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Alleged HDCP Encryption Crack is No Pirate Bonanza

By David Kravets - Wired.com - September 15, 2010

Hollywood studios and the maker and licensing authority of the High-Bandwidth Digital Content Protection standard were scrambling Wednesday to determine whether a so-called “master key” to the anti-piracy encryption technology has leaked onto the internet.

HDCP is a copy protection scheme that encrypts high-definition video travelling between set-top boxes and televisions. The technology, built by Intel, was approved by the Federal Communications Commission in 2004, and is a standard feature in televisions, cable boxes, satellite receivers and Blu-ray players in much of the modern world.

On Monday, a purported master crypto key for HDCP appeared on the clipboard site Pastebin, and has since been mirrored on hundreds of other websites, in a scene reminiscent of the 1999 crack of the CSS Content Scrambling System that once protected DVDs from copying.

“We are investigating whether this is real or a rumor,” said Howard Gantman, a Motion Picture Association of America vice president, in a telephone interview Wednesday. That sentiment was echoed by an Intel spokesman. “We are still investigating the facts behind the stories on this. Until we’ve completed that, we don’t have more to say than this,” wrote Tom Waldrop, in an e-mail.

But even if the code is real, it might not immediately foster piracy as did the cracking of CSS on DVDs more than a decade ago. Unlike CSS, which could be implemented in software, HDCP requires custom hardware. The threat model for Hollywood, then, isn’t that a hacker could use the master key to generate a DeCSS-like program for HD, but that shady hardware makers, perhaps in China, might eventually create and sell black-market HDCP cards that would allow the free copying of protected high-def content.

“You could make a device that would impersonate a TV, that would receive the bits and save them to a hard drive,” said Paul Kocher, chief scientist at Cryptography Research in San Francisco. “I don’t think it is going to have an impact on Hollywood’s bottom line anytime soon.”

Kocher suspected somebody in the business of making HDCP-compatible devices, who had access to at least 50 individual keys, was able to reconstruct the master key — if it turns out to be real.

“This was bound to happen, soon or later,” Kocher said.


Here is a part of the alleged HDCP "master key" code

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Update on HD code crack::

Intel Thursday confirmed that the "master key" to anti-piracy software for movies shown on HDTVs, Blu-ray players and set-top boxes circulating on the Internet in recent days is indeed the real thing. But, says the company, which created it, pirates will have an almost-impossible time putting it to work.

"Based on the testing we’ve done, it does appear that this circumvention is real,"said Tom Waldrop, an Intel spokesman.

However, he said, in order for the code to be "misused....someone would have to make a computer chip from it and put that chip into a device" that would play pirated movies.

"Creating a computer chip is a very expensive proposition," he said. "But if someone wanted to manufacture a chip and build devices that could listen in, eavesdrop on content, and obtain it that way, illegally, they would have to do that."

In other words, just having the master key to the code for HDCP (High-bandwidth Digital Content Protection), the anti-piracy software used on every device that plays high-def content to prevent copying of movies, is not enough to make gazillion copies — or even one — of, say, "Resident Evil: Afterlife" or "Inception."

News of the master key's availability was spread, in part, via Twitter with links to a website containing the code to unlock the copy protection "master key." Hollywood was in no way happy to hear that. The movie industry, looking for new revenue sources, is planning to start streaming films to consumers at home for viewing on high-def sets while those movies are still in theaters as well.

Waldrop said Intel is "still investigating exactly how (the crack) was achieved." But, he said. "It's important to note that HDCP as a technology remains a very effective way to protect digital entertainment, especially in conjunction with the licensing agreements that are used, and the legal enforcement mechanisms that are available whenever circumvention issues do arise."

And, "should any circumvention devices appear on the market — if someone uses this to try to create hardware that could take advantage of this hack, there are legal remedies that can and will be pursued," he said. Those legal remedies include prosecution under the federal Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

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