iMedia Law Blog » HD-DVD/Blu-ray

Arnezami Hacks HD-DVD/Blu-ray – Discovers the One “Processing Key” to Rule them All

Dale Dietrich — Wed, 14 Feb 2007 18:46:01 +0000

A hacker known as Arnezami has gone a giant step further than Muslix64 in hacking AACS. Arnezami has discovered and published the cryptographic key (known as the "processing key") that can be used to circumvent AACS copy restrictions on any Blu-ray or HD-DVD movie (the "one key to rule them all" ). He did so by using an Xbox 360 HD-DVD drive and studying all changes (comparing hex-dumps) to a key part of memory during startup of the movie King Kong.

Previously, Muslix64 had discovered the "volume keys" for individual HD-DVD movies (and subsequently Blu-ray titles) which, when used with his BackupHDDVD software, allowed technically adept users to decrypt and copy individual HD titles protected by AACS. Since then, volume keys for more than 100 HD titles have circulated on the Internet. The processing key discovered by Arnezami can, until revoked, be used to easily determine the volume key needed to decrypt and copy any HD title.

It is unclear to me, at this moment, whether the processing key so discovered is unique to one specific player (and therefore easily revoked under the AACS system) or a key that is universally used in all players.

More importantly, if this particular processing key is revoked, hackers could simply use the same technique to discover the next processing key implemented by the AACS authority.

[UPDATE 1:] A day later beta software called AnyDVD is circulating the net (See here and here). This software purports to use Arnezami's processing key to automatically strip out the DRM, FBI notices etc. from any HD-DVD or Blu-ray disk.

[UPDATE 2:] SlySoft is distributing AnyDVD on the net: See here.

Related posts:

Arnezami Hacks HD-DVD/Blu-ray – Discovers the One "Processing Key" to Rule them All (February 14, 2006)
BackupHDDVD & Doom9 Forum Create End-to-End HD-DVD Crack (January 13, 2007)
HD-DVD & Blu-ray Cracked? (December 28, 2006)
HD-DVD and Blu-Ray Reportedly Successfully Hacked via PrintScreen (August 2, 2006)

BackupHDDVD & Doom9 Forum Create End-to-End HD-DVD Crack?

Dale Dietrich — Sat, 13 Jan 2007 17:54:01 +0000

It appears that the latest entry into the DRM arms-race, BackupHDDVD, along with the Volume Unique Keys in memory found by Doom9 forum member Musilix64, is able to isolate private keys within AACS protected HD-DVD disks needed to crack them. The cracked HD-DVD movies have made their way to torrent sites and are now circulating the globe. Some minor playback glitches have been reported, however.

Dale's Comment: I want to be clear about something. I do not endorse piracy nor the use of BitTorrent to circulate pirated copies of HD-DVD content.

I do, however, believe the DMCA unfairly criminalizes the behavior of honest consumers wishing to exercise their "fair use" rights to make copies of and/or format shift copies of content purchased by the consumer for the consumer's own personal use. The DMCA and the WIPO Copyright Treaty unfairly take away rights that U.S. consumers have under the fair use provisions of U.S. Copyright law. It is therefore understandable why consumers would choose to use software such as BackupHDDVD to exercise the rights the U.S. Copyright regime otherwise affords them. In my opinion it is copy-protection mechanisms such as AACS put in place by the content industry to penalize the activities of honest consumers that leads to massive piracy by the same consumers through BitTorrent and other P2P networks. As I've said here for years, treat honest consumers fairly and they'll purchase your products in record numbers. Treat them like criminals and they'll rebel.

Sources: Engadget | ars technica | DigitalMusicWeblog

Related Posts:

Arnezami Hacks HD-DVD/Blu-ray – Discovers the One "Processing Key" to Rule them All (February 14, 2006)
BackupHDDVD & Doom9 Forum Create End-to-End HD-DVD Crack (January 13, 2007)
HD-DVD & Blu-ray Cracked? (December 28, 2006)
HD-DVD and Blu-Ray Reportedly Successfully Hacked via PrintScreen (August 2, 2006)

Warner Announces “Total Hi Def” A Hybrid HD-DVD/Blue-ray Disk

Dale Dietrich — Fri, 12 Jan 2007 20:31:34 +0000

Warner Home Video made a surprising announcement at CES. Starting in the 3rd quarter of 2007 it will exclusively release its HD titles on a hybrid, multi-layer, HD-DVD and Blu-ray disk dubbed "Total Hi Def". HD-DVD formatted content will be on one side and Blu-ray formatted content will be on the other. Regardless of the HD player a consumer purchases, these disks would be playable.

In an effort to put the format wars behind (and increase sales), Warner has committed to licensing the Total Hi Def technology to any other TV/movie studio for free. Not surprisingly, fellow Time Warner properties, New Line Studios and HBO, have said they will also use the Total Hi Def format. Major retailers including Best Buy, Circuit City, and Amazon.com have announced they will support this format and make Total Hi Def DVDs available through these retail channels. No word yet from Walmart.

Dale's Comment: This is an interesting development in the high-def wars (which I personally believe HD-DVD is winning). Consumers don't want to be left in a loosing Betamax-like camp. Universal exclusively supports the HD-DVD standard. Fox, Disney and Sony, of course, exclusively support Blu-ray. Other studios support both. If Warner is licensing this this technology for free, it is possible that these studios, with the exception of Sony, could eventually support this hybrid disk approach. That said, the per-unit manufacturing costs will be higher than producing disks with one format or the other because the process requires the purchase of dual manufacturing equipment to support both formats.

With an alternative approach to solving the same problem, LG also used CES 2007 to announce an expensive ($1,200ish U.S.) hybrid player that could play disks of either format. Under the LG hybrid-drive formulation, something both Sony (Blue-ray) and Toshiba (HD-DVD) strenuously oppose (and until now had precluded through licensing restrictions), we would be headed down a similar road as the CDR+/CDR- and DVDR+ and DVDR- standards where no format won and eventually all players could support all formats. But its difficult to envision consumers, that are unwilling to pay $200 for an Xbox 360 HD-DVD sidecar or $600 for a PS3 with its internal Blu-ray player, wanting to spend $1,200 on a hybrid player. It would be cheaper to purchase an Xbox 360, its sidecar DVD player and a PS3 than to purchase the LG hybrid player at this price.

Previously the HD-DVD camp had announced its HD-DVD/DVD hybrid disk technology as a key advantage over Blu-ray. Purchasers of those disks could play the movie on either current gen DVD players OR HD-DVD players. I had also seen this as a format Blockbuster and Netflix would glom onto because one disk could serve its rental needs for customers of both existing DVD and HD-DVD formats. One SKU per movie cuts the needed display/warehousing space in half.

Importantly, the porn industry announced at CES 2007 that it will standardize on HD-DVD. Don't laugh at this! The porn industry has been a huge factor in the advancement of interactive media technologies over the last decade and could play an important part in determining what HD format wins. It embraced VHS over Betamax in the early years. We all know the outcome there.

My sense is that while one format or the other may win, or one of these hybrid approaches might solve the problem, in the longer run, none of this matters too much. I believe, as does Microsoft, that the world is headed for a paradigm shift where HD downloads, such as those done through the XBox 360 right now, will become more important than any physical disk-based HD distribution approach.

Discussed at the 32:03 Minute Mark of this Engadget Podcast 98 (after iPhone segment).

HD-DVD & Blu-ray Cracked?

Dale Dietrich — Thu, 28 Dec 2006 21:07:47 +0000

Reports are coming in fast and furious that the AACS DRM system used by both HD-DVD and Blu-ray players has been cracked by someone with the codename muslix64. I had reported earlier on a possible brute-force print-screen method of cracking HD-DVD.

This new method seems to rely on a compromised HD-DVD player whereby muslix64 was first able to access the unique decryption keys for particular HD-DVDs. Then using those keys and his java-based BackupHDDVD program, muslix64 was able to implement the AACS decryption protocol as outlined at aacsla.com (the official AACS website) and play it back using standard HD-DVD play-back software (in this case PowerDVD 6.5 HD-DVD).

Muslix64 says the tool works on his XBOX 360 external HD DVD player, but that the software would not be limited to just one specific player.

It is unlikely that this will become the HD-DVD/Blue-ray equivalent of DeCSS, however, because it does not provide a universal method of decrypting HD-DVD/Blu-ray disks. Nonetheless, even if this is only usable by the most dedicated of hackers, once a decrypted HD-DVD/Blu-ray title is out on the wild and wooly Internet, it would be freely copied by the P2P community. As the recording industry knows too well, it only takes one decrypted copy for the file to spread around the Internet like wildfire.

Whatever its future, DVD Jon is smiling somewhere.

Related Posts:

Arnezami Hacks HD-DVD/Blu-ray – Discovers the One "Processing Key" to Rule them All (February 14, 2006)
BackupHDDVD & Doom9 Forum Create End-to-End HD-DVD Crack (January 13, 2007)
HD-DVD & Blu-ray Cracked? (December 28, 2006)
HD-DVD and Blu-Ray Reportedly Successfully Hacked via PrintScreen (August 2, 2006)

HD-DVD and Blu-ray Reportedly Successfully Hacked via PrintScreen

Dale Dietrich — Thu, 03 Aug 2006 00:12:08 +0000

Like DVD's CSS before it, it appears that HD-DVD and Blue-ray have, at least partially, been successfully hacked by a relatively low-tech means that has been discussed in various Internet forums for the last few weeks. Specifically, Windows' PrintScreen function was used by a scripting program to capture each frame of both an HD-DVD and a Blu-ray movie. The resulting approximately 162,000 frames were stitched together in real time to create a viewable 324 GP HD movie. No word yet on whether they were able to successfully synchronize the movie's audio with the resultant movie. Presumably, this process could be further refined to compress the resulting file to a more manageable size.

[January 1, 2007 Update: Paul Thurott mentioned on one of his late 06 or early 07 Windows Weekly podcasts that Vista has disabled the "print screen" function when HD-DVD and Blu-ray movies are played at full resolution within Vista - thus removing this hack possibility from Vista-based PCs. But, this is hardly a solution. All it takes is for one person using an XP-based PC to hack an HD title in this way and it will be circulating the globe within minutes through BitTorrent and other P2P technologies.]

Sources: ars technica | HDTV UK

Related Posts:

Arnezami Hacks HD-DVD/Blu-ray – Discovers the One "Processing Key" to Rule them All (February 14, 2006)
BackupHDDVD & Doom9 Forum Create End-to-End HD-DVD Crack (January 13, 2007)
HD-DVD & Blu-ray Cracked? (December 28, 2006)
HD-DVD and Blu-Ray Reportedly Successfully Hacked via PrintScreen (August 2, 2006)

Movie Industry May Drop HDCP/ICT Until 2010/2012?

Dale Dietrich — Tue, 23 May 2006 19:04:23 +0000

The leading German newspaper Der Spiegel claims to have information on an unofficial agreement struck between the movie studios, Sony, Microsoft and others which will see HDCP, and the Image Constraint Token (ICT), being consigned to the scrap heap for at least four years. This move would mean that all movie content produced until 2010 at the earliest, and possibly as far as 2012, will not carry the ICT – a security feature which restricts/down-rez’s high-definition playback only to equipment with HDMI ports and HDCP encryption.

Sources: ars technica | GameIndustry.biz | Daily Tech | Next Generation | IGN | Gamasutra | Xbit | Joystiq | Engadget | Der Spiegel (Google’s English Translation)

Dale’s Comment: This is a remarkable development if true. I have been participating in online forums for years where this has been a major subject of contention for early HDTV adopters. With the constant delays of HD-DVD and Blu-ray and the many competing HD standards appearing on the horizon, this may spell the demise of HD down-rezzing and the ICT. Recently, Professor Ed Felton suggested that HDCP is Eminently Crackable. All this said, since main-stream press has not yet picked this up, I question its veracity. But, its fun speculation in the meantime.

Update: October 15 2006: Save for one or two titles, the first couple hundred Blu-Ray and HD-DVD releases have been released without HDCP/ICT activated.

Related Posts:

HDCP is Eminently Crackable Says Professor Ed Felton (April 17, 2006)
Windows Vista Proofed against Video Piracy (August 31, 2005)

AACS Copy-protection System Agreement Reached for Blu-Ray and HD-DVD

Dale Dietrich — Fri, 17 Feb 2006 19:21:23 +0000

An agreement has been reached on an interim license for the AACS copy-protection system both formats will use, removing one of the final obstacles that had been standing in the way of a launch.

Sources: PC Magazine | ars technica | engadget

Windows Vista Proofed against Video Piracy

Dale Dietrich — Wed, 31 Aug 2005 22:54:45 +0000

Windows Vista (formerly Longhorn) will contain anti-video-piracy technologies. Vista will only output HD signals via protected connections such as HDMI and Firewire.

Source: silicon.com

Blu-ray Disc Association Outlines Content Protection

Dale Dietrich — Tue, 09 Aug 2005 23:00:00 +0000

The members of the Blu-ray Disc Association, a consortium for development of the upcoming Blu-ray media format, have announced the medium’s planned features for protection of content
Source: Gamasutra