14 DAY TRIAL // AACS Licensing Authority has officially confirmed the fact that the protection used on Blu-ray and HD DVDs has been compromised. According to the consortium including movie studios and technology companies that has backing the encryption system for high definitions DVDs, hackers have been able to steal title keys via faulty software on DVD players. Following the initial hacks, HD DVD movies have begun appearing on Peer-toPeer networks around the world.
A representative of the Advanced Access Content System (AACS) Licensing Authority additionally acknowledged the fact that the stolen title keys together with decrypted content have been uploaded on p2p websites. Moreover, there is also a HD DVD Decrypting Tool available that circumvents the Advanced Access Content System encryption specification.
For the time being, the large size of the files that result from decrypting Blu-ray and HD DVD movies, together with the high cost of the hardware and of the media, offer the AACS Licensing Authority plenty of time to resolve the issue before the phenomenon gets out of hand. And in fact, the AACS Licensing Authority representative revealed that the problem will be tackled immediately in order to limit the impact of the hacks.
According to the AACS Licensing Authority, the hackers did not break the AACS encryption system; however, they managed to extract the keys from the high definition devices. A course of action has not yet been defined in order to counteract the HD DVD hacks, but the AACS Licensing Authority stated that no response measure has been ruled out.