SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
An alleged copy of an Ultra HD Blu-Ray disc has appeared online, leading to speculation that AACS 2.0 has been cracked:
While there is no shortage of pirated films on the Internet, Ultra-high-definition content is often hard to find. Not only are the file sizes enormous, but the protection is better than that deployed to regular content. UHD Blu-Ray Discs, for example, are protected with AACS 2.0 encryption which was long believed to unbreakable.
A few hours ago, however, this claim was put in doubt. Out of nowhere, a cracked copy of a UHD Blu-Ray Disc surfaced on the HD-focused BitTorrent tracker UltraHDclub. The torrent in question is a copy of the Smurfs 2 film and is tagged "The Smurfs 2 (2013) 2160p UHD Blu-ray HEVC Atmos 7.1-THRONE." This suggests that AACS 2.0 may have been "cracked" although there are no further technical details provided at this point. UltraHDclub is proud of the release, though, and boasts of having the "First Ultra HD Blu-ray Disc in the NET!"
[...] If the encryption has indeed been broken it will be bad news for AACS, the decryption licensing outfit that controls it. The company, founded by a group of movie studios and technology partners including Warner Bros, Disney, Microsoft and Intel, has put a lot of effort into making the technology secure.
"Atmos" refers to Dolby Atmos (see PDF list).
[Update: It is fitting to note that one of our most prolific story submitters happened to garner submission number 20,000! Congrats and many thanks to Takyon, and to all the rest of the SoylentNews community who have made this achievement possible. --martyb]
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 04 2017, @03:04PM (2 children)
Another possibility is that somebody got access to a pre-release master of the bluray that had no encryption to begin with.
Soylent just ran an article a couple of days ago about somebody who got into an unsecured system that contained a netflix show.
Will just have to see how many other UHBDs show up.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Thursday May 04 2017, @04:02PM (1 child)
Would a master have the Blu-ray file structure and 50-100 GB size of UHD Blu-ray?
There is a possibility that there could be a key revocation linked to this, which would be as good of a confirmation as anything.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 04 2017, @04:20PM
> Would a master have the Blu-ray file structure and 50-100 GB size of UHD Blu-ray?
Yes. Encryption has to be the absolute last step of the process because DRM prevents any further modifications. So if you get access to one generation before that final step it won't be encrypted.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 04 2017, @03:47PM (19 children)
how can something be securely encrypted when anyone can just buy a random machine, a random disk, and they can still view the contents of the disk?
my guess is that there are keys that are distributed to the manufacturers of the machines, and they are present in the machines somewhere. Is this wrong?
because if it's not, it's just a matter of enough patience, right?
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Immerman on Thursday May 04 2017, @04:02PM (4 children)
That's how it was done with DVDs at least, though it's not impossible they added some dial-home shenanigans as well. What makes it tricky is that the keys are generally stored in hardware inaccessible to normal software, with device manufacturers being required to jump through a bunch of hoops to make it as close to impossible to access them as they can, since it's essentially impossible to crack modern encryption unless there's a major flaw in the implementation.
As I recall, with DVDs that patience had to last until some manufacturer got careless and made it substantially easier for someone to extract the keys from their hardware, at which point the house of cards collapsed. I think I recall hearing that the blue-ray spec added regular key updates to prevent a similar collapse - if a key get leaked, that only effects old releases that used that key - new releases just move on to a new key and your player has to dial home to get that key before you can watch them.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Thursday May 04 2017, @04:26PM (2 children)
So that means your (everyone's) investment in a blue-ray disk is at risk of the key it uses is compromised. The older your disk gets, the more at risk it is of no longer working.
I was going to watch a blue-ray disk at a friend's one time and his player had to phone home first, which delayed everything considerably.
It seems like they want to give everyone as many reasons as possible to avoid blue-ray.
To transfer files: right-click on file, pick Copy. Unplug mouse, plug mouse into other computer. Right-click, paste.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 04 2017, @04:38PM (1 child)
So that means your (everyone's) investment in a blue-ray disk is at risk of the key it uses is compromised. The older your disk gets, the more at risk it is of no longer working.
That is incorrect.
They do not revoke per disc-keys.
They revoke per-player model keys, and new keys are made available to 'legit' players that phone home.
Its actually more complicated than that, lots more indirection involved.
But for the purposes of all non-pirates that is effectively how it works.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by edIII on Thursday May 04 2017, @05:08PM
That shit is why I never bought BluRay to begin with. I'm happy enough with the products the pirates put out, which are far far far superior.
For instance, my pirated content does not:
1) phone home
2) force me to watch other content
3) make me worry if I have the right encryption software
4) force me to watch that fucking FBI warning again. I've already wasted maybe 2 hours of my life just seeing that damn thing.
5) stop my family from watching the movie that night because we need to download an upgrade, burn it to disk, upgrade the firmware in the device, reboot the device, etc.
It's still easy enough to compensate them. Rent the damn thing from Redbox for 1 minute and return it. Compensation on the way ......
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Friday May 05 2017, @01:00AM
As I recall, with DVDs that patience had to last until some manufacturer got careless and made it substantially easier for someone to extract the keys from their hardware
Actually what happened is that a software based player didn't do their program coding properly so they could be debugged. And the result is known ;)
Besides if anyone really wants the key. It's right in the chip! But at current feature sizes at 45 nm and lower it gets tricky.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Thursday May 04 2017, @04:04PM (13 children)
There are existing Blu-ray "rips". But to my knowledge they all use the analog hole and end up with massively inflated file sizes and degraded video and audio quality.
Patience, yes, due to brute force decryption... and maybe quantum computing.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 4, Insightful) by MrNemesis on Thursday May 04 2017, @04:27PM
There's certainly plain-jane blu-ray rips; AnyDVD-HD (formerly slysoft, now redfox) will do that for you straight from the disc and a regular BD-ROM drive and will dump the streams out to disk, no analogue hole needed.
Although the groundwork was initially done through vulns in the encryption, because of the BD players mandate on "it must be online and receive firmware updates" (thus patching out software vulns as well as known-broken player keys) I believe most of the work on key retrieval work is now done by hardhacks on the players themselves.
The days of the content cartels allowing the means for playback of their precious IP on general-purpose operating systems are numbered. Everything will be streaming-online only, tied to an account linked to your credit card, only behind a wall of DRM running on a software stack you will not be permitted to control or even look at.
"To paraphrase Nietzsche, I have looked into the abyss and been sick in it."
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 04 2017, @04:31PM (11 children)
There are existing Blu-ray "rips". But to my knowledge they all use the analog hole and end up with massively inflated file sizes and degraded video and audio quality.
(1) No, all blu-ray rips are bit-for-bit copies because AACS 1.x was cracked many years ago
(2) Screen captures (aka "caps") aren't really the "analog hole" its decode-to-raw to send over HDMI, capture the HDMI bitstream (because HDMI is cracked), re-encode. All steps are digital.
(3) Caps are how netflix, amazon, hulu, etc videos are pirated (except during the times when their DRM is cracked and not yet updated which has happened a couple of time already) are roughly the same size as the original bitstream and not a significant degradation in quality. h264 is not lossless, but the higher quality the source material, the less loss there is in a single generation of re-encoding. For 99% of people the difference between the original bitstream and the cap is indistinguishable.
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Thursday May 04 2017, @04:38PM (6 children)
(2) Why bother cracking HDMI or AACS2, when you can buy a 4K TV for cheap, open it, and tap the screen driver's output?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 04 2017, @04:41PM (3 children)
Because most pirates aren't that hardcore.
Easier to buy a $100 box from china that does all the work for you.
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Thursday May 04 2017, @04:58PM (2 children)
True, but finding a TV with a broken screen to gut is a lot easier than cracking a modern encryption algorithm, if you want credit for being the first to upload a perfect digital copy of a movie.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 04 2017, @05:59PM
Yeah... that's not really how it works.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Friday May 05 2017, @01:04AM
The problem is that you then need to re-encode that data which causes data loss. Top that of with very high speed data issues.
(Score: 2) by epitaxial on Thursday May 04 2017, @05:44PM (1 child)
Ok you have access to this output. Its proprietary and meant to drive LCD panels. What do you feed it into?
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Thursday May 04 2017, @05:58PM
It's typically documented because only 3 companies make LCD panels, and digital so you can plug it into your FPGA eval board of course...
Definitely not for beginners, but simpler and more permanent than cracking keys.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 04 2017, @04:43PM (1 child)
Here is an online reencode of a phone cam video of another phone playing back a phone cam video of a security system monitor. Quality isn't something people actually care about.
https://www.liveleak.com/view?i=b87_1489092484 [liveleak.com]
(Score: 3, Touché) by bob_super on Thursday May 04 2017, @05:01PM
Given how many recent Hollywood productions obviously cut budgets by not bothering with a scenario, I'd say picture and audio quality are pretty much the only things left in major movies...
(Score: 2) by takyon on Thursday May 04 2017, @04:59PM (1 child)
I meant to say UHD/4J Blu-ray.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 1) by takyon on Thursday May 04 2017, @05:00PM
4(fuc)K
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Thursday May 04 2017, @03:51PM (1 child)
The sloth-men from the Orion constellation haven't stolen it, and taken it back to Orion. It's still right here on earth, where it belongs.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 04 2017, @06:00PM
Congratulations, that's the most intelligent thing you've ever said.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by epitaxial on Thursday May 04 2017, @05:40PM (5 children)
x265 should really help high resolution video. A 30 minute tv show encoded at 1080p with x265 is under 200Mb.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by takyon on Thursday May 04 2017, @05:57PM
720p is the sweet spot for me. Acceptable quality -- to the point where I doubt I'd need better for anything other than VR (TV/laptop/phone at a few inches distance), maximum quality my laptop could display anyway (I'm in the shitty 768p club), and much easier to decode than H.265 1080p on a 2011 CPU. Even smaller file sizes, with less than 100 MB possible for 22 minute content (as far as I can recall).
I have embraced the advice from that one troll and just stream almost everything nowadays. It's legal!
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 04 2017, @06:02PM
> A 30 minute tv show encoded at 1080p with x265 is under 200Mb.
That bitrate might be ok for a talking-head kind of show like jimmy kimmel or animation.
But anything like a regular tv show is still going to look crappy at that bitrate.
A lot better than h264 at that bitrate, but still crappy.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Friday May 05 2017, @01:07AM (2 children)
200 Mbit or 200 MByte?
(Score: 2) by takyon on Friday May 05 2017, @01:38AM (1 child)
200 MB aka 200 megabytes aka 200 million bytes.
We are doomed to see this mistake forever.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Friday May 05 2017, @01:51AM
Almost on par with "400 mhz" hmm.. 400 Mhz or perhaps 400 millihertz. Who knows! ;-)
Then it's that thing with base. 1000 000 or 1048 576 bytes.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 04 2017, @06:23PM (4 children)
I came to SN and saw a story about the first cracked copy of a UHD Blu-Ray film.
"Which film?" my mind inquired.
Scanning the summary for this information, the mind started to wander, "Was it the greatest film in history? A film worth sharing in glorious full UHD!"
"Better yet, what if it isn't?" the mind continued. "Maybe, at least, we will have some laughs" it concluded.
The torrent in question is a copy of the Smurfs 2 film
The mind was not dissapointed.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Thursday May 04 2017, @06:56PM (3 children)
From the TF comments: "Many people consider it the best 4k release yet."
I assumed that meant the technical details. I looked up a review:
http://ultrahd.highdefdigest.com/30720/thesmurfs2ultrahdbluray.html [highdefdigest.com]
So there you have it, a reason why Smurfs 2 should be the first 4K rip.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 04 2017, @08:43PM
wtf? let me explain what it means to impress someone with your big ass TV: show a film of a fly walking on the screen, and see if they get a fly swatter.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Friday May 05 2017, @01:10AM (1 child)
Does the release include high-dynamic-range video [wikipedia.org] data?
(Score: 2) by takyon on Friday May 05 2017, @01:32AM
Apparently, YES [referencehometheater.com]:
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 04 2017, @07:32PM (1 child)
hahaha. Right. Nothing is unbreakable, except my dependence on caffeine.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 04 2017, @10:15PM
And Bruce Willis.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 04 2017, @07:54PM
Fuck DRM, and anything/one attempting to use it.
I'm happy to pay for DRM free content, but fuck paying for DRM'd content, I'd rather pirate or avoid it.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 04 2017, @08:54PM (2 children)
Why in God's name would you choose "the Smurfs 2" for the test movie?
(Score: 2) by takyon on Thursday May 04 2017, @09:17PM
http://ultrahd.highdefdigest.com/30720/thesmurfs2ultrahdbluray.html [highdefdigest.com]
Might be more about using a film where the extra color depth actually matters.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultra_HD_Blu-ray [wikipedia.org]
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by meustrus on Friday May 05 2017, @02:21AM
Because piracy theoretically hurts movie sales, and junk like this ought to be as unprofitable as possible?
If there isn't at least one reference or primary source, it's not +1 Informative. Maybe the underused +1 Interesting?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 04 2017, @08:57PM
"The company, founded by a group of movie studios and technology partners including Warner Bros, Disney, Microsoft and Intel, has put a lot of effort into making the technology secure."
thanks a lot! now my keyboard is floating off the desk in a river of tears!
(Score: 2) by digitalaudiorock on Thursday May 04 2017, @09:24PM (3 children)
The annoying part of these content wars is that there seem to be no really good sources for streaming recent movies outside of pay TV subscriptions. I record HD off an antenna with MythTV and will NEVER have any interest in any pay TV. However I very much would be glad to pay even the price of a movie ticket to stream HD movies. From what I see however options like Netflix and Amazon quite simply suck balls, with mostly a bunch of B-movie crap, and they go out of their way to keep the degree to which they suck a deep dark secret.
I can't be alone with that one. My guess is that this, to a large extent, is because of the movie industry being afraid of anything that might cut into Blu-ray sales. They may be creating a situation where the only ones who can afford to offer that are the players who are already billing you $100+ a month.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 04 2017, @09:32PM
https://hdonline.to/ [hdonline.to]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 04 2017, @10:20PM
netflix and amazon are only crap if you have to watch brand new blockbuster type releases
their back catalog is pretty good
(Score: 2) by meustrus on Friday May 05 2017, @02:26AM
If you're willing to pay movie ticket prices, you can rent through iTunes.
If there isn't at least one reference or primary source, it's not +1 Informative. Maybe the underused +1 Interesting?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 04 2017, @10:18PM
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RedFox [wikipedia.org]