BackupBluray available now too

We knew that once AACS was compromised on HD DVD, Blu-ray wouldn't be too far behind -- and sure enough, now that they've figured out how to extract the keys for Blu-ray, an appropriate utility called BackupBluray is chillin in the wild. With Usenet and Torrents bringing HD DVD and now Blu-ray movies to movie lovers everywhere, we have to sit back and wonder what the AACS will do. There is little doubt that they planned for keys to be exposed -- but not this quickly -- and now that they have, how they respond could influence the outcome of either format. According to Kevin Collins of Microsoft, it is simply a matter of revoking the exploited software player keys. But how will that affect the law abiding early adopters? Is it even worth it for them to worry, considering those titles are already readily available. Maybe BD+ wasn't such a bad idea after all.

[Yaya @ Jan 24th 2007 3:11PM]

Does anyone else think that touting this new code system as "unbreakable" as they so often did only increased the motivation for hackers to break it? I mean hackers are really really smart people and telling them something is unbreakable is like challenging Robin Hood to an archery contest that he knows is a trap.

[Ihar `Philips` Filipau @ Jan 24th 2007 6:38PM]

I think it is irrelevant. Why DVD was broken? Because people wanted to watch them where they wanted - but MPAA didn't cared about. So guys tried hard and broke CSS.

If situation would be the same - there are all chances that AACS would be broken (systematically) too.

Before paying for HD stuff, I personally want to see how it pares against DVD with upscaling. I have seen later - and image quality is pretty good and well worth its price. Paying 10 times more for HD/AACS system in my mind needs requires some pretty heavy justification. And I do not think that I am alone thinking so.

So we come to my point: cracking AACS right now makes very little sense. At the price one can get DVDs at rentals + low price of upscaling DVD players, all that makes HD-DVD/BD very unattractive. Since it is unattractive for consumers - it would be definitely low target for crackers. IOW probability that among dissatisfied customers would turn up good cracker is low, since current customer base is very small. And putting out on P2P file which can be played on ... really few system and weights 15+GB ... well, count me out. DVI/HDMI output of my geforce 7800gt does suck big time anyway.

[Dong Ma @ Jan 24th 2007 3:30PM]

Actually, this is MUCH WORSE for BluRay!!!

Why? Well, BluRay is mostly MPEG2, for which there are a large number of decoders/players. Also, the overhead for playing back MPEG2 is MUCH lower than VC-1 or MPEG-4. So, BluRay rips will be playable by almost anyone.

Also, BD+ is a joke.

First, it hasn't been implemented yet as it is not finalized. Second, it is much weaker/easier than AACS to "crack". Problem is that once it is cracked, it receives, from AACS the unencrypted stream. So once BD+ is cracked, there is an even easier way to get the unencrypted data - without the possibility of revoking anything!

[Simon P @ Jan 24th 2007 3:35PM]

Nice explanation Dong Ma, I was wondering about that.

[CPUWiz @ Jan 24th 2007 3:34PM]

I agree totally with you Yaya

[saycheese @ Jan 24th 2007 3:47PM]

Dong Ma,

Please pray tell, how is BD+ easily crackable?

It is true that if and when BD+ gets cracked, it brings down BOTH the Blu-Ray protection mechanisms down - given that it handles unscrambled data from the AACS layer as the input. So, once BD+ gets cracked, BD content is wide open without the AACS needing to be cracked separately, and any AACS revocation measures become a moot point. But, BD+ also has a similar revocation measures built in as AACS, but given that BD+ hasn't been finalized and implemented yet, nobody outside of BDA knows how easy or difficult it is to crack BD+ and how practically effective the revocation countermeasures are.

Unless you can how BD+ can be cracked, please don't go around claiming it to be extremely easy. Also, playing back 1080p24 MPEG-2 is still out of reach of run of the mill Celeron boxes out there. You would need a pretty powerful PC to play even 1080p MPEG-2, not to mention the VC-1 and AVC formats which are even more taxing.

[Landlocked @ Jan 24th 2007 3:51PM]

The MPAA will have the last laugh when they mandate that all new releases will have to come out on VHS.

Mwahahaha.

[Jeff @ Jan 24th 2007 4:11PM]

Realistically, the whole concept of key revocation is fatally flawed. It cannot be done. Think about it - you're going to basically disable a whole bunch of movies on a whole bunch of players, all purchased by law abiding citizens.

Look up and read about how HD-DVD and BD key revocation in reality actually works. They can't even do it title by title. There's no such thing as title revocation. The most specific they can get is disabling one particular player from which the keys originated, or one type of content (content revocation). But being that there are only 2-3 players on the market right now, you'd be disabling about 33% of the entire market - and these are $1,000 players bought by early adopters. You know, the people who are supposed to be evangelizing the benefits of your format to others.

You can't just go around bricking products purchased by law abiding people just because somebody else broke your DRM. Talk about a class action lawsuit in the making. To do any sort of key revocation, you'd have to either disable a whole bunch of players or a whole bunch of movies.

My prediction is key revocation is one of those features that the DRM industry touted as a benefit to the AACS technology, but which in practicality can never be used. It's like the nuclear bomb of anti-piracy measures - complete with mutually assured destruction. It would be business suicide to do it, especially when there's a format war going on.

[Andy @ Jan 25th 2007 8:26PM]

Yup.

Key revocation will be completely useless as soon as we figure out where the black / whitelists are and then simply strip them out of the disc image to be burned from. Then that disc image goes out to bit torrent or burned to the disc or whatever.

[Ihar `Philips` Filipau @ Jan 24th 2007 6:42PM]

You can't describe the situation created by DRM any better:

http://minimsftcrf.blogspot.com/2007/01/aargh-lead-away-new-comment-on-good.html

[Wonderboy @ Jan 24th 2007 4:32PM]

My understanding of key revocation is that they've got a list of keys on the disc for hardware/software it will work with...

As such, how feasable would it be to have someone write a hack that reads the disc, grabs a valid HW/SW key, then emulates it to invalidate the revocation process? I'm no hacker, but the concept seems relatively doable... if the data is there, it can be messed with.

[Bob? @ Jan 24th 2007 5:22PM]

not to be anal, but AACS itself has not been cracked, they just found a way to get the title keys...

[Naris @ Jan 24th 2007 6:11PM]

...And cue the Final Fantasy Victory Theme.

[mitch @ Jan 24th 2007 6:21PM]

Well see the way that I see it is that the Hardware key is much harder to get as it runs securely in the memory of your system, meanwhile the Software key does not. Therefore retrieving the Software key is easier than Hardware one. This method is not a break in AACS but it is a work around so pretty much the same thing. Ultimately the format that will win is the one that can be "ripped" the easiest and that has the most functionality. More DRM = that format loosing the "war". This is a stupid war, and the consumers are the ones who loose. Why would someone buy a HD player and a movie to find out later on that the format they chose lost and now they own a 600-1000 dollar piece of shiny new technology? I know it's the same as VCR and Betamax, but fortunately I wasn't alive for that fiasco....

[Kirk @ Jan 24th 2007 6:27PM]

Okay so here is the question I have. They are able to revoke a players code, couldn't some one change the players code itself? And what if that code matches the code of (lets say may player). Then that code is revoked and me (the innocent guy). I think that is how it works.

[Rob @ Jan 24th 2007 7:06PM]

Yeah, it would be crazy to change specs now and punish early adopters, because any new system would be beaten too -- what a huge waste of time and cost to change now. Maybe this will be a way for Blu-ray to gain market-share -- people who buy it can make copies of movies, whereas HD-DVD still has unbroken DRM... (I assume that's the case). Hopefully this won't make studios shy away from Blu-ray.

[sdsdv10 @ Jan 25th 2007 2:29PM]

@Rob, "whereas HD-DVD still has unbroken DRM... (I assume that's the case)."

Did you read the first line of this article?
"We knew that once AACS was compromised on HD DVD,"
HD DVD was "broken" a couple of weeks ago.
http://www.engadgethd.com/2007/01/13/round-one-goes-to-the-hackers-backuphddvd-rips-open-aacs/

[BatteryAcid @ Jan 24th 2007 7:33PM]

Yes! Now I can back up my bluray that i get on sale for $20 on a $20 BluRay R disc!

[Murc @ Jan 24th 2007 10:31PM]

Who is going to download a 20 gig movie anyways...well, other then those lucky bastards that have fiber-2-the-home.