AACS cracked

[Pekka]

Advanced Access Content System, used in both HD-DVD and Bluray, seems to have been hacked.

Yaay! A victory for the people who want back ups of their legally purchased products!

But then again, when was victory not achieved, against companies trying to secure their products? This came fast though.

[Pekka]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/12/28/AR2006122801499.html

oh yeah, forgot the link.

http://forum.doom9.org.nyud.net:8080/showthread.php?t=119871

here you can see the thread...

[aneeshm]

Great news (though I had read about it on Slashdot earlier)!

Does this mean that a software player will be able to play stuff on a PC without issues, and will be able to rip the data to normal video and audio formats?

[Pekka]

Well I didn't read the threads about this yet, but my quick impression is that you can extract the HD-DVD to your HD and watch the movie from your HD, so ripping essentially.

I don't know how they keys work in AACS, or how this new crack will deal with it.

[snoopy369]

What it means is that titles released to this point in time can be theoretically played on a software title. AACS is, in theory, made to be able to respond to a breach like this by simply cancelling the keys that Muslix has breached, preventing his key from working on future titles. If I understand it correctly.

However, if I also understand correctly, that comes at a steep price. If you have a player that uses the key(s) he broke, that player may not work any more on future HDDVDs/Bluray discs.

(Correct me if I'm wrong, please, but this really bothers me ...)

[aneeshm]

But doesn't that mean that the system is broken, given that the same method used to break the current keys can also be used to break future keys?

[KrazyHorse]

Probably.

Any time you have the decryption mechanism available (in the form of the players) cracking a code simply becomes a matter of effort.

[aneeshm]

For the sake of honesty, let me say that I don't know any of the details of this AT ALL, I'm just speculating.

[Dinner]

Awesome. We need to repeal that horrible Republican passed "Digital copy right act for a new mellinium" and restore the fair use principle to all Americans.

[aneeshm]

Oerdin

For the programmers among us - attached to this post you can find the source and executable of the program which can do the decryption (it's in Java).

EDIT: On second thought, better not host the files here. Let's just link to it.

http://rapidshare.com/files/8318838/BackupHDDVD.zip.html

[aneeshm]

Here's the original saga:

The Saga of decrypting an AACS protected movie, by Muslix64.

December 6:

I just bought a HD-DVD drive to plug on my PC, and a HD movie, cool! But when I realized the 2 software
players on windows don't allowed me to play the movie at all, because my video card is not HDCP compliant and because I
have a HD monitor plugged with DVI interface, I started to get mad... This is not what we can call "fair use"! So I
decide to decrypt that movie. I start reading the AACS specification I have found on the net. I estimate it will take
me about 4 weeks of full time job to decrypt that. I was wrong, it was in fact, easy...

BTW, when I disable my HD monitor, I can watch the movie,on my old VGA screen, but, what is the point of having
a HD monitor and not being able to watch a HD movie on it!

December 7 to December 12:

Nothing, I try many things, but I'm going nowhere. I change my technique

December 13:

Now I focus only on title key. I was very surprise to realize that the title key is there, in memory! Can it be
that easy? Around 7PM, I decrypt my first movie "pack". Around 11PM, I have now a totally decrypted movie! But there is
a problem. Frame skipping.

December 14:

After many tests, I found a field in the Nav pack, that fix the frame skipping problem.
Wow! Now I can watch a smooth playback of an HDDVD film that I have decrypted!
After only 8 days of work, I was able to decrypt an HD-DVD movie! What's the problem? There is a major
security problem somewhere.

December 15 and December 16:

I put together a small program called "BackupHDDVD", a java based command line utility to decrypt movies.

December 17:

I made a small video called "AACS is Unbreakable" where you can see the output of the program while decrypting.
You can also see a playback of a decrypted movie.


December 18:

Upload that video on YouTube

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_oZGYb92isE

December 20:

Upload the program and source code on RapidShare (V0.99)

http://rapidshare.com/files/8318838/...HDDVD.zip.html

December 21:

I want to go further in the decryption, so I decide to track down the "Volume unique key" instead of title key.
I found it also! I'm preparing BackupHDDVD V1.00, that will support volume key and title keys.

December 25:

Merry Christmas!

December 26:

I create a thread on the Doom9 forum about BackupHDDVD. People don't believe it...

Muslix64

[Pekka]

Please do consider the issue of uploading any tools on Apolyton... Not sure where the servers are located, however, at least in Finnish law, including laws of some other Euro nations, it is not illegal to take a copy of, say, a CD to your own usage, however, it is illegal to break the copy protection, effectively going around the fair use thing.

So, tools that would do that, possession of them is not very clear to me are they legal or not. Therefore, posting this attachment on here, depending where the servers are, might be OK or not OK.

[aneeshm]

If you want, I'll remove the executable and keep only the source code.

[Pekka]

I guess it's up to the staff, not me..

[Asher]

Bluray has another layer of DRM on top of AACS.