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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: 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.
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(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.