BackupHDDVD
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BackupHDDVD slapped with DMCA takedown notice
It's roamed relatively unscathed for a few months now, but it appears that BackupHDDVD -- the app that helps bypass the AACS copy protection on HD DVDs -- has been hit with its first major setback, drawing a DMCA takedown notice and vanishing from its perch at SourceForge as a result. Speaking to Wired blog 27B Stroke 6, SourceForge parent company VA Software's General Counsel Jay Seirmarco revealed that the AACS's complaint centered on copyrighted cryptographic keys allegedly contained within BackupHDDVD, which he says was verified to be true, giving SourceForge reason to remove the software. He added, however, that SourceForge would be willing to host a version of BackupHDDVD that did not contain the keys in question. This course of events will no doubt be familiar to anyone's who's followed the FairUse4WM saga, in which Microsoft issued a similar notice demanding that the software be taken down from its host site. Of course, BackupHDDVD isn't the only bit of software that messes with the copy protection on HD DVDs, although, as of yet, it's main rival AnyDVD HD remains untouched and readily available, albeit for a price.[Via Slashdot]
Hackers discover HD DVD and Blu-ray "processing key" -- all HD titles now exposed
Those cooky kids over at the Doom9 forums hate themselves some DRM. Not more than two months after discovering a means to extract the HD DVD and Blu-ray Disc "volume keys" to decrypt AACS DRM on individual films, we're now getting word that DRM hacker arnezami has found the "processing key" used to decrypt the DRM on all HD DVD and Blu-ray Disc films. Let's break this down for what it is: instead of needing individual keys for each and every high-definition film -- of which there are many -- the processing key can be used to unlock, decrypt, and backup every HD DVD and Blu-ray Disc film released so far. As arnezami points out, "nothing was actually hacked, cracked or even reverse engineered." All he had to do was keep an eye on his memory, watch what changed, and voila... the processing key appeared. So kick back and watch the trickle of HD titles hitting the torrents quickly turn into a flood (at ~20GB a pop, that's not an exaggeration) when the BackupHDDVD and BackupBluray utilities (or AnyDVD HD) are updated to reflect the new hack find. [Thanks, Eric L]
BackupHDDVD creator speaks out
Just about everyone and their respective grandmothers have now gotten a whiff of this whole "BackupHDDVD" thing that's been floating around, as muslix64 was able to break down the HD DVD content protection and allow folks to sidestep the AACS boundaries. The folks over at Slyck sat down to chat with the infamous hacker about his motives, his work, and the obligatory "hopes and dreams," and as we expected, he's simply yet another (albeit intelligent and determined) individual that's frustrated with the limitations that DRM presents. He refers to himself as simply an "upset customer" looking to "enforce fair use," further explaining that he wasn't able to appropriately play back an HD DVD film that he purchased "on a non-HDCP HD monitor." He also said that his success with HD DVD led to his shared efforts while taking down Blu-ray's content protection, and noted that any stronger protection to limit the abilities of purchased media would likely be "too costly to manufacture." Lastly, he showed a bit of humbleness by admitting that he "probably wasn't the first to do this," and suggested that the ones before him probably just kept quiet, but his overriding purpose with all of this is to simply "enforce fair use, not piracy" and to "benefit the consumers." Sure, there are certainly polarized camps when it comes to breaking down content protection, but before jumping to any conclusions, be sure to hit the read link and read the full dialogue.
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.
Round one goes to the hackers: BackupHDDVD rips open AACS
You know how we were all waiting on someone to figure out where AACS was hiding those dagnab private keys? BackupHDDVD seemed to work as advertised, but it needed access to the hard-coded "Volume Unique Keys" that unlock the encryption of each HD DVD disc. Well, the friendly folks at Doom9's Forum finally tracked down that elusive key in memory, and have already started leaking keys for a few HD titles, including nerd-fave Serenity (which has quickly made its way to the torrents), Peter Jackson's King Kong, and the ever-popular 12 Monkeys. It's still unclear at this point how HD DVD's key-revocation technology will affect HD DVD players and their users, and currently there a few playback issues with the ripped HD movies, even on fast machines. Still, it sounds like the hackers won't have too much trouble replicating their success, even if they lose a few ripped keys or even HD DVD players in the process to big bad MPAA, and we're guessing playback issues will be eventually sorted.[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]
What exactly does BackupHDDVD do? Oh, and version 1.0 is released.
We know that AACS, the DRM shared by HD DVD and Blu-ray, is touted as being practically unbreakable and impenetrable -- much like its predecessor CSS (and we all know how well that went). Last week we saw the launch of BackupHDDVD the first tool claiming to break down AACS, but a lot of people were left wondering -- us included -- exactly what does it do? Does BackupHDDVD really actually crack AACS? Well, yes and no. With the release of version 1 of the app today, muslix64, the app's author, helped out by shedding a bit of light about exactly how this thing works. (We'll assume you know a bit about public key crypto -- if not, see here, here, and here.) One of the tenets to advanced crypto and this particular DRM system is key revocation, which for AACS means that as soon as a content publisher or industry group gets wind of some funny business, they can revoke crypto keys and push an update down the line that basically invalidates whole groups of pirated movies, hacked hardware, player software, etc.In simple terms (ok, not that simple), muslix64 does not claim to have cracked the AACS DRM itself, but instead to expose and use each disc's hard-coded private key in order to make the hardware device run through its routine decryption process. By doing so, BackupHDDVD effectively bypasses the key revocation system which might otherwise prevent it (or your HD DVD hardware, like an Xbox 360 HD DVD drive) from being mass-invalidated as soon as the RIAA blinks. The trick here, however, is the private key extraction -- no one really knows how muslix64 exposed and extracted the private keys on the HD DVD discs needed to strip the DRM from the HD DVD discs. S/he claims it can be done with any poorly built software or hardware as the private disc keys are held in memory, but we still don't have specifics. So while we're sure to see master key lists for HD DVDs popping up on file networks in the near future, we're still hazy about how a regular user can extract his or her own keys for their own fair use purposes. We'll be sure to keep you up to date on this, though, as more information becomes available.
Cyberlink responds to BackupHDDVD crack: It wasn't us
Since "muslix64" posted his BackupHDDVD tool there has been much discussion across the internet over how it works, and if it works at all. So far others haven't been able to obtain the necessary keys to decrypt high definition content, and now Cyberlink, makers of the PowerDVD software many assumed was exploited for the attack, is denying vulnerability. In an email to blogger Chris Lanier, the company stated not only is it confident that PowerDVD "fully protects" HD DVD contents, it does not keep the encryption "Title Keys" in system memory -- which is how muslix64 was presumed to have obtained them -- and finally that there is no evidence in the YouTube video released indicating PowerDVD was in any way actually used to crack HD DVD content. Other questions surrounding news of the crack center on the usage of PowerDVD version 6.5 instead of the just released (and Xbox 360 HD DVD player compatible) Power DVD Ultra. The video promised more details in January, and being that it's January now, we shouldn't be waiting very long to find out if this is truly a chink in the AACS armor -- and if so, where it really lies.
