HD-DVD/Blu-Ray cracker muslix64 interviewed

Cory Doctorow 3:54 pm Fri Jan 26, 2007

Slyck has a fascinating interview with muslix64, the hacker who broke HD-DVD and Blu-Ray (he broke Blu-Ray without even owning a Blu-Ray player!). He says he didn't care about DRM until it stopped him from doing something legit, and then he broke it wide open in an act of "fair use enforcement":

IMHO, AACS is totally busted. The only thing I can see for now to prevent the attack I have described is to put different keys on every disc! It will cost a fortune for the manufacturing, so I'm not sure they will go that way…

People say I have not broken AACS, but players. But players are part of this system! And a system is only as strong as his weakest link. Even if players become more secure, key extraction will always be possible.

I know many people of the industry try to cover up this breach, by saying I have only poked a tiny hole in AACS, but it is more serious than that. Only the future will tell.

The AACS security layer is almost the same for both HD-DVD and Blu-ray, so they are both busted for good.

The only extra security layer is for the Blu-ray format, and it's called BD+. BD+ is not there yet, and I don't know when it will be. May be my "exploits" will speed up the adoption of BD+, we will see…

(Thanks, Ray!)

See also Report: HD-DVD copy protection defeated

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