Ok, so we're a little late on this news, but nevertheless: AACS (Advanced Access Content System), HD DVD and Blu-Ray's copy protection scheme has been cracked by Doom9 forum member muslix64. His BackupHDDVD tool decrypts AACS on a PC after you insert a crypto key into the utility. After that, you can freely copy the video content straight off the disc. It's no surprise, though: seems like there is just no such thing as guaranteed un-crackability. (No, I don't think that's a word either.) Check out Engadget's post for confirmation of the cracking process. And if you want to learn more about the intricacies of AACS check out this post.AACS DRM hacked
Ok, so we're a little late on this news, but nevertheless: AACS (Advanced Access Content System), HD DVD and Blu-Ray's copy protection scheme has been cracked by Doom9 forum member muslix64. His BackupHDDVD tool decrypts AACS on a PC after you insert a crypto key into the utility. After that, you can freely copy the video content straight off the disc. It's no surprise, though: seems like there is just no such thing as guaranteed un-crackability. (No, I don't think that's a word either.) Check out Engadget's post for confirmation of the cracking process. And if you want to learn more about the intricacies of AACS check out this post.
1. If you dig a bit deeper, you'll see that there isn't any cracking involved. The guy may (or not may, there isn't any outside confirmation) have discovered a way to get keys out of PowerDVD. Then he just wrote a bog-standard AACS decryption tool. You still need an authorized player to watch the files, as there are still a few layers of encryption left - you can't transcode the files or anything. Similarly, you need to repeat the hack of PowerDVD for every new HD-DVD movie. MPAA can just issue a revocation for the powerDVD key, force you to upgrade to a newer verison, which won't have the vulnerability. At best this might let you store the current round of HD-DVDs on your harddisk, though nobody outside this muslix fellow has even managed that.
DeCSS this ain't.
Posted at 9:35PM on Jan 13th 2007 by Colin McFadden