Intel confirms HDCP copy-protection crack
Intel has confirmed Blu-ray HDCP encryption is cracked after admitting a leaked master key is the real deal. High-bandwidth Digital Content Protection (HDCP) copy protection technology is designed to protect high-definition video content as it travels across digital interfaces. The technology was developed by Digital Content …
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Software hacks would simply be too slow.
This month? yes,
Next month? maybe,
Next year ? hahahahaha.
FPGAs ?
I upvoted this because, well I had to.
But the real truth is that you probably don't need a custom chip, just an FPGA. There will be boxes out to do this just like the ones that removed the copy bit from TOSLINK.
Who needs speed anyway?
Save the data stream to disk. Leave a decrypt running overnight.
Title is loading ████████████ 99%
I guess they aren't necessarily saying it because they believe it, but because commercially it makes sense to establish that as the current truth.
@Christoph
Or even download the decrypted version that someone else has fixed up.
The hi-def encryption can cause problems with devices that do not implement the protocols correctly (or implement the encryption at all). So the law abiding citizen may not be able to play their legal blu-ray at full quality, where pirate pete can play it on anything he wants to as full resolution.
It leaves the question of why would people want to stick to the legal route, given the choice.
Good news
Now if anyone does the same thing for BD and protect them from key revocation for good I will probably start buying BluRay videos...
Now watch the industry clamor to develop the next BluRay...
Besides, forcing consumers off of standards and onto newer, less permissive ones makes the economy go 'round.
Or, media producers can accept the reality that there's very little they can do to stem copying altogether and just settle for a partial answer for a number of years. (Fat chance of that happening.)
Software hacks would simply be too slow.
i7 not up to the job then Intel?
if
If they weren't so arrogant and just admitted that all digital content protection was inevitably going to be broken people probably wouldn't work so hard on doing it, it would still get done but there wouldn't be that excellent "we told you so" motivation that drives a lot of the clever people that look at it who arn't driven by the potential rewards of piracy.
Of course if they admitted that dcp/drm was inevitably going to be broken companies probably wouldn't buy into the stuff.
It's a lot like the best way to keep a computer safe, turn it off, encase it in a concrete box, and bury it under several hundred meters of earth. This is similar to the best way to make sure a movie isn't pirated - don't make the movie, it's the only way to 100% guarantte it wont be pirated.
eh?
"This is similar to the best way to make sure a movie isn't pirated - don't make the movie, it's the only way to 100% guarantte it wont be pirated."
You didn't see "Furry Vengeance", did you? There was NO reason to encrypt that movie to prevent piracy, the movie was prevention enough.
"build a device that ignores HDCP copy protection, with a specialist chip."
Sounds good, probably be widely available via fleabay etc. within months. Chinese electronic sweatshops FTW!
How long?
Before the other master keys are toast?
When will they learn?
Copy Protection
I think that this will help re-enforce the message that "copy protection" doesn't work if enough people want to break it.
IMHO they should give up on trying to copy-protect everything, but work out what the market as a whole is willing to pay, and sell for that price.
If that price looks too low for the margins you want, re-think your business model. Stop paying the actors a gazillion dollars for each film, pay everyone a normal living wage the same as your customers earn, and watch copyright infrindement fall. (Oh and have simple click-to-download & buy websites, but NOT itunes) Get with Web2.0
Copy protection doesn't work
The market has already decided what it will pay... my son lives in merkin-land and me has as part of his cable package he has netflix, which enables him to queue up the films he wants to watch, and he has access to then until he wants to remove them from his list.
And he's not limited to single films either, entire seasons wold count as 1 choice, e.g. South park season 8 would count as 1 choice.
And all for $9.99 a month, makes sky movies look fairly shit
I dont have a title dammit.
> Waldrop said. "It relies on these licensing agreements to ensure that implementations are done appropriately, and there are legal enforcement methods available for cases where it is done inappropriately."
Haha, yeah that'll work. he also says that no one would go to the expense of manufacturing chips to defeat this. Expect HDCP stripping boxes being rushed out of Asian plants for the Christmas season!
HTPC
With HDCP cracked there is no need to deal with the moving target that is the Blueray DRM system (a virtual machine based decrypter that needs constant re-cracking as I understand).
Great news for us HTPC types who want everything on a central server to watch anywhere in the house.
Speed is not the issue, buffer it and take as long as you like, thank you sir.
....1
Hmm, 1,920x1,080x3x60=373,248,000 bytes per second. Yeah, that could be stored if you have one amazingly fast disk system. It is really the MPEG2/MPEG4 data you want to store, not the decoded video stream.
Specialist Chip ?
Only in Intel's world would anybody need a specialist chip.
The removal of HDCP is now easily achieved using a cheap readily available FPGA.
It is past time for the whole sorry mess that is HDCP to be scrapped and not replaced.
But...
A FPGA is really a custom chip though, isn't it? Ok, it's end-user customisable but he is technically right (the best kind of right.)
Monopoly over?
Prehaps now some more of the walled garden has been broken down the industry might shift prices downward a little as new release BD discs are stupid amounts from new.
(don't knock me for a bit of wishful thinking)
Sooo...
Where was all the HD content on the pirate sites coming from before this key was released?
yeah exactly.
I don't get it. Why is this news? Why do we even care? I guess it might be usefull for cloning disks linked directly to multi-writers but your average joe can already rip a BD/download a BD ISO
@Monty Burns
This isn't just about BD. HDCP is used for example as 'copy protection' on all HDMI streams. HDCP being cracked means you can record from HDMI without HDCP getting in the way and downsampling the video.
Which is all manners of awesome for HTPCs to name but one application. Think HTPCs that can record from _any_ source that has an HDMI output with no degradation of quality in either video or audio. Or a tiny little box that has an HDMI input and an ethernet/wifi output that streams whatever it gets from the HDMI input to a multicast address on your home lan. Instant multi output viewing of any video source with HDMI output.
Software isn't fast enough
Of course coming from an industry so in love with click & drag and the speedy applications java produces.
Even then theres always hardware or non realtime processing
Huzzah
I bet that in pretty short order we're going to start seeing Chinese HDMI-to-ethernet adapters, which decrypt the stream, push it down a piece of (cheap, simple, reliable) gigabit ethernet, and encrypt it again at the other end to keep your HDMI TV happy. And I, for one, can't wait.
RE: Huzzah
Umm, you've been able to buy HDMI to Ethernet adaptors/baluns for some time. A quick google for "HDMI over Ethernet" will give you the lowdown.
Don't think there's any decrypting going on though but as long as it works, who cares?
re-encrypt?
no need to re-encrypt just to keep HDMI screens happy, they will take unencrypted video no probs. Why wouldn't they? - its quite possible that they are displaying customer-owned presentation material, for shows, concerts, launches, presentations etc.
Fundamentally, every copyright protection scheme has one huge massive secret, which if found compromises the entire system. It always gets found because it is so valuable.
Furthermore, in this case, the general encumbrance to legitimate users is such a complete buggerment that most people are happy to see it destroyed.
Excellent
I'll be able to plug my son's PS3 into his DVI screen.
roflmfao
software not fast enough, chip not fast enough, everyone has made the comments no need to repeat, no one yet said, though, about all this encrytion and security malarky, who was looking after the fucking keys in the first place. It's no good crying intel, if you want to know where the fault lies you won't have to look very far will you now,although of course some poor muggins of a file sharer will feel the full force of the amercun entertainment business's wrath for it, not those directly responsible for it in the first place.
btw, have AMD not got a spare set of keys/technology then, or do they have to licence from intel, or now, just go to pirate bay like the rest of us, even those of you who deny doing it, deny knowing how to pirate any copyright material, and continually insist that their 20000 bluray film library is entirely legally purchased, even though they live in a council bedsit and are unemployed, and it's all on a shoplifted to order set of cheap acer terabyte usb hard drives.
Ahoy!
Surprised it stayed secret so long. The master-key to Blu-Ray streams? A pirate's bounty and mistake mateys! At last some sense, now we can rip our own paid for titles and store them on NAS to preserve the disks!
@oh dear
Intel reckons that someone exploiting the hack would need to build a device that ignores HDCP copy protection, with a specialist chip. Software hacks would simply be too slow.
Do they not know how much money people will spend just to not give their money to the man ???
Copy protection: Of Geeks and Shirts.
Anyone with an ounce of technical knowledge will tell you that copy protection / DRM is a failed concept. To my knowledge there are no DRM / Copy protection systems that have not been broken. All it does is inconvenience legitimate users and create business for commercial pirates and "chippers" because Joe Public has to turn to them make fair use of their own media and/or devices.
Only the stuffed-shirts and bean counters believe that DRM is a workable option and, like most of that ilk, won't listen to the geeks that know different until it all goes tits-up on them.
Oh, yeah...
While it works. And while they are generous enough to let you play your games.
One day they'll decide to lock you all out and there'll be nothing you can do about it. Absolutely nothing.
Steam isn't about DRM
Steam works because it's massively more convenient than pirating, not because it has uncrackable DRM (It doesn't).
It's a lesson that the big media companies would do well to learn from.
@Eponymous Cowherd
"To my knowledge there are no DRM / Copy protection systems that have not been broken."
I think the Sky Digital system is still unhacked in the sense of a download-the-bitstream-and-watch-it-without-any-kind-of-smartcard. I get the feeling various ways exist but you need a *real* smart card of some kind (not necessarily yours) to get the party started.
cracking sky digital
eh? sky digital is a gazillion channels of wall to wall shite. why would anyone watch this mindless crap even if there was a way to defeat rupert's cash extraction technology? if there was a demand for bypassing sky's smartcards, someone would be providing that service. even if rupert sent out his goons to stop that.
Demand
There is demand for break SKY smartcards, problem is NDS are too quick fixing the damn thing whenever it does get cracked. They have many versions of the encryption just waiting to be used...
Steam works?
You try buying certain games from them from this part of the world. Can't be done if the game in question is from Rockstar Games. It's the reason I still don't have GTA IV. Can't be assed to drive out to that part of town again where traffic is a major hassle just to get a legal copy of the game and pay for it by credit card. And since it applies to all R* games, I don't expect to own a copy of Duke Nukem Forever either.
Don't get me wrong. Steam is okay, it's the region coding part that fails epicly for me.
Steam works?
Steam is a load of bollicks, I had the misfortune to buy a game that was stream protected, it installed a 60MB runtime that was ALWAYS loaded and was constantly STEALING my internet broadband, even when I was not playing the game.
Stream is not a DRM scheme, it is a marketing tool, it kept offering me free game demos.
Note that I speak in the past tense.
I've said it before, my PC, my Broadband, I own the battlefield, so THQ and every other games producer that uses stream, you can shove your fucking games up your arse while you are using that stream shit..... Don't you just love it when the one thing stream is supposed to prevent, is the one thing it helps promote!!!! What a bunch of assholes.
@zerofool2005
"Demand → # ↑"
Exactly. It might not be *your* idea of ideal viewing but a *lot* of people fork out substantial green on a regular basis for Mr R's "Product."
Quite a few would like to pay out quite a lot less *if* they could do so with an assured supply.
IIRC the outfit behind this kit is based in Israel and is run/owned/pays 1 third of the group behind the RSA PK algorithm (The A off hand) and have a bunch of patents issued to them. Indications suggest its at least a 2048 bit key (the last time I looked the biggest prime number factored is equal to about 336 bits). Obvious approaches would be to run off line by streaming *all* Sky digital HD to multiple digital tape drives (2TB a tape) and brute force decoders (see the book about cracking DES for example)
I suppose you could also await (or force in some way) the decoder software to be updated over the air (if you can find the datastream) and study that. Obviously it it turns out to be the machine code to a totally bespoke proprietary processor you'd be screwed.
Note these are merely commonly suggested approaches which are obvious to anyone with a few minutes thought on the subject and of course I would *never* encourage wholesale copyright violation for gain. It is quite a good subject for a software (or hardware) design excercise.
re: huzzah
You don't need to re-encrypt
HDMI works without HDCP
The raw data rate is about 2.5 Gbps though.
HDCP does not protect BD (alone)
Some have hinted at it but IMO it has not been made clear enough: HDCP does not protect Blu-Ray Disks (BD), it's link-level protocol to encrypt the raw, uncompressed (~5 gbit/s for 1080p + 8ch audio) video and audio stream, meaning about 1-2TB / movie, now, TB class disks are not exactly impossibly expensive but you need a proper RAID setup to be able to write fast enough to keep up with the stream (also some sort of HW to read the stream from the wire is required)
Anyway I'm fairly sure cracking the BD level protection continues to be the preferred way for normal users to backup/format shift their HD content. The "real pirates" get their content from unencrypted master sources anyway so nothing new there as well.
HDCP only would make sense if it was possible to make the disk/player level DRM systems so strong that going through "link hole" would be easier than cracking the DRM for those that wish to do format shifting/backup of disks they already have (again: pirated HD material is readily available in the internet in any case, and it's a sad state of affairs when the "pirates" have so much better product than the "real deal")
Even E.E. Doc Smith had this one right in his pulps
back in the 1950s and 1960s: New technology only gives you a temporary edge, very temporary. Why can't these drones figure that out?
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