AACS is a sieve, ready the new crack

There is no peace for AACS LA, the consortium that develops and promotes the most attacked anti-copy technology since the days of “CSS” on DVD. After the revocation of the processing key capable of unlocking all HD DVD and Blu-ray discs placed on the market so far, and the subsequent reopening of the padlocks by AnyDVD HD, it is now a new processing key has been published online capable of unlocking recent video discs without the need for proprietary and paid software such as AnyDVD HD.

To make it public is arnezami , now a famous geek who discovered the existence of the processing key, and does so once again from the Doom9 forum, which has always been the front line in the endless war between hackers and the entertainment industry. The key, as far as can be read in the thread opened by arnezami, was originally communicated by the user “BtCB” on the weblog of the famous DRM expert and acclaimed Princeton professor, Ed Felten.

The key appeared in the comments of the “infamous” post generate-codes, put online by Felten to ridicule the claim of the industry to own the copyright on a 128-bit hexadecimal string. “How much do you bet the new processing key is?” hilarious BtCB comments in his revealing post, and some speculate that the break-AACS key came out just using the script built into the teacher’s weblog .

“It’s a race. AACS is losing, ”comments Cory Doctorow direct on Boing Boing. “The amazing thing – continues Doctorow – is that the entertainment industry continues to throw dollars down the DRM pit”, consciously making its products “less attractive to consumers with the magical and non-functional anti-copy technology”.

But in addition to the efforts of those who enjoy beating pro-bono protection systems that cost commitment, time and money, AACS is about to be threatened by a legal dispute over purely patent matters: the specialized cryptographic company Certicom has just sued in court Sony Corporation, for the alleged unauthorized use of its find Elliptic Curve Cryptography (ETC).

The complex question – to which BetaNews dedicates an in-depth study – concerns two different technologies, which have been registered by Certicom with the American patent office for years. The first, registered with the number 6,563,928 , precisely concerns the ECCs (of which a tutorial is available on the company’s website), whose dictates would have been incorporated into Sony products that take advantage of AACS protection, including PlayStation 3, Blu-ray players, computers of the Vaio line and so on. step. The second patent, registration number 6,704,870 would affect the “Digital signatures on a smartcard” technology, also used by Sony in its devices.

The encryption system behind ECC would then be employed by the Digital Transmission Content Protection (DTCP) protection technology. Together with Sony, they are developers of the standard Intel, Hitachi, Matsushita and Toshiba (founder of the HD DVD hi-def standard promotion group). If Certicom’s allegations prove correct, each of these companies and their underlying products they would be liable to court charges for patent infringement .

Certicom brags diplomacy, claiming it has every intention of solving the problem through an out-of-court settlement with Sony. But she still declares herself ready to proceed towards “the next phase” of the controversy, therefore going to the final legal confrontation should the Japanese multinational prove less reasonable than expected.

Incidentally, a well-known user of ECC technology, BetaNews reports, is the US federal government. That Certicom is ready to denounce the USA too? Unlikely, given that, at least in this case, the NSA is a legitimate user and pays for a regular license to exploit the cryptosystem .

Alfonso Maruccia