Next-gen DVD formats fall to the first of many hacks [Archive]

Phanto

07-08-2006, 10:33 AM

You can read the article at Arstechnica (www.arstechnica.com) or here (http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20060707-7214.html)

The folks at c't magazine have discovered a simple tool for beating the content protection on Blu-ray and HD-DVD formats: the print screen button. By pressing the print screen button once per frame, you can capture an entire movie at full resolution. Of course, you'd want to automate this task, but c't has shown that it can be done. They're promising more details in the forthcoming print version of their magazine.

Well so much for the content protection for Bluray and HD-DVD.

Varsity

07-08-2006, 01:44 PM

No overlays? What a FUBAR.

Qoz

07-08-2006, 01:54 PM

By pressing the print screen button once per frame, you can capture an entire movie at full resolutionTrue, but the resolution shown on the screen is a product of compressed data. To make a usable copy you would have to re-encode the images in some format, and you loose detail. It's like opening a JPEG image and saving it again.

If you want to distribute HD on the internet, you would compress it pretty hard (to make the files small), so this loss of detail probably won't make a difference anyway.

GrinR

07-08-2006, 02:36 PM

Unbelievable!

not.

gzsfrk

07-08-2006, 02:36 PM

Actually, depending on how they implement the final drivers, this may or may not hold true, at least in Windows XP/Vista/etc. For instance, I don't know specifically how it works, but a while back I was wanting to do a screen cap on a DivX file I had without having to download any external utility, so I figured I could just have the movie playing in Media Player, pause it at the desired frame, and then use the PrtScr (or Alt-PrtScr to only capture the active window) button, then paste the capture into an image editor. However, for some reason, while it would capture all the surrounding part of the screen (Media Player borders, etc.), it would capture the frame from the movie itself. I presume it's something to do with the way the DivX decoder is implemented, although I'm by no means certain. I just know that it frustrated me to the point of going to the web and finding a screencap utility. :)

Vandenh

07-08-2006, 03:08 PM

Well... I would think there was NO way to prevent people from copying pixels that are in some part of memory in your system??? A quick custom driver would do the trick? If there are real bits and bytes somewhere, someone will be able to copy them :) It is just not the most elegant way... brute force :)

mkelehan

07-08-2006, 03:20 PM

Zeal

07-08-2006, 03:23 PM

Copy protection will always fail.

Rafer

07-08-2006, 03:56 PM

However, for some reason, while it would capture all the surrounding part of the screen (Media Player borders, etc.), it would capture the frame from the movie itself. I presume it's something to do with the way the DivX decoder is implemented, although I'm by no means certain. I just know that it frustrated me to the point of going to the web and finding a screencap utility. :)

Actually the reason for that is hardware acceleration, your video card is doing the decoding and passes it straight to your screen, Windows doesn't see it as it's a kind of overlay, turning off hardware acceleration can get rid of that.

As for copying next-gen formats, I think the studios might have figured out internally that's it's near impossible to prevent copying and that's why they aren't rushing to include HDCP.

Captain Awesome

07-08-2006, 04:46 PM

hahahah :D

Lord Nerdious

07-08-2006, 04:50 PM

So falls the unhackable next-gen media. Next, the future-proof PS3.

Stormwatcher

07-08-2006, 05:15 PM

that's so stupid.

Xenkylm

07-08-2006, 05:27 PM

Yeah, but at least n00bs will still pay full price. As long as someone's getting screwed, i'm sure the movie industry is happy.

Namielus

07-08-2006, 05:28 PM

The only way to prevent someone from copying it is to prevent us from seeing it. As long as there is a way to view that data (no matter the form) we can write custom overlays, we can write screen/audio capturing programs, or even write custom device drivers. No form of media is safe.

:P

antoniogaud

07-08-2006, 05:32 PM

Billion dollars wasted.

What's next from Sony's skunk works?

Xenkylm

07-08-2006, 05:42 PM

I'd imagine they're already hard at work on a highly-plausible missile defense shield

Morangie

07-08-2006, 06:02 PM

I'd imagine they're already hard at work on a highly-plausible missile defense shield

They don't need to bother, the power of a million linked cell processors will simply take control of the US goverment system as and when its needed.

Wonka

07-08-2006, 06:42 PM

This is really big news.

The biggest/strongest selling point for the next gen formats was that movie studios were excited to have a new format that was secure and hacker proof. News like this could REALLY slow down the roll out of new titles to next gen movie formats...

pooty-tang

07-08-2006, 06:45 PM

screw next-gen movie formats. i'm not really in the mood to have an unnecessary format shoved in my face for the next year. and unhackable? unrealistic. if man can make it, man can hack it. accept it. dvd is, in my humble opinion, the best multimedia format we've ever had. ohhhh.....a little higher res, a little better sound support, a lot more expensive, a lot more kiss my ass i'm not buying in for a long while, or at least not until i really, really need to. seems a little early to push a new and only marginally better format on us if you ask me.

Lord Nerdious

07-08-2006, 06:46 PM

But these bootlegged HD movies still wont be playable of HDMI right?

Phanto

07-08-2006, 06:51 PM

Copy protection will always fail.

True, they can't prevent the inevitable.

fndarkone

07-08-2006, 07:46 PM

Yeah, but at least n00bs will still pay full price. As long as someone's getting screwed, i'm sure the movie industry is happy.
no. the movie industry isnt happy until everyone is getting screwed.

as far as copy protection goes, the movie industry was pleased with DVD because it was encrypted. no more vhs to vhs transfers, they thought. then some russian dude cracked the decryption and along came dvddecrypt, clonedvd, dvdxcopy, etc. the same will happen to the next gen formats. some smart guy (or guys-maybe even a girl) will figure it out and that will be that.

antoniogaud

07-08-2006, 07:54 PM

I checked out (again) the newest BluRay/HD-DVD displays at the local Tweeter store (High End AV) and it is very difficult to notice a major difference between BluRay/HD-DVD and normal DVD. The upscale DVD players had quality which looked better in many cases.

I am also sad to say that the the Samsung BluRay display had a demonstration video deliberately misrepresenting the quality of normal DVDs compared to BluRay. They made normal DVDs appear akin to watching TV through a screen door with an intentional and totally innacurate downgrade of DVD quality.

It just goes to show the level of desperation that they have reached to convine us that this is a good bargain.

digitalErich

07-08-2006, 07:59 PM

I am also sad to say that the the Samsung BluRay display had a demonstration video deliberately misrepresenting the quality of normal DVDs compared to BluRay. They made normal DVDs appear akin to watching TV through a screen door with an intentional and totally innacurate downgrade of DVD quality.

Haha, I saw that at Best Buy and asked myself "who the hell do they really think they're fooling?" At least the other stores try harder. They put two TVs next to each other and crank up the brightness on the display that's playing the Blu-Ray. OMG, Blu-Ray is soo much brighter and more colorful than DVD...jackasses.

inmostlight

07-08-2006, 08:38 PM

Last of the Red Hot Mamas

07-08-2006, 09:27 PM

Without the ICT there's little preventing you from just recording the output via component video, which would be a hell of a lot easier than capturing 150,000 individual frames. (Both next-gen formats incorporate Macrovision to prevent analog copying, but it's easy to circumvent.) You would be limited to 1080i, but you could deinterlace it and get decent results if you absolutely need to have a 1080p image. Of course I'm not sure this means anything, since the only people interested in HD DVD/Blu-ray at this point are the people most likely to notice the difference between an original disc and a recompressed copy and wouldn't think anything of dropping $30 for a legit copy.

Beelzebud

07-08-2006, 09:31 PM

If someone can make it.

Someone can unmake it.

There will NEVER be a medium that keeps data safe. If I can access the data, I can copy it.

Zeal

07-08-2006, 09:35 PM

You are an imperfect medium, created by an imperfect being. Finding your weakness is only a matter of time.
Damn, Sony got told off.

Zanzibar

07-08-2006, 10:01 PM

Wonka

07-08-2006, 10:15 PM

I don't understand why this "hack" is getting so much hype. All they discovered is that you can take screenshots. You'd still have to then stitch everything back together and re-encode it into a new movie that happens to be SILENT since it doesn't capture the soundtrack(s), subtitles, or anything else. Lame. This is a functionally useless exploit.

Or they could just analog record the damn sound channels using some high quality sound equipment and then re-encode them. If they did it right I doubt that even an audiophile could notice

Someone else mentioned that you might not get good playback without the HDMI. But Sony and MS have already guaranteed that for YEARS many Blueray and HD-DVD players will only have analog output anyhow.

This format is HACKED. Hacked and DOA.

At least before this, you could think that if it was HARD to crack that hollywood might put their full weight behind it (maybe release new films onto these formats ONLY just to ensure that people could not pirate stuff). But now, THAT idea has formally just DIED. Odds are that NOW they will release LESS stuff onto next gen video formats in the interest of keeping hot IP like "Star Wars" only available in low res formats (untill something more secure comes along).

I used to believe that these formats would fail with consumers. Now I believe that they will fail with absolutely everyone....

tombofsoldier

07-08-2006, 10:46 PM

Owned :) _

Also, the sound wouldn't be a problem, many recording programs have a setting that allows you to record whatever is being played on your speakers.

Last of the Red Hot Mamas

07-08-2006, 11:57 PM

Any low-grade programmer could create, in about an hour, a program that could autonomously pull this off. Once that hits the net...

AVAST!
http://orangecow.org/pythonet/yellowbeard.jpg

At least until they revoke the keys of the software players that allow it. This is why the hardcore pirates are infinitely more interested in actually cracking the copy protection than in exploiting loopholes -- as long as AACS and BD+ are unbroken, the studios and the hardware manufacturers will have an easy out, and defeating that protection is far preferable to impractical methods like this (coming up with an automated method isn't the problem, it's more about the processing time and the ~1 TB of disk space that would be required to pull it off).

Qoz

07-09-2006, 12:53 AM

As for copying next-gen formats, I think the studios might have figured out internally that's it's near impossible to prevent copying and that's why they aren't rushing to include HDCP.Thats not the primary reason. If they pushed HDCP right now nobody would buy the media, because only few people have both players and screens supporting it. It would be suicide. The dilemma the studios are facing, is this very scenatio we have now - they cannot introduce DRM tech right away (because people need to buy the tech first) and when they CAN activate it later, the DRM has been out for too long so hackers have cracked it already.

easi

07-09-2006, 07:39 AM

If it can be seen, heard or in some other way experienced, it can be copied.

Beelzebud

07-09-2006, 08:55 AM

#define m(i)(x[i]^s[i+84])<<
unsigned char x[5],y,s[2048];main(n){for(read(0,x,5);read(0,s,n=2048);write(1, s
,n))if(s[y=s[13]%8+20]/16%4==1){int i=m(1)17^256+m(0)8,k=m(2)0,j=m(4)17^m(3)9^k
*2-k%8^8,a=0,c=26;for(s[y]-=16;--c;j*=2)a=a*2^i&1,i=i/2^j&1<<24;for(j=127;++j<n
;c=c>y)c+=y=i^i/8^i>>4^i>>12,i=i>>8^y<<17,a^=a>>14,y=a^a*8^a<<6,a=a>>8^y<<9,k=s
[j],k="7Wo~'G_\216"[k&7]+2^"cr3sfw6v;*k+>/n."[k>>4]*2^k*257/8,s[j]=k^(k&k*2&34)
*6^c+~y;}}
What you are looking at right there is C+ code that can decrypt a DVD movie.

It's only a matter of time before something like this is out there for the newer formats.

Winterwolves

07-09-2006, 12:38 PM

heh... by the time next gen dvds become current gen you will be able to pirate them. wait a second.. that is just like every form of media that has ever been released.

pacman

07-09-2006, 03:16 PM

There's an old saying I heard a long time ago:
"Locks are meant to keep the honest, honest. What man has made man can break"
And it rings true every time game or movie companies try to introduce some way to prevent pirates from getting products for free...the only difference now is that most of us don't even want these new formats so many people are trying to pirate them to actively protest their creation. Hell, I buy every movie and game I watch/play but I will not buy fuckin HDVD or Blu-Ray...i hope there's a PS3 hack the first week it's out

51|RandoM

07-09-2006, 07:15 PM

Billion dollars wasted.

What's next from Sony's skunk works?

Omg, you're so insightful. Obviously we can blame Sony for HDCP.
...lol...

If you really want to blame people, by all means feel free to point your finger at the MPIAA or the RIAA. Pointing it just at Sony is -stupid- and obviously just another element of the current "cool to be anti-Sony" wave.

Now, to answer the question: "Why do they keep making protection standards that just end up being cracked?".

Answer: They know that is going to happen. It isn't the crackers---or by extension the people technologically sophisticated enough to use cracks---that they're trying to stop. They're trying to make it just inconvenient enough for Joe Sixpack that he won't bother copying stuff.

The current HDCP bullshit is a good case in point of that. Sure we know it is going to be cracked, but every other post about HDCP is somebody saying something like, "make sure your equipment supports it."

inflamez

07-10-2006, 01:57 AM

Zeal

07-10-2006, 02:01 AM

That must be the most.... stupid... hack... EVER. Ridiculous. What kind of hacker would even publish such a thing?

l33t-haxx0r: OMG. L00k wut I h4ve found, dud3!!! PRINT SCR33N FTW! I are teh H4X!

Coming up next: Hacker found a way to record every sort of sound with his tape recorder. News at 11:00.
Are you a fucking retard.

A program could be written in five minutes to automatically hit print screen at every frame. You could literally copy an HD-DVD movie in a matter of minutes.

inflamez

07-10-2006, 02:18 AM

Are you a fucking retard.

A program could be written in five minutes to automatically hit print screen at every frame. You could literally copy an HD-DVD movie in a matter of minutes.

What exactly was wrong with my post? Why the hate?

This is not a HACK. It's a program that takes screenshots for every frame and another one that re-assembles it into a full movie. WITHOUT sound, which has to be recorded / extracted seperatly.

Everything that can be SEEN or HEARD can be recorded one way or another. This is not newsworthy.

It would be a hack if he made it possible to copy the pure video/audio-data from HD-DVD / BluRay to your HD. But as it stands now, it's just silly to even consider rippnig a movie like this. It won't take minutes to rip an entire movie. With 23 frames / second and movies with 2-3 hours, it will take quite a while to put everything together into one file. Then you have to record the sound and sync it with the video. Have fun.

Zeal

07-10-2006, 02:22 AM

It's called an exploit.

inflamez

07-10-2006, 02:27 AM

It's called an exploit.

Fine, call it an exploit.

For me it's the same stupid thing like console users taking screenshots with their fucking camera. Only this time it's digital, and you can write a program for it. Woohoo! Have fun ripping.

rahvii

07-10-2006, 08:07 AM

Worst transition ever, oh god. Everything with all this HD formats is comming out so bad, from lack of standars, lack of content, lack of actual inovation, the main feature is overrated for common users wich equals to no mass market penetration...

Beelzebud

07-10-2006, 08:31 AM

Fine, call it an exploit.

For me it's the same stupid thing like console users taking screenshots with their fucking camera. Only this time it's digital, and you can write a program for it. Woohoo! Have fun ripping.

The entire process to make a full res movie, with sound, would be a fairly easy thing to automate. I don't know wtf that has to do with people taking camera shots of their console games, but whatever. You seem to have it all figured out.

inflamez

07-10-2006, 01:16 PM

The entire process to make a full res movie, with sound, would be a fairly easy thing to automate. I don't know wtf that has to do with people taking camera shots of their console games, but whatever. You seem to have it all figured out.

What I wanted to say is, that you can always take pictures of each single frame. No matter how good the DRM of any given format is. If you can see it, you will be able to record it. In this case (bluray hack *lol*) it's just digitial / without loss of quality.

Am I the only one who can't find the super awesome facts in this c't article? Whatever ..... *back to more useful topics*