The content of DVDs is theoretically protected by the Content Scramble System (CSS), a cryptographic Digital Rights Management (DRM) system meant to prevent the copying of discs and restrict which devices discs can be played on. For instance, when DVDs were first released, they could not be watched on Linux machines. That changed with the advent of DeCSS: a program that circumvents the copy protection on DVDs.
Blu-Ray discs use a DRM system called High-bandwidth Digital Content Protection (HDCP) to try and accomplish the same things as CSS. Now, the master key for the system is publicly available, which will allow full resolution copying of discs and circumvent the ‘revocation’ system built into HDCP.
The message? You can’t hide secrets from the future with math.
Blu-Ray falls: HDCP key crack confirmed
Cory Doctorow at 10:58 PM Thursday, Sep 16, 2010
Intel has confirmed that the rumored master key crack for HDCP (the high-definition video “copy protection” used in Blu-Ray, high def consoles, and many game consoles) is real. Blu-Ray and other systems that rely on HDCP are now terminally compromised.
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Intel threatens lawsuits against HDCP jailbreakers
Cory Doctorow at 11:57 PM Friday, Sep 17, 2010
Last week, the master key for the HDCP DRM scheme — which prevents people from connecting unapproved monitors, recorders and switches to high-def players, computers and consoles — leaked. Using this key, it is now possible to make more flexible and cheaper high-def equipment (for example, high-def recorders that save unrestricted video-files). Intel is promising to sue anyone who tries it, though
HDCP Encryption/Decryption Code Released
“We have released an open-source (BSD licensed) implementation of the HDCP encryption/decryption algorithms. The code includes the block cipher, stream cipher, and hashing algorithms necessary to perform an HDCP handshake and to encrypt or decrypt video. The code passes the test vectors provided in the HDCP specification and can encrypt video at a rate of about 180 640×480 frames/second on a 2.33GHz Intel Xeon CPU. This isn’t quite fast enough to decrypt 1080p content in real-time on a single core, but decryption can be parallelized across multiple cores. There are also many opportunities for further optimisation, such as using SSE instructions. We are releasing the code in hopes that others will further optimize it and use it in their HDCP-related projects.”