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HD DVD cracked?

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Originally posted by: Eug
Originally posted by: Kaido
Even if they do hack HD-DVD and Bluray, aside from copying discs what good is it? I'm not going to download 25gb movie on a torrent or store my movie collection on my multimedia server like I do with my DVD movies, they're just too big! :Q
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You can buy bootleg DVDs in some areas, and internet bandwidth will just increase.

When DVD first was hacked, downloading movies was not an option because it would take far too long. I don't download movies at all, but now I could these days if I wanted to.
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If you are going to pay for a DVD, then why are you buying bootleg? It just seems a bit counter-intuitive.
 
This isn't a true 'crack' yet, but it's a step in the right direction. Hopefully it will get broken soon. The best scenario is if they manage to compromise the key to one of the most popular standalone players, forcing the vendor / industry to make a choice: piss off millions of customers by forcing a hassle on them (updating through firmware etc), or just living with the compromised key. The reality is that customers, especially technology illiterate ones, do not want to hassle with updates. It doesn't matter to them that it's because of some hacker or some other BS reason, they don't want to hassle with it. They are not going to want to hear "your player won't work with this new disk because xyz reason"... they don't care, they'll never buy another player from that vendor.... so the vendors are going to be really reluctant to allow their keys to be blacklisted.

Bottom line: I will not buy into this DRM crap that the industry is trying to shove down the throats of the consumers. I won't purchase blue ray or HD DVD until it's properly cracked and broken wide open. Until then, dvd's will do just fine.
 
One other nice thing about this project is that I can now watch HD DVD movies on my $440 video card and my $800 monitor, neither of which happen to be HDCP compliant. My machine is technically well qualified to watch HD content, but it isn't sanctified by Hollywood. So screw that, and thank you Muslix64, LordSloth, and the others at Doom9 who helped put this all together.
 
Originally posted by: Matthias99

If it's something that could be fixed by, say, a firmware update, the manufacturer would likely provide that (either online or via CD/DVD as mentioned above). If it's a deeper sort of problem... guess we'll find out when/if this occurs. Some people have questioned whether the MPAA would have the clout to be able to revoke the keys to a popular player once many of them have been sold to consumers if it can't be fixed easily.
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It's more likely that hackers will provide their own firmware update to crack the DVD player's DRM.
 
Originally posted by: Mark R
It doesn't look like this is much of a crack.

Indeed, HD-DVD/Blu-ray were designed with this type of exploit in mind.

This exploit appears to decrypt a movie, as long as you give it the decryption key. Hardly difficult, and the specifications on how to do this are freely available. The catch is obtaining the decryption key. In this case, it looks as if he has found an exploit in a HD-DVD software player - whereby he is able to attach a debugger and isolate the key from memory. No problem, but not really an automatable task.

The point is that HD-DVD and Blu-ray have 2 keys - the 'title' key (which is what actually decodes the movie) and the 'player' key, which is a key built into the player/software that is used to obtain 'title' key. However, the 'player' key can easily be revoked by the studios. So let's say that XYZ DVD player v1.0 has been exploited, once the studios find out they can simply cancel XYZ v1.0 compatability for future discs. So, although XYZ v1.0 will always be able to play King kong, King kong 2 will not be playable. If you have XYZ v1.0 you won't be able to watch KK2 until you upgrade. Of course, XYZ v2.0 won't get a key unless they can prove that the new version is resistant to the same type of hack.
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You can't put the genie back into the bottle. The secret is out, now, and others will surely build upon this exploit. Once they've found out how to extract the decryption key, they'll begin taking apart the program to isolate the part in which this occurs. Eventually, a fully automated decryption key scanner will be made.

The HD-DVD standard has already been set, and the pirates are always on the move.
 
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