OT - Hackers Pry HD DVD, Blu-ray Protections; Crack Quickly Spreads
Cracking protection systems is now a celebrated sport in the digital underground, and few companies have been spared a bloody DRM decryption. In the digital music world, titans like Apple and Microsoft have had their protection systems compromised numerous times, though the companies quickly issued patches in response. In the video realm, an alphanumerical key unlocking HD DVD and Blu-ray disc protections recently bubbled online, and subsequent efforts to contain the chaos resulted in a broader distribution. The copy-protection system, known as the Advanced Access Content System (AACS), was designed to limit access and redistribution of optical discs and DVDs.
The offending code appears to have first surfaced on the Doom9 Forum, and was recently posted on user-generated news service Digg. The AACSLA, a consortium that includes Disney, Intel, Microsoft, Matsushita (Panasonic), Warner Brothers, and IBM, issued a number of cease-and-desists to eliminate the information. Recipients of the termination letter included Google and Digg, both of whom complied, though a firestorm of protest soon erupted.
The result is that the code, which starts with 09F9, is now published across thousands of websites. And in the case of Digg, efforts to remove the key were stymied by innumerable posts containing the coveted number. "We had to decide whether to remove stories containing a single code based on a cease-and-desist declaration," said Digg founder Robert Kevin Rose. "We had to make a call, and in our desire to avoid a scenario where Digg would be interrupted or shut down, we decided to comply and remove the stories with the code. But now, after seeing hundreds of stories and reading thousands of comments, you've made it clear. You'd rather see Digg go down fighting than bow down to a bigger company."
The code, used in conjunction with a decryption program, means that a swath of high-fidelity DVDs can now be copied, swapped, and used without restrictions. That is a troubling development for major content holders, though the file sizes in mind are immense. "The files in question are enormous and cumbersome to store and distribute, containing more than a gigabyte of content," commented Princeton University Edward Felton. "If you can't stop distribution of these huge files, surely there’s no hope of stopping distribution of a little sixteen-byte key, or even of decryption software containing the key."
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