Microsoft's Zune Surrenders to Hackers, Gets Its DRM Cracked

It would seem that just about anything that's got the word "Microsoft" in its name is a target for hackers, especially if the respective product (either software or hardware) is considered by the company from Redmond to be unbreakable. And the latest example of this state of facts is related to Microsoft's more or less famous Zune portable media player, renowned mostly for its relatively low sales compared to its direct competitor, the iPod, as well as its very nasty DRM protection system.

Thus, a user that calls himself (or herself) Divine Tao has posted on the Doom9 forums a new tool that, according to his/her own statement, "introduces a new tool for uncovering the individual keys from Microsoft's DRM blackbox components ("IBX"), up to version 11.0.6000.6324.", plus a download link and several instructions for making the whole application work. Moreover, according to the people from Ars Technica, who actually got to test the tool, it works absolutely perfectly, on either the XP or Vista operating systems.

As you might know, this is not the first time Microsoft's infamous DRM system is under attack. The same thing happened last summer, when a user called "viodentia" brought about himself the wrath of Microsoft by launching the FairUse4WM, a program that exploited what appeared to be quite a serious backdoor into the Windows Media DRM. The actual "war" between Microsoft and viodentia took some ugly turns, with the company from Redmond threatening to sue, as it considered the whole deal to be a clear case of stolen intellectual property. Nevertheless, things cooled down after the initial conflict, since it appears the company from Redmond wasn't able to identify the user.

However, it seems that the whole show will start all over again, since the app developed by "Divine Tao" (a very clear anagram of the name viodentia) is far more dangerous than the FairUse4WM on its own. We're waiting now for Microsoft's response to this new security threat, and we'll keep you posted as things unfold.

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