14 DAY TRIAL // The AACS (Advanced Access Content System) encryption specification designed to limit unauthorized copying on HD-DVD and Blu-ray disks has been bypassed. It has started with a video fragment uploaded on YouTube that demonstrated the decryption of a HD DVD disc containing Stanley Kubrick's 1987 film, Full Metal Jacket, with AACS copy protection.
And while the AACS Licensing Authority announced that it has debuted investigation into the legitimacy of the AACS circumvention method, Muslix64, the hacker that authored the AACS exploit has also made available a utility dubbed BackupHDDVD.
"The BackupHDDVD circumvention tool will last as long as insecure players will exist... And insecure players will always exist, in fact you can extract keys from any player! Some players are just easier to extract the key from. Being lazy, I prefer to extract keys from an insecure player than a secure one. And the AACS spec says "Device keys must be protected!" but they did not said that about volume key, fatal mistake!" Muslix64 said.
Both HD DVD and Blu-ray discs share the encryption system and the Digital Rights Management copy protection technology. In this regard, the Advanced Access Content System (AACS) has become and integer part of HD DVDs and Blu-Ray Discs with backing from Walt Disney Co., Intel Corp., Microsoft Corp., Toshiba Corp. and Sony Corp.
"When they design AACS, they assume people will look for the device keys. I don't care about device keys. I do care about volume key. Having the device keys mean that you have to re-implements all the complex crypto and do the full AACS process. I leave all this dirty job to the player and recover only the volume key", Muslix64 added.
BackupHDDVD was designed to decrypt high-definition file formats. It is by no means a crack. "I did not break AACS, but I find a way to decrypt movies and I have bypassed all the revocation system," explained Muslix64. BackupHDDVD uses the private keys from the disk to get the hardware to run the runtime decryption process, while bypassing the AACS's revocation system. BackupHDDVD decrypts the content on a HD DVD or on a Blu-ray using legitimate keys.
"They (AACS and friends) will eventually get their hands on this program, look at the device keys and revoke them. Making that player unable to play new titles. But the author of this program can pre-extract a bunch of devices keys from different players and release them, one at the time, when the previous one have been blacklisted. The AACS spec says "Device keys must be protected!" so I suppose they put more effort in protecting these keys then the volume key in memory." commented Muslix64.
BackupHDDVD 1.00 was tested by Softpedia as being 100% Free and is available for download here.