HD-DVD AACS DRM Cracked? Posted by XanTium | December 27 22:32 EST

From engadget.com: [QUOTE] Can it be? Is Hollywood's new DRM posterchild AACS (Advanced Access Content System, see more here) actually quite breakable? According to a post on our favoritest of forums (Doom9) by DRM hacker du jour muslix64, his new BackupHDDVD tool decrypts and dismantles AACS on a Windows PC. Just feed the small utility a crypto key [none released with application, more about it in FAQ], and it'll dump the video right off the disc onto your hard drive, supposedly playable in any HD DVD compatible player. If true, this would instantly become the DeCSS of high def optical, as AACS is the copy protection scheme used not only by HD DVD, but by Blu-ray as well. [/QUOTE] Full Story: engadget.com and forum.doom9.org Download: n/a (probably illegal under DMCA/EUCD) You can read the FAQ released with the application here

Nice work Makes you kinda wonder why anyone bothers with copy protection these days. We have yet to see anything suceed for very long.

Xbox360's unsigned code protection isn't too bad (so far)

I hope this is true or a lot of people are gonna be pissed....

Wow. Blu Ray also uses AACS. Not a good day for High Def content providers.

great, now all i need is money to buyt a high def dvd burner and discs.

taking donations

...And to stay on the topic of Xbox, he used the Xbox360 HD-DVD player to do it.

What's the big deal about this really?

Saweet.

It's cheaper than a 'real' PC HD-DVD drive.
At least for now.

Thats awesome!

Cop Protection is a facade in todays world, I dont know why the industry just embrace it and work with the communities on making a BETTER PRODUCT for everybody..

We as consumers are just too damn smart these days

If I understand what you're asking correctly, you're saying whats the big deal about him using the Xbox360 HD-DVD to do it? If so, it's not really a big deal I just thought it fit nicely considering this is a Xbox forum.

Been playing with this for the last few hours (albeit, without my HD DVD stuff, which is back in colorado).. but it looks like you still need a way to get the title key for each movie you want to decrypt (which he most likely got from doing a memory dump of power DVD's memory space while playing an HD DVD movie) in order to make this work.... He is claiming to work on a volume key version however, which would only need one key to decrypt all AACS encrypted HD DVDs.

My understanding of AACS is that old cracked keys can be disabled at the player level via firmware:

good news, i like to backup my games, movies, and content, This is a good step towards electric/content domination.

This is true... however, it means that all previously released content can still be decrypted even with a 'banned' key... and it also means that they'd be effectively disabling the players that used the compramised key... not exactly a wise choice for good PR (unless new discs auto-updated the onboard key or something similar to change it)

No about backing up an HD movie. How much is an HD burner and who said they will even play in a HD player. So if all you can do is store 20 gigs per movie on your hard drive what will be the use.

its drm so its illagle lawsuit will come. but it is a majer blow to all this drm shit.

Maybe they should let everyone copy everything with no protection? Maybe the Xbox 360 games shoudl be able to be backed up without any kind of protection. Let's see how well the games will sell.

Personally, I couldn't care less about backing up HD movies. I do, however, enjoy the fact this might make AACS useless. To learn why DRM sucks do a simple google search.

I think DRM is needed because there is just too much pirating. Without any kind of protection what will happen to the industry. If the Xbox 360 had no protection and games could be backed up without any modification how many games would be released?

That's a far too simplistic way of looking at it. If such protection schemes actually succeeded in stopping piracy I might see the point in implementing them but they never do.These protection schemes end up doing nothing to stop the ultimate goal, eliminating piracy, and only end up hurting the consumer. I won't go into the numerous, well documented examples of how DRM affects the consumer but like I stated earlier, google is your friend.

woot woot, I suppose. now I can fill up a 250gb hard drive with eight whole movies! instead of 100 DVD quality ones

Meh kinda, but this will be great in about 4 years when terabyte hard drives are $80 and I have a screen big enough to justify 1080p.... and by then I'll be doing it on xbmc360.... until that day comes I'll stick with cheap dvd+r's and old fashoned ripping

Pirates will use this.

That's a given.

However.. those who'd want to back up their investment.. now can.

Bravo.

I fully understand the need to protect they're product, but hampering it to the point where it effects the user who legally purchased it is bullshit. That's what I hate about DRM. They can't simply place no protection on it at all, but they must realize that no matter what they come up with it will be hacked. What needs to be done is come up with a away to protect the content so that it does not frustrate the poor sap who buys it.

Any protection is a success if it makes it far too complicated for the average joe to understand. How many people out there have enough of a clue to mod their 360's firmware even though all the info and tools are there for the taking? Probably around 1% of the population. So given that the other 99% are more or less oblivious to it, I'd say that was a success for M$.

AACS was going to be hacked no matter what, but it's there to prevent massive scale piracy. I imagine the vast majority of the herd doesn't even know how to backup a DVD at this point.

where I come from.. even senior citizens know how to download from newsgroups, and make/burn VCD, SVCD, and DVD's.

Tool have made this far too simple.. and almost dummy proof.

with AACS cracked.. and tools to follow.. it won't be terribly difficult for anyone wanting to do this. $$$ cost of hardware will be the only stepping stone. Cost of media as well. but as we know. that drops fast.

It's a good thing you don't work in software development. Would you work for free? I don't think so but developers should and everyone should be able to copy their work without any form of protection. A cd key is needed to activate software and that's DRM and PC games needs the oirginal Cd to play is also DRM. The xbox 360 games cannot be read on the PC and even that is DRM.

They should eliminate all these Digital Rights Managements because it hurts the consumers.

Interesting situation.

So pirates and most of the public will like HD-DVD as it's only protection is AACS, but studios will like BD as it still has 2 more layers, i.e. Fox not going with HD-DVD due to AACS being the only form of protection.

I understand and it's not ideal, but still an option for studios to discourage large scale piracy.

Can you think of a way to seperate the two?

I can imagine PowerDVD will come under a lot of fire because of this. Looks like PowerDVD is what helped the hacker crack the code. Wasn't this just launched recently?

People don't seem to fully understand the nature of piracy here. So lets say they do ban the keys and you can't use that DVD software to rip new movies. Ok well as people said you would still be able to steal the old ones via the banned software. Patching drive firmware has always been a possibility so simply updated the drive firmware will not solve the problem for the media companies. They can essentially only stop the software from decrypting old movies.

Ok before diving into the issue of new movies with the old ones, once someone gets a decrypted copy it will hit the topsites and/or some P2P community. So essentially once its cracked you will be able to download it from anywhere given enoguh time. Now if the keys are stored in RAM when the software loads up and decrypts the movie then that means the software developers will have to clever and completely redesign it each time a key is cracked. So right now PowerDVD is going to have to be completely redesigned if this is indeed real. Well they will then start releasing discs with new keys and new version of PowerDVD. So once agian remember the key has to exist for the player decrypted somewhere on the PC off the disc. So its possible to hack it again.

Now each time someone is able to find that key then its likely the authors of the decryption software will just have a new release with the new key and problem solved. So the media companies are really going to redesign software completely to thwart hackers each time?

Also consider even if they do start to disable the keys that have been compromised off these early discs, they are always running the risk of screwing standalone drives. Lets say a hacker gets the key off of a standalone toshiba player. What is the solution for the MPAA? Essentially kill millions of players across countries from playing new movies? Wow that would be an even bigger PR disaster then simply disabling old versions of PC software. Their fall back plan just isn't that great.

HD-DVD has just won the format war.
I agree piracy sucks but what about fair use rights? I have ripped and converted dozens of DVDs for use with XBMC, my PSP, and my Play-Yan Micro (GameBoy video adapter). I don't see the Film companies offering unDRMed content that can be played on anything. Until they do that I will be using these "piracy" tools so that I can watch my movies when I want how I want. I paid for a copy and a licence to view the film when I purchased the DVD, I should not have to buy it again from Vongo or iTunes.

This is great news! I can see me purchasing a xbox 360 HD DVD drive now that my content can be backed up.

It will take a few years for the HD DVD media & burners to come down to a reasonable price but it's good to know that AACS is already on its knees.

Because if average Joe with no technical skills could do it, EVERYONE would do it. As it is, just the people with some technical know how do it. That is a muuuuuch smaller percentage of the population.

The real impact of this isn't so that people will have 20Gb files sitting on their hard disk. Now this allows pirates to rip the movies, re-encode using h.264 with virtually no quality loss, and distribute in DVD sized files (cheap media). Rip out all the extra audio, trailers, extras, etc. probably gonna be quite possible to do that with no quality loss, like we have 700Mb rips of DVD's now using xVid.

HD-DVD movies with a download half the size of an x-box 360 game, for those that are so inclined. Don't know if that last statement is overstepping the mark here re. discussion of piracy, if it is a mod can just delete it. Also, how expensive would a stand-alone h.264 player be? If there is no such thing on the market, invest in a company developing them now :-)

Well, look at PC games. Most of them don't have DRM crap and yet they still sell.

coming for copy right protection in the year 2052

If people start distributing these movies in h.264 this early, then I suppose alot of money wasted on the AACS.

http://www.shoutwire.com/viewstory/46038/A..._Wars_is_Piracy







Could care less about hd dvd, but thought this was kinda fitting.

Moot point since you can play copied disks on the system. Signed code is not copy protection it is alteration prevention.

The author does not have a clue, yes HD-dvd & Blu-Ray movies can be downloaded all over the place but they can not be played yet. And this software released today is nothing, it will decrypt EVO files if you have the title KEY, and the program does not find or create the needed key instead the guy behind the software says to read the AACS guide lines and figure out how to get the keys yourself

Think the author was referring to High Def content, not HD-DVD or Blu-Ray media itself.

Why does the video say "Stay tuned for source code in January"? The source is already out!

Edit: nvm, he means the source code for extracting the Title Keys.

This hack uses the title key, not the player key meaning that the player key cannot be revoked as it's not known. The only thing the movie studios could do would be to revoke the title key which would mean the the actual HD-DVD wouldn't work in future players which is pointless and would result in lawsuits.

lololol i liv in teh u s of a and now wil not hav teh buttsechs lol11!111

Seriously, not everyone lives on that overrated continent. The world is a lot bigger than North America, and on most of it you can use this hack without any legal consequences (as long as you own the original movie, off course).

The whole system of title/player keys simply will never work. Once HD-DVD/Blu-Ray gets popular, an online database will be created and hosted inside a country with no laws about cryptographic keys. People can upload and download title/player keys for their modified HD-DVD player/PC. I can even imagine that a piece of software will be available for the PC which will download the correct key(s) once you insert an original/copied HD-DVD, which will be used to play the disc. It also might even be possible to automatically upload the correct keys from original HD-DVD discs so others can use them.

If the title key gets banned, who cares? As long as you have the key, you can play it. If the key of your player gets banned (and newer titles won't play anymore), simply upload a new player key into the firmware/software. Just wait until cheap HD-DVD/Blu-Ray players from China will arrive pre-loaded with keys which come from expensive Philips/Sony players.

I'm not sure this is a victory for HD-DVD. Won't this push studios to Blu-Ray since it still has extra 'uncracked' (so far) DRM's?

It just provides a higher quality source for backups than DVD. I don't think anyone would be interested in keeping the files in a 20gb uncompressed format. HDDivx or HDxvid or h.264. Even a small HR (540p) backup would be nice.
BTW, HR (540p) xvid's play smoothly on XBMC!

As much as I think a lot of you are bullshitting about your absolute need to backup every disc you've bought, I really do think they deserve to get pirated because they can't fix discs(or cartridges) that're solid and can last for more than 5 years. If they could make the software safe, they wouldn't get that punch in the face.

Lets think back a few years..... actually about 15 years or so. DRM is for Digital.... not analog. Since digital has come into our lives and has taken over everything from video, to pictures, to music, it has now become easier to "share" this information. Think back about 15 years ago, before cd's really became big, and we were all using tapes.... well, maybe 20 years, but anway. Lets say i went out and bought a new Bon Jovi tape.... it's really cool.... i let my friends hear it, and they want it. so you make 5-10 copies, and they make copies, and more copies. This might hit about 100 people before the quality is so bad it isn't usiable. Now with digital, you can now copy it as many times as you want, and it doesn't degrade, PLUS one person can now hit millions of people.

I personally agree with fair use. If i have bought the digtal format of "xxxxxxx" music, i would like to play it on my computer, my mp3 player, my cd player, my usb stick at work, and so on and so on. but is you can use it that many places, whos to say you can't send it to a friend, easier now than before.... they also say that DRM keeps honest people honest. back in the day that i would share tapes with friends, i didn't know it was illegal to do this. my parents may have, but they did the same. when you make it hard for me and them to do this, they figure.... well, i might be able to do this since it's not easy.

anyway, my two cents.

Has anyone tried this yet?

I have the M$ HD player hooked up and have installed the toshiba drivers and the drive is recognised by windows.
I am habing problems with java atm.
Can anyone offer help?

Please email me : techno-devices@hotmail.com

EDIT:

I have it working now but dont have the cyberlink software. Does anyone have keys for any of the following software?

Full Metal Jacket (PAL)
Super Man Returns (PAL)
KING KONG (PAL)
NL Xmas vacation (PAL)

Thanks in advance

EDIT: and now you are banned. Asking for KEYS to any of the new HD or BD format movies will get you all banned. General discussion is one thing.. but as soon as it smells like piracy you'll be banned with no warnings. The rules are clear.. and are posted.

Also worth mentioning is that the creator is finding the keys using playback software on a PC. I'm willing to bet the software has been pulled for download and will be released with an update so the keys no longer sit unencrypted in the system's memory.

I'm all for fair us, but this is too early in the format's life and I can see this just killing off the formats. Also, to the guy who said HD-DVD won. Perhaps from a piracy standpoint, but if nobody buys the disc why would a movie studio want to release it's content on that format? Like another poster stated this would potentially push studios to supporting BR. I say potentially because if the software used for this can be fixed then perhaps nothing will happen.

This was posted in a thread I started at AVS and thought it was pretty funny:

Allow me a moment to make perfectly clear... anyone ASKING for.. or offering the Keys to these HD or BD movies, will find their accounts summarily banned with no warning. The Rules are posted, and they are clear.

Same goes for asking for commercial software that can be used as part of this process.

If you guys consider yourself pirates.. be smart and go find the new tools of your trade. Don't ask for them here.