It is a basic truth of computers that what can be created as protection can and will be hacked. Any company that claims it has a hacker-proof method of defending content is simply inviting hackers to strut their stuff. And eventually it will be hacked.

As in any war you have on one side a super-intelligent team of coders setting up a system to protect information. And, on the other side, an equally super-intelligent team dedicated to getting around that system. It has happened every time and it difficult to think of an exception.

Now one of the DVD protection schemes has been hacked. This happened last weekend.

Hackers talk to each other and form loose groupings to attack a system. Such a group, linked by the Internet, last week cracked the antipiracy software protecting several high-resolution movies in the HD DVD format. Then they were bunged on the Internet ready for distribution using BitTorrent, a popular file-sharing tool.

The first movie to fall to their tender mercies was Universal Pictures’ Serenity from which our illustration comes. Whether it was worth hacking is not what we are discussing here. The point is that it was protected. And that protection is now effectively useless because high level hacking techniques most times can be reduced to a single and relatively simple program.

This first attack went for the HD DVD standard which is backed by Toshiba, Microsoft and Intel and uses a copy protection technology known as the Advanced Access Content System.

Blu-ray format, who you can think of as the enemy of HD DVD, is supported by Sony, Hewlett-Packard and Dell. It uses the same system but has an extra layer which makes it slightly more secure although there is not doubt that it will be hacked. That is a basic law of computing.

The first sign that this was going to happen was when Muslix64 — an assumed name — announced in a Web forum that he had unraveled at least part of the HD DVD protection system. Muslix64 released free software. With it you could bung HD DVDs into a computers and make copies without the original encryption. But you still needed a special title key. A challenge to the hacking community.

On Saturday, dozens of keys for movies like King Kong, Mission Impossible: 3 and Superman Returns were posted on Web forums. At least two Web sites were created to provide lists of the keys.

If you want to see the level at which these sites work go to Doom9.net. You may be astounded at the literacy and high level of mathematical and programming knowledge displayed.

Michael Ayers, speaking for the HD DVD alliance,  said he viewed it as an attack on DVD-playing software and not the overall protection system for HDDVD. He said, ‘It’s like somebody picked the lock on an individual house, but he has not discovered the secrets to lock-making at the master padlock company.’

That is sometimes called whistling into the wind.

Bruce Schneier, the chief technology officer of the security company BT Counterpane, said the new DVDs would inevitably be vulnerable to hacking. He said, ‘Data is inherently copyable, just as water is inherently wet. All the technology companies are doing is putting in tricks to make it harder to copy. But all they are is tricks.’

Related:

Entry was posted on Wednesday, January 17th, 2007 at 1:36 am under Legal, Media players.

Read more entries by Gareth Powell.
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