Hackers are Breaking AACS Again

It took less than a week for the hackers of Doom9 to come out with a new hack to break AACS's DRM. Last week, Corel issued a WinDVD update to close the hole opened by AACS hackers but the same hackers took only a few days to create a new hole using the Xbox 360's HD DVD drive.

Using the drive, they catch the "Volume Unique Keys", as they were being read by the device. The latest attack vector bypasses the encryption performed by the Device Keys—the same keys that were revoked by the WinDVD update—and the so-called "Host Private Key," which as yet has not been found.

This was accomplished by de-soldering the HD DVD drive's firmware chip, reading its contents, and then patching it. Once that was done, the firmware was soldered back onto the drive. A hacker said the hack is more difficult but no matter how many "Private Host Keys" they revoke, they will still be able to get the Volume IDs using the patched Xbox's HD DVD drive.

The image is a simplified high-def decryption diagram, courtesy of arnezami, the hacker of Doom9 behind the latest breach in AACS' DRM. "Kvu" is the volume license key.

Via arstechnica.com