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Hackers decimate AACS encryption
Author: Wil HarrisPublished: 13th February 2007
With AACS now hacked player-side, how long can DRM on HD-DVD and Blu-ray survive?
What Muslix was able to do was track down the AACS keys on the individual discs, thus showing the world how to crack each HD title in turn.
Now another hacker, Arnezami, has taken things a step further and found the one, universal AACS key that will decrypt every Blu-ray and HD-DVD title protected with AACS copy protection - effectively cracking the player aspect of the system, rather than the disc.
He managed to do this without going into the copy protection, breaking any laws, or messing around. He spent a lot of time just looking at the data loaded into memory by discs and the player on his PC, and discovered that the player-side key wasn't kept in memory. The Media Key, as the player-side key is called, is only in memory for a short amount of time, but Arnezami wrote software which would memory dump a small area of memory at the time he suspected the Media Key would need to be loaded and, as it happens, he was right.
Of course, it could be that this particular key - belonging to one of the software PC programmes - could be revoked in the future. But, since the hacking community now knows how to go about finding the key, any future revisions of PC software could be hacked in seconds - the only thing that would prevent this would be a re-writing of the AACS standard!
It seems that HD DRM is really in trouble with this latest announcement. The encryption that took years to perfect and millions to build has been compromised in weeks by hackers who haven't even reverse engineered anything to do it.
What are your thoughts on this latest development? Let us know over in the forums.
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Comments (49)Stats: 0.155 seconds
This was inevitably going to happen, and now it did..... let's see what happens next.
'Nuff said about "unbreakable." The more intent we are on such ego, the more we stack the deck against us. :)
They got seriously pwned. :D :D :D
"unbreakable" - hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha - when will they realise that DRM is fatally and fundamentally flawed - in order for legitimate users to be able to play the encrypted disc, either the disc or the player must know the key to decrypt it. Since both discs and players are in the public domain, they will always always always be vulnerable to being cracked. All it takes is some sufficiently determined clever people with the right tools (which they or other determined clever people can always manufacture) and a bit of time.
*stands up and does a little jig*
If you give us the keys to unlock drm, well then someone is going to figure out how to use that key, duh. Maybe they should start selling us media without the keys, yknow so we can never watch it. Idiots.
Don't give them ideas
All to true...
Considering the amount of time that went into developing AACS you';d have thought they'd at least have made it a bit harder
AACS Developer 1: "Hmmm, we need to get the key into the program somehow... I know, lets just put it into RAM, no-one will think of looking there!"
AACS Developer 2: "Cool, and how about we say that AACS is unbreakable? No-one will ever wast their time trying to crack it if we tell them that!"
It's true, Piracy does cost the consumer millions, just not in the way the publishing houses would have you think...
Ah DRM, how you make us laugh
They do know the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results, right? :D
Maybe next time theyll just release the hacks as not to waste hackers precious time
This should serve as a cue to the big media companies to find an alternative to DRM.
Yet another thing showing the world that DRM is just an expensive waste of time. People will always find a way around this stuff, so why bother in the first place?
Why bother making PC games that require the disk to be in the drive?
OMG MY ****ing hears!!!!!!! i am deaf!!!!!!!
The funny thing these days is, that these super complicated DRM methods are being cracked faster then when DRM/Copy Protection was first introduced
do they even really bother making good copy protection? or do they put some half baked attempt up so that they can prosecute people who break it.?
Well im glad, im getting tired of being told what i can do with my purchases - If i buy something - Its mine to do what i please with. If i sell a car, im not going to restrict the new owner on who can bloody well sit in it or drive it now am i?
Sure that logic is flawed but yeh we shouldnt have such restrictions, if people want to buy something then they will reguardless of piracy or not - the other article shows this.
-ed out
And how else are you going to to have the program use the key if its not in RAM? :?
don't give them ideas.
EDIT:
PS.
OMGPWNDLMAOROFL!!!!11 WTF? :|
http://i122.photobucket.com/albums/o267/r4tch3t/200px-Home_taping_is_killing_music.png
And music sure is dead huh.
Seriously PWND!! :D
I seriously wonder how long its going to take the record companies to wake up and smell the coffee??
Im aware it isnt the same, and having to take an alternative method to burn them!! Ok allow me to change how I put that to burn A Music CD! Mclean007 y take such a high horse approach ;) CALM DOWN!
Either way, they're all money-grabbing a-holes! :(
Please allow me to make my point again for you, since you quite clearly had missed it, was just because this post was on the subject of protecion of what was generally on the disc. Whether that be a film ,audio cd or even via download. So all that I was saying was I wonder if people will take on the iTunes protected music! Im sorry if my pondering caused you any offense as it seems to have done!
In future if you could remember when trying to help someone that maybe you do it in a nice way, or parhaps ask them to explain what they mean instead of trying to make them look stupid!
Thanks
Really? I stopped buying stuff from there a while ago, a mini protest if you like. Do you have a link?