So there is some talk about BD+ appearing before the end of the year. How long will it take for BD+ to be cracked forcing the BDA to implement yet another layer of DRM?

Edit: There is some confusion over the question. I am asking How Long do you think it will take to crack BD+ completely, so that it may be circumvented on any disc.

if history has any say in it... it will only take a month or two.

So there is some talk about BD+ appearing before the end of the year. How long will it take for BD+ to be cracked forcing the BDA to implement yet another layer of DRM?I want to make sure I understand the question. I don't think it will be long before the first discs with BD+ are in the free and clear, but then the disc manufacturers can try changing the code. That wouldn't be another layer of DRM, but just different implementation using BD+ (much like using C++ to write programs that do different things), from what I understand. If I think that the first discs with BD+ will be in the free and clear within a month of two of when they come out and then later discs will get different BD+ code, how am I supposed to vote? Cracking the first discs isn't necessarily the same thing as cracking BD+ completely.

--Darin

I want to make sure I understand the question. I don't think it will be long before the first discs with BD+ are in the free and clear, but then the disc manufacturers can try changing the code. That wouldn't be another layer of DRM, but just different implementation using BD+ (much like using C++ to write programs that do different things), from what I understand. If I think that the first discs with BD+ will be in the free and clear within a month of two of when they come out and then later discs will get different BD+ code, how am I supposed to vote? Cracking the first discs isn't necessarily the same thing as cracking BD+ completely.

--Darin

I mean cracking BD+ Completely, so that it can be circumvented on any disc after the fact.

My guess is 4 weeks. The sooner the better.

I mean cracking BD+ Completely, so that it can be circumvented on any disc after the fact.

Whoops, I thought you meant the first batch of discs, well in that case it seems likely to take a lot longer than what I voted for.

Whoops, I thought you meant the first batch of discs, well in that case it seems likely to take a lot longer than what I voted for.

Sorry 'bout that, I got a real knack for making polls where the question isn't crystal clear.

One of the developers of the related tool answered the question as follows:

"(we'll break it) faster than Sony can spell 'Casino Royale' " :D

So there is some talk about BD+ appearing before the end of the year. How long will it take for BD+ to be cracked forcing the BDA to implement yet another layer of DRM?Could you have asked this question without the veiled attack against Blu-ray? Seriously it would have been nice if this question had been legitimately asked since as it stands now this question is just a veiled attack against Blu-ray implying that another copy protection system would be used if BD+ was cracked, which to be blunt is utter nonsense. Much like any other video format both HD DVD and Blu-ray are limited to the copy protection systems that they start out with. Fox believes that the ROM Mark and BD+ will make Blu-ray more secure and as such I can understand why some HD DVD supporters attack them. It would have been nice though if that sort of thing could have been kept out of this thread.

Oh boy, another hddvd fan trashing BD.

Oh boy, another hddvd fan trashing BD.


Sorry, but I think all these copy protections are futile no matter what the format in question may be, it's a colossal waste of time and resources,

I have a hard time believing that studio's actually believe it's possible.

A quality product, that is reasonably priced and widely distributed is the best copy protection you can have.

Oh boy, another hddvd fan trashing BD.

Nope not this thread, I'm just curious how long it will take to to crack BD+.

Nope not this thread, I'm just curious how long it will take to to crack BD+.

You forgot to make an option for "Never." You may want to restart the poll so it is valid.

~Josh

You forgot to make an option for "Never." You may want to restart the poll so it is valid.

~Josh

I was going for realistic options. The idea that it will never be cracked is pretty ridculous.

You forgot to make an option for "Never." You may want to restart the poll so it is valid.

~Josh
Are you kidding? :-) Everything can be cracked. It's only a matter of time and money. --- and ressources. I bet it will not take too long until the "community" will find a hole, they are already set-up, waiting for the toys to play with. Something being perfectly secure is not usable.

You forgot to make an option for "Never." You may want to restart the poll so it is valid.

~Josh
You can't buy that, I'm sure even it's creators don't buy that. I'm sure even it's marketer's don't have the nut-sacks to promise "never".

What's the BDA's next project, the perceptual-motion machine?

I want to make sure I understand the question. I don't think it will be long before the first discs with BD+ are in the free and clear, but then the disc manufacturers can try changing the code. That wouldn't be another layer of DRM, but just different implementation using BD+ (much like using C++ to write programs that do different things), from what I understand. If I think that the first discs with BD+ will be in the free and clear within a month of two of when they come out and then later discs will get different BD+ code, how am I supposed to vote? Cracking the first discs isn't necessarily the same thing as cracking BD+ completely.

--DarinObviously the thread starter had no idea, he probably doesn't know AACS is not totally cracked either.

I was going for realistic options. The idea that it will never be cracked is pretty ridculous.

there are examples of anti piracy measures that exist today that have NEVER been cracked or if there is a crack, the crack is so costly in terms of time/effort/money that it is not feasible to the vast majority of people would engage in piracy.

I want to make sure I understand the question. I don't think it will be long before the first discs with BD+ are in the free and clear, but then the disc manufacturers can try changing the code. That wouldn't be another layer of DRM, but just different implementation using BD+ (much like using C++ to write programs that do different things), from what I understand. If I think that the first discs with BD+ will be in the free and clear within a month of two of when they come out and then later discs will get different BD+ code, how am I supposed to vote? Cracking the first discs isn't necessarily the same thing as cracking BD+ completely.

The way to break BD+ is to attack the virtual machine that runs the BD+ code, not the BD+ code itself.

Once the hackers substitute a fake VM for the real one, there's nothing the BD+ code can do to figure out what it's running on, since everything it knows is fed to it by the VM.

For example, if the BD+ code says "checksum this memory region and make sure it's what we expect before decrypting the video", then the fake VM will just lie and supply what the BD+ code is expecting.

Or if the BD+ code says "verify the drive and firmware version is XYZ", then the fake VM can just lie and say "yup that's the version that's installed".

If the DRM can't trust the hardware, then the game is already over.

there are examples of anti piracy measures that exist today that have NEVER been cracked or if there is a crack, the crack is so costly in terms of time/effort/money that it is not feasible to the vast majority of people would engage in piracy.

Can you name a few cause I cannot remember a single one that has not been cracked.

Can you name a few cause I cannot remember a single one that has not been cracked.
how about Triple DES encryption used since the late 70's and used by financial institutions (so more then just bad movies/songs ) to be had :)

BD+ is not an encryption, it is a programming language. In such it can't be cracked unless someone builds the virtual machine that can handle it.

Or if the BD+ code says "verify the drive and firmware version is XYZ", then the fake VM can just lie and say "yup that's the version that's installed".

but a VM does not respond, it runs the code, it compiles it. So someone needs to know every detail of the VM and build a new one that like you said when it runs the program it gets back a fake value.

If AACS can be circumvented, is this even needed ?

If AACS can be circumvented, is this even needed ?

isn't needed even more? not sure what you are asking

how about Triple DES encryption used since the late 70's and used by financial institutions (so more then just bad movies/songs ) to be had :)

I think we were talking about movie/song encryption used to prevent piracy.

Can you name a few cause I cannot remember a single one that has not been cracked.

I already named these in another thread, but here are a few:

P4 smartcard - introduced 3yrs ago by direcTV. has never been cracked. killed direcTV signal piracy.

digital cable - I think its called C5 encryption.

PC games - still lots of games protected by starforce that have never been cracked.

PS3 - might be too early to tell, but CELL was engineered to be very secure.

Everyone seems to think

I already named these in another thread, but here are a few:

P4 smartcard - introduced 3yrs ago by direcTV. has never been cracked.

digital cable - I think its called C5 encryption.

PC games - still lots of games protected by starforce that have never been cracked.

PS3 - might be too early to tell, but CELL was engineered to be very secure.

P4 cracked.

5c cracked.

Not sure about the last two.

I think we were talking about movie/song encryption used to prevent piracy.

well I wanted to go with something public that has been around for ages. In the end encryption is encryption.

If we are stuck on entertainement media can youy name me one that use a VM?

there are examples of anti piracy measures that exist today that have NEVER been cracked or if there is a crack, the crack is so costly in terms of time/effort/money that it is not feasible to the vast majority of people would engage in piracy.

In some years time there will be a market for pirated HD movies whether they come from HD DVD or Blu-Ray. It is simply a matter of time. SACD was never cracked, but there was never a market big enough for it to be cost effective. If HD formats are actually able to pull out of the niche market then there will be pirated copies of the HD movies, period.

P4 cracked.

5c cracked.

Not sure about the last two.

LOL, sure.

the total lack of information on the web for anyone to verify the existence of a working crack should be proof enough that it doesnt exist.

If such cracks DID exist, the information would be all over the web. look at the AACS workaround. anyone can google "AACS crack" and find a ton of information to see for themselves if it really works.

5c cracked? if the people on doom9 cant figure it out, then I doubt it.

The piracy world does not revolve around Doom9. People in the know around here can more than attest that it has been for many years now.

You are absolutely right. I am wrong. Never mind.

how about Triple DES encryption used since the late 70's and used by financial institutions (so more then just bad movies/songs ) to be had :)

BD+ is not an encryption, it is a programming language. In such it can't be cracked unless someone builds the virtual machine that can handle it.
DES and TripleDES cannot be considered secure anymore. The can be attacked by several means. I've been in a business where DES is used for years and let's say it this way: you won't believe what's possible today with hardware, software, and mathematics.

Anyway, for movie encryption breaking AACS is not necessarily needed. It's much easier to attack complex systems on a higher level.

It may be useful to define if we really mean "cracked", or we mean "cricumvented". In many cases the underlying encryption was never cracked, but a specific implementation allowed the process to be circumvented (i.e. grabbing the keys out of memory, reading bits of a data bud, etc...).

So, to the OP: Is your goal to simply define the endpoint as "BD+ content rendered in the clear, by whatever means?"

I was going for realistic options. The idea that it will never be cracked is pretty ridculous.

As is the notion that, if cracked, BD+ will be replaced by another layer of DRM.

Or is that wishful thinking on the part of a certain group?

You are absolutely right. I am wrong. Never mind.

if 5c and P4 was truly cracked then everyone would know about it. you cannot keep something that big "underground." not only that, the cracker would try and claim credit for the crack. why would someone spend a huge amount of time and effort to make a crack and not claim credit??

So, to the OP: Is your goal to simply define the endpoint as "BD+ content rendered in the clear, by whatever means?"

steve, this is what he said a few posts back

I mean cracking BD+ Completely, so that it can be circumvented on any disc after the fact.

take it for what you want.

steve, this is what he said a few posts back


take it for what you want.

I'll take it in the context of Darin's question to which he was responding:


Originally Posted by darinp2
I want to make sure I understand the question. I don't think it will be long before the first discs with BD+ are in the free and clear, but then the disc manufacturers can try changing the code. That wouldn't be another layer of DRM, but just different implementation using BD+ (much like using C++ to write programs that do different things), from what I understand. If I think that the first discs with BD+ will be in the free and clear within a month of two of when they come out and then later discs will get different BD+ code, how am I supposed to vote? Cracking the first discs isn't necessarily the same thing as cracking BD+ completely.


Darin was speaking about successive generations of cracks on BD+. I'm speaking of the ability to circumvent it as a whole.

As an example rather than actually cracking what BD+ processes are decrypting the data stream, it may be possible to simply fake a BD+ VM. Mounting such an attack would not necessarily require cracking the actual decryption mechanism, if the fake VM can hand you bits in the clear on the back end.

Darin was speaking about successive generations of cracks on BD+. I'm speaking of the ability to circumvent it as a whole.

Agree, that is why I said take it as you want, since he is not clear. I think circumventing Or cracking that can be fixed is not counted b but any way (even recreating your own fake VM) would if it is a permanent solution. In the end most people don’t know the difference between hacks crack s and circumventing.

PC: StarForce was hard to crack but has been cracked.

"StarForce has a reputation of being extremely difficult to reverse engineer, though all StarForce protected games have been cracked or have other methods in order to run copies. However, the crack is usually released a couple of days after the official release of the game"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starforce


I remember when StarForce was first release it was named un-crackable. It did take awhile but it was eventually cracked. Only a matter of time until BD+ is cracked.

but a VM does not respond, it runs the code, it compiles it. So someone needs to know every detail of the VM and build a new one that like you said when it runs the program it gets back a fake value.

Either the BD+ code is going to invoke an API in the runtime library (which you can just replace if you have a fake VM) or it's going to use some BD+ instructions to read some registers or IO ports, or scan some memory location (which you can just fake out when you initially compile the bytecode).

Once you have a fake VM, you can fake all of these mechanisms to say whatever you want, so IMHO, it will be a short time before BD+ is circumvented completely and it will largely be useless as an enforcement mechanism.

PC games - still lots of games protected by starforce that have never been cracked.



Ouch - this is the best joke of all you've cracked in this topic, seriously.

PS: do you understand what is SF?

You forgot to make an option for "Never." You may want to restart the poll so it is valid.

~Josh

NEVER?! Oh my!

Either the BD+ code is going to invoke an API in the runtime library (which you can just replace if you have a fake VM) or it's going to use some BD+ instructions to read some registers or IO ports, or scan some memory location (which you can just fake out when you initially compile the bytecode).

Once you have a fake VM, you can fake all of these mechanisms to say whatever you want, so IMHO, it will be a short time before BD+ is circumvented completely and it will largely be useless as an enforcement mechanism.How does that VM plays a new disc with a new protection code? :confused:

Sorry 'bout that, I got a real knack for making polls where the question isn't crystal clear.

Yes you do. :D

Ouch - this is the best joke of all you've cracked in this topic, seriously.

PS: do you understand what is SF?

Do you understand what it means to qualify as a proper CRACK? that means to completely defeat all security measures. most SF protected games have NOT been cracked. maybe you think unhooking your DVD rom to trick starforce qualifies as a NOCD crack, but its not. and even the cracks that do exist are not reliable for everyone.

It wasnt until 2005 that a certain group started regularly cracking SF successfully, and even then it took a long time for the cracks to appear. one particular big name title was released in 05 and wasnt cracked till 1 year later.

Do you understand what it means to qualify as a proper CRACK? that means to completely defeat all security measures.


Man, you ARE funny... :D


most SF protected games have NOT been cracked. maybe you think unhooking your DVD rom to trick starforce qualifies as a NOCD crack, but its not. and even the cracks that do exist are not reliable for everyone.


Dude, SF was completely reverse engineered and its documentation published long time ago. They keep changing but it doesn't mean it's not been cracked.

Read up instead of spreading the BS viral marketing of that Russian @sshole, please - he's like cancer, we must stop him.


It wasnt until 2005 that a certain group started regularly cracking SF successfully, and even then it took a long time for the cracks to appear. one particular big name title was released in 05 and wasnt cracked till 1 year later.

Thanks for admitting you were wrong when posted your original, clueless claim.

Gee, have you ever heard the word RELOADED? I just realized even Wiki has their story:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RELOADED_%28warez%29

.....and lets not forget, why wasn't StarForce, in its most secure form, more widely embraced by game makers???

.....and lets not forget, why wasn't StarForce, in its most secure form, more widely embraced by game makers???Because it's not a standard supported by the spec.

Starforce was the biggest piece of **** ever. It didn't stop piracy, but it sure did piss off a ton of legitimate customers who couldn't run the product they purchased because SF wouldn't work properly due to some esoteric incompatibilities with the system, drives, other software installed, etc. Nobody uses it anymore that I know of. DRM is just a waste of time and money and some day these companies will realize that all this money they are spending could be better used elsewhere.

Muslix64 is da man..... Won't take him long. Definately less than 3 months. Maybe these companies need to hire him since they cant seem to find anyone who can stop him.

How does that VM plays a new disc with a new protection code? :confused:

The new protection code has to run on something.

Since every BD player has potentially different hardware and thus runs different CPU instructions, you cannot take BD+ code and run it directly on the CPU inside the BD player.

You must have a "virtual" instruction set that is translated for each kind of CPU by the player itself.

The piece of software that does the translating is called a virtual machine, or VM.

So in a (vastly simplified) example, a piece of BD+ protection code might say something like:

"read 5 bytes at firmware address 12345"
"compare it with the string 'v1.01' "
"if they are equal then allow decryption else print out of date firmware"

and the job of the VM is to translate these instructions into something the CPU in the BD player can actually run.

So a hacker would just modify the VM so that when any piece of BD+ code tries to access any part of the player's firmware, it always returns the data from a unaltered copy of the BD player's firmware, not the hacked one that is actually running.

So now *any* BD+ check that a studio might put in to try to verify the firmware version will only see the unaltered firmware, and will therefore say that the player is OK.

Now you can try to make more and more sophisticated BD+ protection code, you can start hashing parts of the VM itself, or try to verify timing, or whatever... but at some point, if your checks are running on a fake VM, the hacker can fully emulate whatever environment your BD+ code thinks its running in, and the game is over.

This is similar to the way things like VirtualPC/Parallels/VMWare/etc work, but emulating a whole PC is probably orders of magnitude more complicated than just emulating the BD+ VM.

Either the BD+ code is going to invoke an API in the runtime library (which you can just replace if you have a fake VM) or it's going to use some BD+ instructions to read some registers or IO ports, or scan some memory location (which you can just fake out when you initially compile the bytecode).


I don't know if it is possible, but if it is the hacker needs to reverse engineer the VM, rebuild it with fake responses (i.e. all is OK). This is no small task.

I don't know if it is possible, but if it is the hacker needs to reverse engineer the VM, rebuild it with fake responses (i.e. all is OK). This is no small task.

It is never a small task but for any popular system with very annoying DRM there are practically endless resources available. I assume they will have fun making a BD+ interpreter/debugger and solving the mystery, much as many of us sit around here and try to second guess Lost or Heroes plots. The whole thing is sort of an expensive (studios) free (others) shared puzzle game for hackers.

It is an excercise in futility for those who still believe they MUST come up with unbreakable protection.

- Tom

Because it's not a standard supported by the spec.That was indeed a reason, but then again you have wonder why that version of StarForce wasn't spec'd .....it sure did piss off a ton of legitimate customers who couldn't run the product they purchased because SF wouldn't work properly due to some esoteric incompatibilities with the system, drives, other software installed, etc. IMO, this is the reason such draconian DRM schemes aren't more commonplace........

This BD+ Virtual Machine schema reminds me of the plot to The Music Man.

http://ec1.images-amazon.com/images/I/51TH8SRQQ1L._AA240_.jpg

Maybe because I am living in Meredith Willson's Iowa. ;)

"Blu-ray has more DRM!!!"

That type of argument put forth by BR fanboys strikes me as incredibly fascinating.



Its kind of sad the more I think about it.

"Blu-ray has more DRM!!!"

That type of argument put forth by BR fanboys strikes me as incredibly fascinating.



Its kind of sad the more I think about it.Agreed... I try and stay away from this type of paranoia. Huge music and movie studios that price fix, hide spyware on our computers, and sue Universities and then cry about the millions they lose to a 19 year old college student scraping by to get an education and trades a few tunes while they ignore giant offshore knock offs selling on e-bay. It's absolutely sickening.

DRM was never and is not about stopping piracy.

AACS, and BD+ will not prevent one movie from being comparmised. Even if they prevent casual copying i.e "anyDVD" they will not stop a dedicated professional pirate. Once a single copy of the content is available it will be sold, resold, and given away.

DRM is about control.
DRM is about convincing consumers that they have no rights.
DRM is about increasing profits.

DRM was never and is not about stopping piracy.

AACS, and BD+ will not prevent one movie from being comparmised. Even if they prevent casual copying i.e "anyDVD" they will not stop a dedicated professional pirate.It is unlikely that they can stop dedicated professional pirates, but the point of the ROM-Mark on Blu-ray seems to be to try to address that, at least to some degree. I can't think of anything similar that HD DVD has to try to slow down the professional piracy, if AACS isn't going to keep the content protected in the first place. Pirates probably love that all sorts of untrackable replication machines can be used by them. Although I doubt the markets will be big enough to appeal to many of them for a while.

--Darin

Man, you ARE funny... :D



Dude, SF was completely reverse engineered and its documentation published long time ago. They keep changing but it doesn't mean it's not been cracked.

Read up instead of spreading the BS viral marketing of that Russian @sshole, please - he's like cancer, we must stop him.



Thanks for admitting you were wrong when posted your original, clueless claim.

Gee, have you ever heard the word RELOADED? I just realized even Wiki has their story:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RELOADED_%28warez%29

Yes, I've heard of RLD, as it seems to be the only group that can crack starforce with any success. fact of the matter is that prior to mid- late 05 , most starforce protected games were not properly cracked. the methods used to play pirated SF protected games usually involve crap like disconnecting your DVD rom and use daemontools to load a mini-image. that is NOT a crack. many of those games still have no proper crack. Even today there are recently released starforce protected games that have not been cracked.

is starforce uncrackable? No. but the whole point of anti-piracy measures is to buy time. in that sense starforce has been fairly successful. it took RLD a year before they could properly crack SC:CT and Toca2.

Anyways, this particular discussion is highly OT and AVS is not the proper place to discuss such things.

Obviously the thread starter had no idea, he probably doesn't know AACS is not totally cracked either.

Does it really matter what workaround is found to circumvent DRM, as long as it's circumvented ? Cracked or not, I'm pretty sure that all that matters to the studios is that their hidef movies are in the free and clear...

I give BD+, because of its changing code, about 3 to 6 months to be circumvented. Net effect is same as cracked. There is no DRM that can stand in the way of hackers, none. The only thing DRM does is delay the inevitable by a few weeks or sometimes, a few months.

Yes, I've heard of RLD, as it seems to be the only group that can crack starforce with any success. fact of the matter is that prior to mid- late 05 , most starforce protected games were not properly cracked. the methods used to play pirated SF protected games usually involve crap like disconnecting your DVD rom and use daemontools to load a mini-image. that is NOT a crack. many of those games still have no proper crack. Even today there are recently released starforce protected games that have not been cracked.

is starforce uncrackable? No. but the whole point of anti-piracy measures is to buy time. in that sense starforce has been fairly successful. it took RLD a year before they could properly crack SC:CT and Toca2.

Anyways, this particular discussion is highly OT and AVS is not the proper place to discuss such things.

I merely responded to your misleading statement about StarForce wasn't cracked - StarForce was cracked, reverse engineered and published, period.
Your ideas about daemontools not a crack etc are simply a matter of one person's misunderstanding of the subject which is indeed irrelevant to the topic.

However any StarForce game can be cracked at any time as SF was cracked open long time ago and any first-tier title comes with SF it's usually cracked before tits release, let alone AAA titles.
The fact that some might not have been or rather crack has not been published for some means only one thing, that the game didn't raise enough attention to get RLD or other, competing group's attention.

I don't know if it is possible, but if it is the hacker needs to reverse engineer the VM, rebuild it with fake responses (i.e. all is OK). This is no small task.
Yes but remember this is based on a standard instruction set, in this case JAVA = it has to work within a given set of constraints.

I give BD+, because of its changing code, about 3 to 6 months to be circumvented. Net effect is same as cracked. There is no DRM that can stand in the way of hackers, none. The only thing DRM does is delay the inevitable by a few weeks or sometimes, a few months
Here here! Really wish they'd get this through their thick skulls & stop wasting $$$ on trying.

The thing with copy protection of this sort is that the creators are giving the pirates everything they need in order to decrypt the cypher protecting the content. As long as this is the case, and it has to always be the case as otherwise people would not be able to plug in the discs and watch the movies, the copy protection scheme will always be circumvented or completely cracked.

I merely responded to your misleading statement about StarForce wasn't cracked - StarForce was cracked, reverse engineered and published, period.
Your ideas about daemontools not a crack etc are simply a matter of one person's misunderstanding of the subject which is indeed irrelevant to the topic.

I never said starforce wasn't cracked. I said most starforce protected games have not been cracked. To me, cracking starforce means to completely defeat its security measures. if someone needs to disconnect their DVD rom to play a pirated starforce game that means starforce has not been completely defeated.

However any StarForce game can be cracked at any time as SF was cracked open long time ago and any first-tier title comes with SF it's usually cracked before tits release, let alone AAA titles.
The fact that some might not have been or rather crack has not been published for some means only one thing, that the game didn't raise enough attention to get RLD or other, competing group's attention.

Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory was a high profile game released in 05. the reason it was uncracked for a year was because NO ONE could figure out how to crack it, not because the groups didn't think it was high profile enough. if that was the case, why did RLD crack the game 1 year later? same thing for toca2. I disagree with your notion that ANY sf protected game can be cracked at any time. V8 supercars still hasnt been cracked, and thats a game that many people want a no cd crack for.

I really dont think this is going to be a very simple task. I personally think its going to take over a year or two for the hackers to crack this stuff. I could be wrong.

does it make it pirate proof? nope. That would take probably 2 to 3 hours depending on the length of the movie. And maybe an extra hour to make a real nice cover to go with it. the average person probably wouldnt be able to tell the difference if they weren't comparing them side by side.

Isn't HDCP still secure?

BD+ may be harder because of the resources necessary aren't there.

Isn't HDCP still secure?

It is but there is little interest in trying to hack it. HDMI carries uncompressed digital information and maxes out at 10.2Gbps So unless you got a hard drive that can store data at > 1GB/sec and capacity of > multiple TB you couldn't do anything w/ the decrypted stream anyways. HDCP is more about protecting the transmission in the future because CPU, HD, memory, etc will all continue to improve at a exponential rate.

One of my favorit papers on the subject of DRM is Cory Doctorow's presentation to Microsoft Research Group.

http://www.dashes.com/anil/stuff/doctorow-drm-ms.html

In DRM, the attacker is *also the recipient*. It's not Alice and Bob and Carol, it's just Alice and Bob. Alice sells Bob a DVD. She sells Bob a DVD player. The DVD has a movie on it -- say, Pirates of the Caribbean -- and it's enciphered with an algorithm called CSS -- Content Scrambling System. The DVD player has a CSS un-scrambler.

Now, let's take stock of what's a secret here: the cipher is well-known. The ciphertext is most assuredly in enemy hands, arrr. So what? As long as the key is secret from the attacker, we're golden.

But there's the rub. Alice wants Bob to buy Pirates of the Caribbean from her. Bob will only buy Pirates of the Caribbean if he can descramble the CSS-encrypted VOB -- video object -- on his DVD player. Otherwise, the disc is only useful to Bob as a drinks-coaster. So Alice has to provide Bob -- the attacker -- with the key, the cipher and the ciphertext.

Hilarity ensues.

DRM systems are broken in minutes, sometimes days. Rarely, months. It's not because the people who think them up are stupid. It's not because the people who break them are smart. It's not because there's a flaw in the algorithms. At the end of the day, all DRM systems share a common vulnerability: they provide their attackers with ciphertext, the cipher and the key. At this point, the secret isn't a secret anymore.

One of my favorit papers on the subject of DRM is Cory 's presentation to Microsoft Research Group.

http://www.dashes.com/anil/stuff/doctorow-drm-ms.html

In DRM, the attacker is *also the recipient*. It's not Alice and Bob and Carol, it's just Alice and Bob. Alice sells Bob a DVD. She sells Bob a DVD player. The DVD has a movie on it -- say, Pirates of the Caribbean -- and it's enciphered with an algorithm called CSS -- Content Scrambling System. The DVD player has a CSS un-scrambler.

Now, let's take stock of what's a secret here: the cipher is well-known. The ciphertext is most assuredly in enemy hands, arrr. So what? As long as the key is secret from the attacker, we're golden.

But there's the rub. Alice wants Bob to buy Pirates of the Caribbean from her. Bob will only buy Pirates of the Caribbean if he can descramble the CSS-encrypted VOB -- video object -- on his DVD player. Otherwise, the disc is only useful to Bob as a drinks-coaster. So Alice has to provide Bob -- the attacker -- with the key, the cipher and the ciphertext.

Hilarity ensues.

DRM systems are broken in minutes, sometimes days. Rarely, months. It's not because the people who think them up are stupid. It's not because the people who break them are smart. It's not because there's a flaw in the algorithms. At the end of the day, all DRM systems share a common vulnerability: they provide their attackers with ciphertext, the cipher and the key. At this point, the secret isn't a secret anymore.

Hilarity indeed.

That Cory Doctorow article is a favorite of mine but it has been around for about 3 years now. And the things it says have been widely known for much longer. This has not stopped repeated annoying and frustrating attempts to make uncrackable DRM anyway.

The justification seems to be the idea that, even if it is eventually crackable, maybe it will at least delay the hackers for awhile, at least a short market window. But I am fairly convinced now that, way deep down, the executives responsible for these things maintain a hope they are somehow smart enough and lucky enough that this time they will have come up with the unbreakable holy grail DRM that defies the science of cryptography in some fashion.

So they will continue to do the same things but expect different results.

- Tom

Has Xbox 360 been hacked for installing custom software on the machine?

It is but there is little interest in trying to hack it. HDMI carries uncompressed digital information and maxes out at 10.2Gbps So unless you got a hard drive that can store data at > 1GB/sec and capacity of > multiple TB you couldn't do anything w/ the decrypted stream anyways. HDCP is more about protecting the transmission in the future because CPU, HD, memory, etc will all continue to improve at a exponential rate.

but how about reencoding it?

It is but there is little interest in trying to hack it. HDMI carries uncompressed digital information and maxes out at 10.2Gbps So unless you got a hard drive that can store data at > 1GB/sec and capacity of > multiple TB you couldn't do anything w/ the decrypted stream anyways. HDCP is more about protecting the transmission in the future because CPU, HD, memory, etc will all continue to improve at a exponential rate.

HDCP strippers are commonplace if you know where to look. From there, piracy of any BD or HD-DVD is easy, even on an entry level Core 2 Dell:

1. Buy a Blackmagic Intensity
2. Buy the CineForm HD visually lossless codec (typical movie should compress to at least 10:1, probably 15:1 or higher meaning you can use an ordinary 7200rpm SATA drive)
3. Capture directly from the HDMI port of your player
4. Re-encode using x264, mux in the DD5.1 or DTS track from the DVD

The biggest problem facing HD DVD and BD are the re-encodes floating around the net. Those 6-8gb 720p re-encodes look pretty spectacular.

If BD+ makes ripping too complicated, the above can be achieved with a very cheap PC and $500 worth of investment. This undeniable truth makes the whole BD+/AACS debate pretty much worthless. Just decrypt HDCP, capture it, and you can bypass anything the BD+ VirtualMachine could come up with.

If BD+ makes ripping too complicated, the above can be achieved with a very cheap PC and $500 worth of investment. This undeniable truth makes the whole BD+/AACS debate pretty much worthless. Just decrypt HDCP, capture it, and you can bypass anything the BD+ VirtualMachine could come up with.There's always more than one way to skin a cat.

Right now AACS and BD+ have a huge bull's eye painted on them. Its part of the backlash studios continue to generate. They are earning nothing but contempt from the consumer, and I feel no pity for them. AACS and BD+ will be bypassed just to drive the point home: nobody likes DRM, and people are sick of paying for it. The music industry is finally starting to come to grips with this, and the MPAA has just recently started expressing a bit of respect to the comsumer's right to fair use......Glickman's speech marks a step forward for the MPAA, which says it is now committed to allowing content to play on any device, from any manufacturer. As other presenters at the conference made clear, this is largely a result of self-interest: consumers are frustrated with current limitations, and movie studios aren't thrilled about having to sign off on Apple's terms in order to get content onto iPods. Still, hearing Glickman speak with conviction about consumer rights to use material in "fair ways" and to wax eloquent about interoperability was an encouraging sign.....

link (http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070426-mpaa-drm-must-be-interoperable-dvds-should-be-rippable.html)yawn......they should have had this catharsis a decade ago. Too bad they are responsible for launching a global digital armada of pirates. The consumer is taking the helm and the studios are scared sh!tless.

Muslix64 is da man..... Won't take him long. Definately less than 3 months. Maybe these companies need to hire him since they cant seem to find anyone who can stop him.

He might want to stay anonymous. A few crackers/hackers have ended burned beyond recognition next to the Berlin wall or suddenly died from suicide...

I was actually thinking that the only reason DVD Jon is still alive today is because they picked to go the legal route instead and once all that publicity was made it would have been a bit too obvious that the guy conveniently ends up in a car accident or commits suicide.

Isn't HDCP still secure?

BD+ may be harder because of the resources necessary aren't there.

HDCP was actually circumvented before it even came out. It is still rather easy to bypass it but I believe it's not all software solution. I might be wrong on that but all I know with 100% certitude is that it is easy to bypass it for those that really want to.

BD+ is still in the works but it is basically evolving code, not really a DRM as we know it. They can change the code all they want, but at one point the stream needs to be in the clear for you to see it on the TV, and if it becomes easier/cheaper for "pirates" to grab the stream by bypassing HDCP and re-compressing it on the fly, that's what they'll do.

After AACS and BD+ have been circumvented, their trump card is "Rom watermark". However, it won't do them any good, 'cause once the movie has been re-encoded into what I call "HD Lite" (those 720p re-encodes of BR/HD DVD flying on the internet are the perfect example), nobody is going to care if there's an invisible watermark in the video (heck, they even might find a way to strip the watermark before unleashing it on the net). I could be off on the watermark issue, it might only be on a physical area of the disc, but what can be done can be undone. A perfect example of that type of protection is the DNS of PS2 discs : it's been circumvented not long after they came up with it.

To sum it up, DRM is pretty close to snake oil : a miracle potion that studios will keep buying, hoping that it will take hackers/crackers long enough to circumvent/crack so they can profit enough. However, the only people really losing money are not the studios, not the pirates, but the law-abiding citizens that have to upgrade their displays, players, cables and so on, so that they can enjoy their movies/music as per MPAA/RIAA wishes.