AACS Cracked?

[Ian]

Has anyone tried this utility yet?

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

-What is "Backup HDDVD" for?

It can do backup copies of HD DVD movies that YOU OWN! I don't want anyone to do
piracy here! This software is a good way to protect your investment, because I have
notice that this type of media seems very fragile, if it's scratched a little or
dirty, it won't play. It seems less tolerent than DVD format. (Higher density!)


-What "Backup HDDVD" is doing exactly?

This is a java based command line utility that decrypt video files (.evo) from a
HD DVD disk that you own, to your hard drive and you can play them back with a
HD DVD player software.


-What are the system requirements to use "Backup HDDVD"

1 - A Windows based system
2 - A HDDVD disk drive
3 - A HDDVD player software (like PowerDVD)
4 - A HDDVD movie(s)
5 - Java rutime 1.5
6 - The possibility to access the content of the disk with a drive letter under windows.
(you may need UDF 2.5 file system driver for this)
7 - A lot of free hard disk space to backup your movies!


-Was your first HDDVD movie hard to decrypt?

It took me around a week to do. But I have wasted few days
trying to work on too complicated approach. In fact, it is very simple.


-How do you do that?

The program itself has nothing special. It simply implement the AACS
decyption protocol. I have followed the freely available documents about AACS
Have a look at: www.aacsla.com
The trick, is to find what they call the "Title keys". So I figure out how to
extract them.


-How do you extract the "Title keys"?

I won't explain it in detail. Read the AACS doc first. You will understand.
The title keys are located on the disk in encrypted form, but for a
content to be played, it has to be decrypted! So where is the
decrypted version of the title key? Think about it...

[dolphinius_rex]

Sweet! Now we can make copies of all our HDDVD movies using our HDDVD burners and ... oh wait, nevermind

(Sorry, I just can't help but laugh at the distinct lack of HDDVD burners on the market)

[Ian]

I've been reading more about this. It's not so much a crack, but a way to circumvent AACS. To rip a disc, you need the title keys and at this point, its not known how the author of the program acquired them. The genaral speculation seems to be that PowerDVD puts them in memory.

I'd try this, but I don't own any of the HD DVD movies listed in the config file. None are really worth buying IMO either.

[Silentbob343]

I created a post over at AVS and this pretty much a summary:

AACS wasn't cracked. PowerDVD dropped the ball leaving the keys in memory for anybody to find. The encryption wasn't cracked in any way. The current player keys for PowerDVD will be rejected forcing users to upgrgade to a newer version that will hopefully fix keeping unencrypted key in memory.

[Justin42]

Geeez, that is amazingly like how CSS was cracked, except for the whole "revokable key" aspect. You'd think these companies would've learned by now.

That said, if every new disc needs to have a revoked key list, that could get awfully long in a few years with enough sloppy coding. (And what do you do if you buy a hardware unit that happens to get a revoked key? Buy a new model?)

[[buck]]

Even with the revocable keys, aren't all the HDDVD titles currently on the market vulnerable? PowerDVD will only be unexploitable when new HDDVD titles come along which blacklist the current PowerDVD key.

(And what do you do if you buy a hardware unit that happens to get a revoked key? Buy a new model?)

With any luck, I think that would be fixable with a firmware update.

[Ian]

With any luck, I think that would be fixable with a firmware update.

Yup, why do you think they want you to have your player hooked up to the internet?

If they were smart, they'd put lists of new keys on new HD DVD releases.

[Jim]

If this sticks I can see HD-DVD being widely adopted.

[dolphinius_rex]

If this sticks I can see HD-DVD being widely adopted.

If the copy protection works the way that it's described above, I could see people avoiding both formats (HDDVD and BluRay) en mass...

[algrinch]

I can't see the average consumer being happy with periodic firmware updates. They just want it to work without any hassels.

I am not a big fan of punishing the many for the sins of a few.

[Justin42]

It's not even that the user will be unhappy; they won't KNOW they're needed. They'll get upset when their player suddenly doesn't play their copy of Titanic II they just bought at the store, take the disc back.. get another.. that won't play... they'll think their player is broken or something. (Even if it pops up a "Firmware update required!" message.. how many people would know what that means? Unless they include firmware updates on the discs for each player...)

What would finally kill copy protection is if one of these stupid bills gets passed, and Tivos/DVD Recorders can't record the latest soaps or NASCAR races... in a way, the sort of successful pushing back against copy protection has kept it out of the way of the average consumer to the point they don't think it's a big deal.

[Ian]

People have found a way to grab the keys from memory.

http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=119871&page=33

Huge ass list of them:

http://www.aacskeys.com/

[Bhairav]

19.6GB worth of Serenity's HD-DVD rip is available at a bunch of torrent sites... full menu system and extras included.

[Grain]

19.6GB worth of Serenity's HD-DVD rip is available at a bunch of torrent sites... full menu system and extras included.

Sweet! With my 31.2 dial-up connection, should only take 16 years to download, by which time I'll have decided which format I'm going to support

[Wesociety]

19.6GB worth of Serenity's HD-DVD rip is available at a bunch of torrent sites... full menu system and extras included.

~20GB of content isn't the easiest amount of data to grab.
Even if all HD DVD movies get ripped and shared out, the file sizes will be prohibitive to download. I'm not saying a dedicated person would not do it, but man that takes some effort...

[Ian]

In the time it took you to download an entire HD DVD movie, you could go beg out on the street and buy yourself a copy. In fact, in the time it took, you could probably collect enough money to buy yourself an HD DVD player as well. That is, if you're a good beggar.

[Bhairav]

In the time it took you to download an entire HD DVD movie, you could go beg out on the street and buy yourself a copy. In fact, in the time it took, you could probably collect enough money to buy yourself an HD DVD player as well. That is, if you're a good beggar.

Homer Jay Simpson buying diamond earrings for Marge.. remember that episode?

[pranav81]

I wonder whether hi-def DivX will take off. I have some hi-def XviD video's, & I must say I am impressed by the quality.

If AACS is cracked, it may be possible to rip to a hi-def DivX/XviD file and share it onto the internet...Just a thought...


::Pranav::

[Ian]

That's a very good idea pranav81. At least that way, you're only downloading a 1-2GB file instead of 15GB.

[Ian]

It looks like you can rip Blu-ray titles as well:

http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?p ... post939873

muslix64 also talks about his "known-plaintext attack" where you don't need the keys.

[[buck]]

AACS sure seems to be crumbling pretty fast.

[Ian]

Yep, it is. It's going to be interesting to see how quickly they start revoking these keys. Then again, HD DVD piracy really isn't an issue yet. The files are too big and there really isn't a way to make a copy of a disc yet.

[[buck]]

I'd be wary of underestimating HD piracy... keep in mind that a HD DVD movie can be downsampled to 720p with x264 to fit comfortably in a DVD5, and 1080p would probably fit nicely in a DVD9.

Also keep in mind that 20+ mbit/s internet connections are becoming more and more widespread. It would take roughly 3 hours to download a full HD DVD copy on a 20mbit connection, and overnight would still do it on slower connections.

[Ian]

Also keep in mind that 20+ mbit/s internet connections are becoming more and more widespread. It would take roughly 3 hours to download a full HD DVD copy on a 20mbit connection, and overnight would still do it on slower connections.

Yeah, but we're talking about pirates using bitorrent or newsgroups. The last time I downloaded a TV show for my wife, it took almost a day and it was only a few hundred megs.

I really don't think people downloading this stuff for "free" really care about the video quality. Most would rather download a crappy video camered version vs a high def one if would save them a bunch of time.

[algrinch]

AACS Device Key Found
http://it.slashdot.org/it/07/02/24/2241258.shtml

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."

Source for the above article: http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=122664