watch the same G-rated (or foreign counterpart) animated film once a week or more often. The use case that the MAFIAA member studios want to prevent is that someone buys a copy of Pinocchio in Outer Space on an HD format and backs it up to DVD-R for the smaller SDTV or EDTV set in the kids' room.

    • If I paid for the content, I feel I'm entitled to play it when and where I want. That includes on my cell phone, my mp4 video player, streaming onto one of my pc's from my server, or even on a monitor that's attached with a VGA cable instead of a HDRM cable. And I feel I'm entitled to keep it safe from harm, watching the related movie while the shipping container disc is secure in its plastic box. I'm also entitled to watch just the content and skip the advertising, FBI threats, extras, menus and other c

    • or saving the 20 seconds it takes to locate a disc and physically place it in the player
      Dude. Those 20 seconds are away from the couch. That's not what I paid good money for...
  • ...but I honestly believe that piracy has divine will behind it. That's why no matter what protection scheme or form of encryption is implemented, it always gets broken. It gets broken because the greater majority of the human population depends on it being broken.

    The GNU/advocates on this site need to understand something about me. I don't oppose you people because I oppose your underlying cause in many instances; quite the opposite. I oppose you because I feel that your leader and his second, Bradley
  • I heard those discs can hold about 50GB so back them up all you want, you sure can't save more than a very few images. I'm not a big fan of disc to disc backups cuz the point is to back it up to a medium that isn't easily destroyed or scratched so maybe the best DRM is making the movie too big to save. Combine that with super-protection against players playing burned discs (or don't make a 'civilian' burner for the disc format at all) and movie pirating is over.

It's a naive, domestic operating system without any breeding, but I think you'll be amused by its presumption.

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