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Hackers hit first level
By Paul Sweeting -- Video Business, 12/8/2006
DEC. 8 | Now that both HD DVD and Blu-ray Disc are on the market, the real games can begin.
Both format camps are counting heavily on a boost from the videogame industry: Sony’s PlayStation 3 is expected to serve as Blu-ray’s Trojan Horse, riding the popularity of game consoles to build the hardware base for the high-definition movie format.
The HD DVD camp is looking to Microsoft, whose Xbox 360 game platform now supports an add-on HD DVD drive, giving interested gamers a low-cost way into the high-def movie market.
But the respective alliances with game platforms has also been problematic for the movie formats.
Not only did production problems with Blu-ray drives cause a delay in the launch of PS3, but the priority given to the game platform by Sony meant shortages of blue-laser diodes for stand-alone Blu-ray players.
For HD DVD, the absence of an HDMI connection on the Xbox meant a less-than-optimal presentation of the format’s capabilities.
Now that gamers are finally getting their hands on the PS3 and the Xbox add-on, however, new problems are starting to emerge for Blu-ray and HD DVD.
Right after Thanksgiving, stories began popping up on geek sites around the Internet describing how to use a PS3 console to “dump†Blu-ray movies to the console’s hard drive using the Linux operating system supported by PS3.
Hackers have apparently figured out how to move Blu-ray images to an ISO file—a kind of digital image of the disc—using the Linux install procedure (here’s how to do it if your conscience will let you).
The first movie to be “dumped†in this fashion, apparently, was Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby, which came bundled with PS3 players. The ISO file reportedly weighed in at 20.9GB, so you could only get the whole file if you have the 60GB hard drive version of PS3.
Because the ISO file is a complete image of the disc, the movie remains encrypted on the hard drive. You can’t copy the file to another disc or transfer it off the hard drive.
All you can do with it is play it back on your PS3.
At this point, the Blu-ray dump is more a party trick than a serious threat. But it would be a great irony if the PS3 turned out to provide hackers with a tool to someday crack Blu-ray wide open.
Hackers have also found a way to turn the Xbox 360 against HD DVD, although the method is neither as practical or as elegant.
A week after word of the PS3 trick for Blu-ray began to circulate, stories appeared on the Internet about how to use the Xbox to capture an unencrypted copy of an HD DVD movie.
The method takes advantage of the Xbox’s lack of an encrypted HDMI connection to add a high-def capture card to the unit’s component analog outputs—essentially taking advantage of the “analog hole.â€
Because the signal at that point is uncompressed, however, and comes pouring out of the component cable at something like 6GB per minute of video, the method requires massive amounts of storage with extremely fast write capability, not something the average Xbox owner is going to have lying around the house (again, here’s how to do it).
If the studio had set the Image Constrain Token on the disc, moreover, the signal going over the component cable would have been down-resolved, making the whole exercise pointless.
Neither the PS3 nor Xbox workarounds represent genuine hacks of the copy-protection on Blu-ray or HD DVD. In both cases, the encryption remains intact.
But they illustrate the inherent vulnerabilities that arise when you try to make platforms and formats interoperable.
The PS3 is designed to read data off the hard drive as well as the disc during game play, which means data has to be able to move seamlessly between the two.
That makes game play faster and more compelling, but it’s not a natural environment for a disc that is never supposed to be copied, in whole or in part, without permission.
The Xbox 360 was not originally designed to output 1080p high-def images, so it lacks the HDMI connections such images typically travel over.
The only way to do it is to use unprotected analog outputs—the sort of environment HD DVD discs were designed to avoid.
But with consumers increasingly demanding such interoperability, those vulnerabilities will be a fact of life.
© 2006, Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All Rights Reserved.
By Paul Sweeting -- Video Business, 12/8/2006
DEC. 8 | Now that both HD DVD and Blu-ray Disc are on the market, the real games can begin.
Both format camps are counting heavily on a boost from the videogame industry: Sony’s PlayStation 3 is expected to serve as Blu-ray’s Trojan Horse, riding the popularity of game consoles to build the hardware base for the high-definition movie format.
The HD DVD camp is looking to Microsoft, whose Xbox 360 game platform now supports an add-on HD DVD drive, giving interested gamers a low-cost way into the high-def movie market.
But the respective alliances with game platforms has also been problematic for the movie formats.
Not only did production problems with Blu-ray drives cause a delay in the launch of PS3, but the priority given to the game platform by Sony meant shortages of blue-laser diodes for stand-alone Blu-ray players.
For HD DVD, the absence of an HDMI connection on the Xbox meant a less-than-optimal presentation of the format’s capabilities.
Now that gamers are finally getting their hands on the PS3 and the Xbox add-on, however, new problems are starting to emerge for Blu-ray and HD DVD.
Right after Thanksgiving, stories began popping up on geek sites around the Internet describing how to use a PS3 console to “dump†Blu-ray movies to the console’s hard drive using the Linux operating system supported by PS3.
Hackers have apparently figured out how to move Blu-ray images to an ISO file—a kind of digital image of the disc—using the Linux install procedure (here’s how to do it if your conscience will let you).
The first movie to be “dumped†in this fashion, apparently, was Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby, which came bundled with PS3 players. The ISO file reportedly weighed in at 20.9GB, so you could only get the whole file if you have the 60GB hard drive version of PS3.
Because the ISO file is a complete image of the disc, the movie remains encrypted on the hard drive. You can’t copy the file to another disc or transfer it off the hard drive.
All you can do with it is play it back on your PS3.
At this point, the Blu-ray dump is more a party trick than a serious threat. But it would be a great irony if the PS3 turned out to provide hackers with a tool to someday crack Blu-ray wide open.
Hackers have also found a way to turn the Xbox 360 against HD DVD, although the method is neither as practical or as elegant.
A week after word of the PS3 trick for Blu-ray began to circulate, stories appeared on the Internet about how to use the Xbox to capture an unencrypted copy of an HD DVD movie.
The method takes advantage of the Xbox’s lack of an encrypted HDMI connection to add a high-def capture card to the unit’s component analog outputs—essentially taking advantage of the “analog hole.â€
Because the signal at that point is uncompressed, however, and comes pouring out of the component cable at something like 6GB per minute of video, the method requires massive amounts of storage with extremely fast write capability, not something the average Xbox owner is going to have lying around the house (again, here’s how to do it).
If the studio had set the Image Constrain Token on the disc, moreover, the signal going over the component cable would have been down-resolved, making the whole exercise pointless.
Neither the PS3 nor Xbox workarounds represent genuine hacks of the copy-protection on Blu-ray or HD DVD. In both cases, the encryption remains intact.
But they illustrate the inherent vulnerabilities that arise when you try to make platforms and formats interoperable.
The PS3 is designed to read data off the hard drive as well as the disc during game play, which means data has to be able to move seamlessly between the two.
That makes game play faster and more compelling, but it’s not a natural environment for a disc that is never supposed to be copied, in whole or in part, without permission.
The Xbox 360 was not originally designed to output 1080p high-def images, so it lacks the HDMI connections such images typically travel over.
The only way to do it is to use unprotected analog outputs—the sort of environment HD DVD discs were designed to avoid.
But with consumers increasingly demanding such interoperability, those vulnerabilities will be a fact of life.
© 2006, Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All Rights Reserved.