AACS DRM: Cracked Already?

[Jerry Jones]

http://tinyurl.com/ym4xzn

Can it be? Is Hollywood's new DRM posterchild AACS (Advanced Access Content System, see more here) actually quite breakable? According to a post on our favoritest of forums (Doom9) by DRM hacker du jour muslix64, his new BackupHDDVD tool decrypts and dismantles AACS on a Windows PC.

Jerry Jones

http://www.jonesgroup.net

[Jerry Jones]

Here's the Doom9 thread:

http://tinyurl.com/yzm6vm

Jerry Jones

http://www.jonesgroup.net

[Dr Mordrid]

Not suprised at all. The more complex the plumbing the easier it is to clog the drain.

[Sasq]

Now gentlemen, you know we don't condone piracy here on MURC, fair use personal backups on the other hand...

DIE MPAA DIE

[agallag]

Wow... that was a lot faster than I thought it would be. Ironically, this will probably secure HDDVD's dominance over BluRay...

[paulw]

Best news I've heard for a long time..

No doubt the the MPAA will have the Dept of Homeland Security and the FBI putting all their resouses into catching who ever did this dastidly thing and if cought will demand the death penalty..

[Hulk]

Although I am totally against any kind of illegal software this is good news. I have no problem buying movies. And I also like to have them available on my hard drive so I can serve them to my monitor at will without having to load discs. When I buy the disc I also think I have the right to have a copy on my hard drive for easier access.

I'm looking forward to having 1 terabyte of storage and 30 or 40 of my favorite movies available for viewing at the click of a button (or double-click).

[Jerry Jones]

Apparently, this muslix64 character still hasn't clearly told everybody how to get the keys needed to make his program do the job.

He gave some vague hints in his last post... on this Doom9 thread page...

http://tinyurl.com/y7ysb4

You can extract keys from any player! Some players are just easier to extract the key from. Being lazy, I prefer to extract keys from an insecure player than a secure one.
And the AACS spec says "Device keys must be protected!" but they did not said that about volume key, fatal mistake!

His last comment:

This may be my last post here.

I'm going to have a rest for a while.

Take care everyone and wish me good luck!

Hoax?

Or did he actually do it?

I'm not sure if anybody has succeeded in duplicating what he seemed to do in his video (which he posted to YouTube).

Great drama, however.

Jerry Jones

http://www.jonesgroup.net

[Jerry Jones]

The factually questionable Wikipedia site suggests the hack was legitimate:

http://tinyurl.com/yxenex

On December 26, 2006 a person using the alias "muslix64" posted a utility named BackupHDDVD and its source code for a working AACS exploit on the doom9.org forums. This hack appears to use a similar methodology to the DeCSS hack, exploiting weak player keys. The title keys are located on the disk in encrypted form, but need to be decrypted for content to be played - BackupHDDVD does not do this, but Muslix64 claims that the title keys were found in main memory, and that finding them is not difficult, using the publicly available AACS Guide as a reference.

Also this side note:

It should be noted that even if this exploit proves true, it does not represent any actual hack of the AACS system, but a circumvention based on a weak software implementation.

Jerry Jones

http://www.jonesgroup.net

[Dr Mordrid]

It should be noted that even if this exploit proves true, it does not represent any actual hack of the AACS system, but a circumvention based on a weak software implementation.

Very often that is a distinction without a practical difference.

[Jerry Jones]

Wow, check this out.

http://tinyurl.com/yxhjuh

January 09, 2007 (IDG News Service) -- The recent release of software that can be used to decode encrypted HD-DVD and Blu-ray movies is the first step toward making the encryption standard used by these next-generation video players obsolete, Princeton University researchers said Monday.

Late last month, a hacker going by the name Muslix64 released software that could be used to decrypt movies that were encoded using the AACS (Advanced Access Content System) digital rights management specification. AACS is supported by Hollywood and video player manufacturers.

Introduced in April 2005, AACS is the copy protection system for HD-DVD and Blu-ray movies. It is supported by companies such as Microsoft Corp., Matsushita Electric Industrial Co. Ltd. (Panasonic), Sony Corp., Toshiba Corp., The Walt Disney Co. and Warner Bros.

Muslix64's BackupHDDVD software did not crack AACS, but it will make it easier for some technically adept users to decrypt movies, said Alex Halderman, a Princeton computer science student who, along with noted researcher Ed Felten, is calling the software "the first step in the meltdown of AACS."

Incredible.

Jerry Jones

http://www.jonesgroup.net

[Dr Mordrid]

What's incredible is all the money being sunk into DRM when it doesn't work. No sooner than some PhD coder comes up with a scheme than some middle school dropout will crack or severely disable it

[Jerry Jones]

It's just breathtaking when one considers how much shareholder money has been thrown right down the rathole.

Jerry Jones

http://www.jonesgroup.net

[Hulk]

They just have to understand that if they sell someone a disc with the information on it, and a player that can decode the information, it's only a matter of time before someone figures out how to replicate how the player is decoding. Now if they only had to keep what is on the disc hidden that would be easy. 256 bit encryption would do the trick and the key would be nowhere to be found. But they must have a method for the data to be accessed so it turns into a hide and seek game of finding the key.

I bet they are spending more money developing and manufacturing these copy protection systems than they would be losing by the copying that would be going on since it will go on anyway. Not to mention the fact that more people (like myself) will be inclined to actually buy the product knowing I don't have to just play it from the disc but can load it only differnent playback devices for my convenience.

[Jerry Jones]

Incredible.

It seems the guys on the Doom 9 forum have played around with muslix64's suggestions and they seem to have found the keys.

Check out the thread:

http://tinyurl.com/y2tnp4

Can you believe it?

How much do you think these corporations wasted?

Jerry Jones

http://www.jonesgroup.net