Has HDTV Code Been Cracked?

FOX NEWS ^ | 09/14/10 | Blake Snow

[Doogle]

Much to the chagrin of the entertainment industry, the encryption that protects most high-definition video content may have just been cracked.

Intel Corp. officials confirmed Tuesday to FoxNews.com an investigation into a security breach, possibly a fundamental compromise of High-bandwidth Digital Content Protection (HDCP) -- the digital rights management software that governs every device that plays high-def content.

[Doogle]

interesting........

[perfect_rovian_storm]

Lord, I hope so. HDCP is annoying as hell.

[KoRn]

/mark

[Secret Agent Man]

No coding scheme is unbreakable, some are just a lot more difficult than others. If people care to take the time and effort and feel the payoff is worth it, they will try to crack a code.

[dr_who]

Swell, but is the content even worth pirating?

[Razzz42]

Where’s the “Ha Ha” guy?

[Doogle]

*shruggs*

[Beowulf9]

The big dream out there is that no one will ever be able to monopolize their new tech but themselves, a dream that over and over again has crashed and burned.

[coloradan]

Since he’s high definition, he’s cracked ... up.

[HiTech RedNeck]

If every disk player TV sold in America knows how to get at the content of these HDTV disks in order to show it, it was only a matter of time till it got reverse engineered and blabbed onto the internet. I personally don’t believe in copying material under copyright without permission, but there are enough people raging against the system that it was fated to fall.

[A CA Guy]

It was cracked long ago.
Some companies take it out of the DVDs or BlueRay disks so you can back up your OWNED copies. In that case they strip the disk of protection for open play.

I'm sure it is equally easy for some moderate level engineer to build a device that completes the handshake with HDCP anywhere and then leaving the other end OPEN.

Don't know why that would be such a big deal.
I think it would be expensive to do and who would need it?

[LongElegantLegs]

If I’m understanding this correctly, now that it’s been done, it’s only a matter of time before the script kiddies get ahold of it and then it’s everywhere...Itunes copyright protection would be worthless, for one, and as for who would use it, the people that use bittorrent. People could ‘sublet’ high-def cable content, I think.

But that’s just an uninformed guess.

[counterpunch]

I think HDTV is different than the DVD/Blu-Ray protection that products like SlySoft AnyDVD HD strips.

You cannot, for example, record streaming HDTV over HDMI into your computer/DVR software, so far. But if the HDTV/HDMI DRM has been cracked, then something similar to AnyDVD should be able to be developed for streaming HDTV.

If it has been cracked, then this is a real victory for people who want to build their own DVRs instead of renting one month after month from their cable provider. 

[Califreak]

LOL!

There’s “little people”, “little people” with tattoos, people who put tattoos on other people, UFO’s, loggers and truck drivers(okay until about the third time),extreme crabbing,American Idol type fare, sitcoms, doctor shows and cop shows.

Hmm. Not so much.

[Califreak]

Oops. I thought we were talking about regular teevee. But all of it is mostly junk anyway. Who wants to see it any better?

[A CA Guy]

They've been able to sublet HD cable content for years IMO and the reason the music community isn't as washed in money these days is that even kids can find any itune or mp3 music for free on the net to bypass the on line stores.
Not legal, but kids do it anyway I would think.

Dish has been broken long ago, and I think the only shot cable has in keeping the bad guys away is that they may be able to read usage.
I'm not sure about the reading stuff, I'm only a regular guy who used to read a lot about this stuff. I'm not an engineer and don't with to participate in activities that would be illegal.

[A CA Guy]

HDMI is just a way of talking between machines and the only thing an engineer has to do is complete the handshake and then leave the signal open on the other side.
Kind of like the way slysoft would strip coding for recording your OWNED content as backup.

[Greysard]

HDCP uses an encryption scheme with one master key. Small portions of the master key are used to create device keys. It was always theorized that once a certain number of device keys (which can be recovered) are created, they can be combined back into the master key. The magic number was around 40. It is belived that this is how the master key was recovered.

Knowledge of the master key opens the entire system up. Anyone now can create HDCP compatible devices and report whatever they want, like "no copying of data" while saving every single bit of that data onto the disk.

If this indeed has happened, the HDCP consortium can do only one sure thing to maintain control: to physically destroy all HDCP equipment in the world. I'm not sure if there is enough money on Earth to do that :-) The next best thing is to use legal means of blocking unauthorized hardware from the US market. Video aficionados still will be perfectly capable of imitating a secure device if they want to. The hardware with one or two HDCP interfaces is legal to own, and the firmware for it can't be suppressed.

[counterpunch]

Right.
But the point about HDMI is that it is a digital connection, like S/PDIF, and transmits digital copy protection information.

[battousai]

Hey Hollywierd...