More AACS Cracking
Slowly, AACS—the security in both Blu-ray and HD DVD—has been cracked. Now, it has been cracked even further:
Arnezami, a hacker on the Doom9 forum, has published a crack for extracting the “processing key” from a high-def DVD player. This key can be used to gain access to every single Blu-Ray and HD-DVD disc.
Previously, another Doom9 user called Muslix64 had broken both Blu-Ray and HD-DVD by extracting the “volume keys” for each disc, a cumbersome process. This break builds on Muslix64’s work but extends it—now you can break all AACS-locked discs.
As I have said before, what will be interesting to watch is how well HD DVD and Blu-ray recover. Both were built expecting these sorts of cracks, and both have mechanisms to recover security for future movies. It remains to be seen how well these recovery systems will work.
Lee • February 19, 2007 1:50 PM
The user has to be able to decrypt the content in order to watch the film. Given enough time the codes will be discovered, the mechanism to update the codes and deactivate compromised devices will just inconvenience paying customers instead.