AACS Device Key Found

henrypijames writes "The intense effort by the fair-use community to circumvent AACS (the content protection protocol of HD DVD and Blu-Ray) has produced yet another stunning result: The AACS Device Key of the WinDVD 8 has been found, allowing any movie playable by it to be decrypted. This new discovery by ATARI Vampire of the Doom9 forum is based on the previous research of two other forum members, muslix64 (who found a way to locate the Title Keys of single movies) and arnezami (who extracted the Processing Key of an unspecified software player). AACS certainly seems to be falling apart bit for bit every day now."

Re:Will they actually do it?

[MightyMartian]

It's a ludicrous game, and the industry has been told that over and over again by security experts. There is simply no way they're going to come up with a DRM scheme that isn't going to make life miserable for the average consumer, and still won't be cracked by someone with patience and know-how to do it. It's a colossal joke on the entertainment industry. They keep pouring money into this crap, and it just keeps getting flushed down the toilet.

Re:Will they actually do it?

[rsmith-mac]

Yes, it's only a software player. Intervideo will work on better hiding the device key, and release a patch for all the current WinDVD8 owners whose players won't be able to play future disks. Breaking a major hardware player is a big deal, however breaking a software player is fairly trivial in the long-run as long as it can be upgraded.

Introduction of hardware DRM

[gilesjuk]

I'm sure all this cracking of DRM by snooping memory will result in hardware protection being rolled out. Of course it woud need to be in the chipset and CPU.

Of course such restrictions would make debugging your own programs harder if it was always on.

Go to plan B

[TapeCutter]

I think the time has come for to give up on encryption and move to plan B, and no they don't mean plan A + panic, they mean they will be forced to randomly post armed gaurds on customers DVD player's.

Sure it will be somewhat inconvienient and more expensive for customers, but that's the price they are choosing to pay when they turn a blind eye to piracy.

Re:Will they actually do it?

[statusbar]

Of course there are is no technological way that DRM could be 100% effective.

Now we go one baby-step down the path where debugging tools like the ones used by these "hackers","pirates", and "anti-establishmentarians" require a license to own and use, because tools like this can apparently cause more damage to our society than an unlicensed firearm can do in a school...

From The Right To Read [gnu.org]:

Dan had had a classmate in software, Frank Martucci, who had obtained an illicit debugging tool, and used it to skip over the copyright monitor code when reading books. But he had told too many friends about it, and one of them turned him in to the SPA for a reward (students deep in debt were easily tempted into betrayal). In 2047, Frank was in prison, not for pirate reading, but for possessing a debugger.

--jeffk++

Re:Will they actually do it?

[LackThereof]

But any update will only be a temporary fix. ANY software player will have to put their key in memory at some point while it's running, the new key will be found quickly. And the keys for almost all software players will be found.

Assuming they keep their word, and revoke the keys as they're found, software players will become nearly unusable, with patches every few weeks to update the key, attempt to obfuscate it more, and make it usable with new disks again. If they go that route, it's only a matter of time until software HD-DVD/BR players are permanently blacklisted and cease to exist. Consumers won't like that much. We'll see special cables running from new drives to new video cards, because consumers will not put up with a lack of being able to play HD discs on their computers. And the ones that bought software players will be ROYALLY pissed.

If they let it slide, or just sue the people who found the key in the memory dumps, but do not revoke software player keys there's STILL no way to put the cat back in the bag - HDDVD/BR content protection is finished.

Which way will it go?

I don't know what is the idea behind this

[vivaoporto]

If the idea is to "stick to the man", they are doing the right thing disclosing what is the player in question. But if the idea is to actually use they key, they should keep them in the dark and not to specify what player got corrupted, so the keymakers cannot revoke the key.

Re:Introduction of hardware DRM

[necro2607]

"I'm sure all this cracking of DRM by snooping memory will result in hardware protection being rolled out. Of course it woud need to be in the chipset and CPU."

This is crackable anyways. The original Xbox was cracked by someone building their own data sniffer hardware installed on the system bus. No kidding. People will go to pretty much any length, including hardware modification, to break out of constricting usage limitations (aka DRM)...

Re:Fair-use community?

[Anonymous Coward]

If I am going to be playing a BluRay or HD-DVD movie anytime soon on my Linux box, AACS will have to be cracked first.

key in memory - on some PCs yes

[davidwr]

Within 5-10 years, if DRM is still popular, you will need to have a dongle that does the decrypting of DRM'd materials. The dongle, in conjunction with "protection" circuitry in the video and audio channels, will provide a revocable key between the media player and the video output device.

It will work something like this:

There will be two channels of data, one from the media source to the dongle, and one from the dongle to the playback device.

The dongle will decrypt data from the media source, or possibly ordinary RAM. In some cases, will be done with the aid of software tokens purchased from rights owners. In others, it will merely verify region, time-expiration, and other restrictions embedded in the media are complied with. In some cases, part of the key will be downloaded from the Internet in real time, or a time-bombed key will be renewed at regular intervals.

The dongle will re-encrypt the data so the playback hardware can play it, but memory-snoopers can't access it.

The dongle will be a "black box," protected by hardware features and possibly legal protection: "Tamper with this for the purposes of understanding it and go to jail."

The dongles will be handed out like candy for little or not profit, but they will be revoked individually if any one is compromised. People concerned about privacy and tracking implications will trade dongles or simply buy them by the bucketful.

I don't know if these dongles will be USB dongles or if they will be on a faster bus or maybe even connected directly to the video playback circuitry.

Mark this post, it may prove useful in challenging future dongle patents.

Re:The hackers are moving too early...

[ScrewMaster]

That's a good point ... of course, if you make modifications of sufficient magnitude to frustrate existing decryption tools, odds are you just created a whole new set of security holes. Those will also be found. Also, like CSS before it, the technology will have to be implemented by every video hardware and software maker on the planet (well, in China anyway) and sooner or later the details will get out. Furthermore, if (and it's currently a big "if" given the childlike manner this whole media war is being played out by the likes of Sony, Microsoft and the rest) either HD-DVD or Blu-Ray actually does take off and manage to replace the DVD, they'll find themselves in the same situation they were in with CSS. Not that it matters: as the MPAA has admitted the goal is to keep the bar high enough that the vast majority of consumers have no way to bypass the DRM. There's a certain acceptance by these people that there will always be a some degree of infringement going on, they just don't want it too widespread.

Ultimately, the only real way to protect content is going to have remote-controlled content-monitoring LCD shutters surgically implanted in everyone's eyes as soon as they are old enough to enjoy TV (and these creeps would do just that if they could get away with it.) Anything else will be circumvented sooner or later, which they know perfectly well. It's also why the content companies are pushing so damned hard to export US/EU-style IP law around the world and have copyright infringement treated as a heinous crime akin to murder. Once the cops (everywhere) are accustomed to treating copyright infringers as serious criminals, the MPAA and their ilk are hoping and praying that people won't do it anymore.

I think they will be disappointed. I hope they will. There aren't enough jails to hold everyone that ever violated a copyright, or exercised fair-use rights in countries that support them.

Re:Miserable?

[Perseid]

Good luck playing that DVD overseas. Good luck playing that DVD in Linux. Good luck with your new fancy disks if your player gets revoked. And all of this while the people who really ARE doing things they shouldn't are just double-clicking their unrestricted .avi file.

Re:Will they actually do it?

[vivaoporto]

Reverse engineering the eventual patch would be even easier than finding the key as they did, as all they would need to do is to look for the new key in the patch on in the relevant changed parts of the updated binaries.

Ugh

[Quantam]

I don't think this is as good as you think it is. I'm all for breaking DRM (and was extremely pleased when they broke the AACS process key), but I think releasing a player key was a BAD idea. I'm betting the MPAA's logic in regards to this will look like one of these two:

- WinDVD is not handling its device key in a secure manner
- WinDVD cannot be trusted
- WinDVD won't be getting another player key

Or even worse:

- WinDVD did its best to protect its device key
- It's impossible to protect a device key in a program that people can reverse-engineer [true]
- We'd better not allow any software to read AACS-protected content

Although this may all be moot anyway, as they can extract future process keys with relatively little effort (though it'll be a lot more effort if hackers have to break hardware systems instead of software).

DRM is provably insecure

[this great guy]

Revocation, obfuscation, TPM chips, hardware tricks ? Whatever, DRM is provably insecure.

Re:whoopty doo

[Anonymous Coward]

For (3b), instead of a theoretical argument I'd be more interested if you could name ONE specific example where a company was able to embed a secret in software and keep it secure for years against major efforts trying to find it.

Re:Will they actually do it?

[Usquebaugh]

Where as licensed firearms are ok in school. "Johnny that 9mm better be licensed son or your in real trouble!"

Fortunately, it's still in infancy :)

[alisson]

I know that personally, I refuse to upgrade anything for Blu-Ray or HD-DVD. Even if it weren't for the content 'protection,' what's the real point? Sure, it's nice to put more per disc for PS3 or XB360, but should that really determine the format of movies, or music? The 'truth' that the xxAAs don't understand is that physical medium are on the way out.

So, of course; don't buy them. Tell your friends not to buy the, and spread the word. If technology was selected based on worth and merit, we'd all have been using beta-max and mini-discs. But consumers don't always go for quality, innovation or convenience. Most often they like whet their friends have, they like what they already have, and sometimes? They just follow the pr0n industry (uh oh, did i just predict the HD-DVD?) THe point being, this one is easy to 'nip in the bud.'

Now, if you were to start a large-scale boycott of xxAA products? That would rock the boat. But I'm not holding my breath for you.

Re:Ugh

[Lumpy]

though it'll be a lot more effort if hackers have to break hardware systems instead of softwarethough it'll be a lot more effort if hackers have to break hardware systems instead of software

here is a little secret for you. Hardware players do not exist. every HD-DVD player and Blu Ray Player is a software player. and hacking those is not any harder, just requires different tools they have to be built or bought instead of warezed off of a bittorrent site.

Re:Will they actually do it?

[Anonymous Coward]

But it only takes one to figure it out for us all to benefit.

Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.
Margaret Mead

Re:Will they actually do it?

[vadim_t]

IIRC, there's a key per player model, maybe at best per manufacturing run, not per player instance.

Making a key per player copy is infeasible. How would you do that? Basically, every disk would need to have the data encrypted with each player's key. That number would be in the millions.

Not if you're trying to prove a point ...

[Schraegstrichpunkt]

If you're trying to demonstrate that DRM is futile waste of energy, it's in your best interests to release as early as possible.

Releasing an exploit a couple of years after the technology is first released gives people the impression that the DRM was "good" for those two years. On the other hand, releasing the exploit a week later drives home the point that the copy-protection racket is selling nothing but snake oil.

Re:Will they actually do it?

[Sillygates]

They dont care about software players, people those people can always download a new "security fix" and not even know the difference. What we need is to have the keys for the most popular hardware players to be released, after there is widespread adoption.

Re:fair-use community?

[RealSurreal]

Or it's people who expect to be able to exercise their fair-use rights getting together and forming some kind of, you know, community in order to achieve that.

Re:key in memory - on some PCs yes

[rtechie]

Within 5-10 years, if DRM is still popular, you will need to have a dongle that does the decrypting of DRM'd materials.

First off, this isn't even remotely new. Dongles for copy protection are as old as the concept of copy protection. AutoCAD used a dongle. I'm sure there are dozens of other examples. But they haven't been widely implemented for the same reason this won't be. Cost.

It's too expensive to ship a sophisticated $20 part with a pressed disc that costs $1 to make and you're selling for $20. Dongles have only really been used in very expensive software packages for this reason.

Also, the whole content industry is moving to a "download over the Internet" model. Bill Gates was right when he said this is likely to be the last physical format war. Any solution that is not software only is a non-starter in this context.

The dongle will decrypt data from the media source, or possibly ordinary RAM. In some cases, will be done with the aid of software tokens purchased from rights owners. In others, it will merely verify region, time-expiration, and other restrictions embedded in the media are complied with. In some cases, part of the key will be downloaded from the Internet in real time, or a time-bombed key will be renewed at regular intervals.

If you're going to require an internet connection, what's the point of the dongle? Just make the user verify the key in real time against the server for every play. This would already have been implemented if they thought users would stand for it. They won't.

The dongle will re-encrypt the data so the playback hardware can play it, but memory-snoopers can't access it.

This makes no sense. The playback hardware presumably doesn't have encryption capability. If it does, and it has the encryption hardware built in, what is the point of the dongle? You're also expecting a DONGLE to decrypt, encrypt, and transfer HD video in full resolution all in real-time. That's a pretty beefy dongle. See above for the cost issues.

I think it's worth expanding on this point. Do you really understand how sophisticated the dongle you're talking about would have to be? It would have to include a CPU, memory, and storage to do the encryption. And how they're totally useless unless you ship a SEPERATE one attached to EACH video you want to play? The keys have to be individual for each "disc" (or instance of video) and ROM-burned, not flashable. The idea of some sort of "dongle vault" or multikey that allows you to used multiple stored keys is fatally flawed for a vast number of reasons. The most basic being that it would make hacking the dongles extremely attractive.

Now if you're thinking of "embedding" this dongle into the computer itself, it's been done. This is the whole concept of the TPM chip and concerns about it being used for DRM. This solution is also not feasible for any number of reasons.

I don't know if these dongles will be USB dongles

No, it will have to be a proprietary interface. USB is too easy to sniff.

maybe even connected directly to the video playback circuitry.

So users are going to have to crack their case open every time they want to play a video? I think not.

Mark this post, it may prove useful in challenging future dongle patents.

None of this is either novel or practical.

Re:Care to show a proof?

[grammar fascist]

I mean, a formal proof. You're making a pretty broad statement, after all. The fact that some DRMs were cracked doesn't necessarily mean that all of them are inherently crackable.

At some point between the information and your eyes and ears, the information must be in "plaintext." (Otherwise you can't see it or hear it.) At that very point, the information stream can be intercepted and stored. This is true even if we have jacks in the backs of our heads to accept personal AV signals.

Here's another way to look at it: in the theoretical environment in which the decryption takes place, the person playing the part of consumer also plays the part of adversary. DRM systems give information to the adversary in plaintext. Alice wants to send a message to Bob. But she wants to send it to Bob in a way that Bob can't comprehend it... but he can, but he can't...

Yeah, so it's brain-dead. But there you go.

Most cracks happen earlier than between the emitter and the eyeballs. As long as the digital signal is converted to an analog signal in an environment that can be totally observed, the process of decryption can be observed and replicated. If someone ever designs a perfect black box, we'll possibly have no way to capture the digital signal. But we'll still be able to capture it before it reaches the eyeballs.

This is as close to a proof as you're likely to get on Slashdot. :) I could formalize it, but I don't want to spend the time.

Re:what about memory encryption?

[Helvick]

A well designed hardware cryptographic solution presents an extremely hard barrier if implemented well. The original X-Box failed because short cuts were taken in the architecture and keys were transmitted across a high speed bus but the same does not apply to the X-Box 360. It has thus far resisted all of the attempts to circumvent it, the minor hacks achieved to date have done little to break down the core security of that system despite significant efforts on the part of the X-Box hacking\mod community. Forget about separate TPM's in chipsets - the "ideal" solutions are now being rolled out pre-built into consumer CPUs. Apart from the clever crypto parts of the X-Box 360's CPU, both Intel's LaGrande and AMD's Presidio provide robust "Trusted Computing" features that (could) fully prevent the type of attacks that have been used in the WinDVD key discovery attacks. All three systems implement in-cpu protected key storage and secure memory for key dependent operations. Even without the absolute control that the XBox 360 enforces through its trusted boot process the LaGrande\Presidio technologies allow developers to build DRM solutions that are effectively invulnerable to key discovery attacks on any OS.

Re:Care to show a proof?

[this great guy]

Of course there is a formal proof, just ask any cryptographer or cryptanalyst. A basic sketch of it is that DRM makes use of conventional cryptography. However conventional cryptography has never been designed to prevent attacks in a threat model where the attacker has illimited physical access to the device performing the decryption operation.

Re:DRM is provably insecure

[SharpFang]

The problem with DRM is that no matter how poor it is, DMCA makes cracking it illegal. So if they included a single-byte XOR encryption with key written on the back wall of the device, still decrypting it is illegal, and that's enough for them.

Re:Fortunately, it's still in infancy :)

[Fex303]

Which is why i don't understand why Sony made the MD format. It wasa obvious that hard drives and flash memory was the future - and they introduced a new optical audio disc right at the end of the optical audio disc's popularity and usefulness.

The MD format was originally introduced in 1992. USB wasn't released until 1996 and the iPod was still a long way off.

I think that where MD really fell down was that Sony hadn't quite realized that people were ready to start treating their music as a digital resource that could be manipulated by computer. MiniDisc is a format that is based around MD player/recorders functioning as single-use appliances. Most people changed how they thought about music somewhere between 1996-2002, depending on how wired they were. They realized that music formats were digital and that music could be downloaded, stored, and manipulated on computer. MD was a format that didn't allow these functions, and so it was useless. Not a bad format for what it did, but it missed a shift in how people thought about what music did.

As a side note, I think that the same shift is happening with television. It's taken longer to catch on, but now everyone's starting to understand that the episode of Lost they missed doesn't mean they have to beg to borrow a tape off some friend because it's on the internet and can be downloaded if they want to...

Re:The "Man" is me.

[Catbeller]

You're not owed a damned thing. We own the discs. We'll reverse engineer them. This is the way the universe works. You don't get a say in what we do with things that we buy. Your connection to my home is not welcome.

And I believe player pianos were supposed to break musical profits. and TV was supposed to break movies' business model. and cassettes were supposed to destroy record companies. And Valenti compared VCRs to the Boston Strangler. And music and movie downloads are supposed to break the RIAA and MPAA members. Both outfits are making more money today than they did last year, and the year before.

You are wrong. And you've bought laws to invade our lives and put grandmothers in prison. The least we can do is break your balls, over and over and over.

and please, do, go out of business.

Re:Fortunately, it's still in infancy :)

[MP3Chuck]

"Why didn't Sony just release their own "iPod" instead? They could have made a "pro" line of HD-based players that had professional quality audio inputs for recording, and a "consumer" line focused on playback, portability and fashion."

A lot of the time it seems like Sony exists solely to push their proprietary formats ... and a HDD player wouldn't sell their Memory Sticks now would it?

I'm not quite sure what the logic is behind creating their own format for everything (Memory Stick instead of CF or SD, ATRAC instead of MP3 or Vorbis, Blu-Ray instead of HD-DVD)... seems to me that the R&D money could have been spent elsewhere, perhaps on more useful things.

Of course

[JustNiz]

...there will now shortly be a new media format announced that supercedes blu-ray and HD-DVD.

Now that picture and audio quality is already better than humans can perceive, I wonder what new marketing bullshit feature they'll come up with this time to persuade the public they really need spend thousands more on yet newer hardware just because it has even more restrictive DRM and no bacwkard-compatability.

Look out for super ultra mega HD resolution media and players with 12.1 audio and smellyvision coming to your local store soon!

If only they had peer-reviewed...

[kRutOn]

If only they had peer-reviewed AACS before releasing it like the RIAA did with their Secure Digital Music Initiative [wikipedia.org], then none of this would have happened!