The Saga of decrypting an AACS protected movie, by Muslix64.

December 6:

I just bought a HD-DVD drive to plug on my PC, and a HD movie, cool! But when I realized the 2 software players on windows don't allowed me to play the movie at all, because my video card is not HDCP compliant and because I have a HD monitor plugged with DVI interface, I started to get mad... This is not what we can call "fair use"! So I decide to decrypt that movie. I start reading the AACS specification I have found on the net. I estimate it will take
me about 4 weeks of full time job to decrypt that. I was wrong, it was in fact, easy...

BTW, when I disable my HD monitor, I can watch the movie,on my old VGA screen, but, what is the point of having a HD monitor and not being able to watch a HD movie on it!

December 7 to December 12:

Nothing, I try many things, but I'm going nowhere. I change my technique

December 13:

Now I focus only on title key. I was very surprise to realize that the title key is there, in memory! Can it be that easy? Around 7PM, I decrypt my first movie "pack". Around 11PM, I have now a totally decrypted movie! But there is a problem. Frame skipping.

December 14:

After many tests, I found a field in the Nav pack, that fix the frame skipping problem.
Wow! Now I can watch a smooth playback of an HDDVD film that I have decrypted!
After only 8 days of work, I was able to decrypt an HD-DVD movie! What's the problem? There is a major security problem somewhere.

December 15 and December 16:

I put together a small program called "BackupHDDVD", a java based command line utility to decrypt movies.

December 17:

I made a small video called "AACS is Unbreakable" where you can see the output of the program while decrypting.
You can also see a playback of a decrypted movie.


December 18:

Upload that video on YouTube
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_oZGYb92isE

December 20:

Upload the program and source code on RapidShare (V0.99)
http://rapidshare.com/files/8318838/...HDDVD.zip.html

December 21:

I want to go further in the decryption, so I decide to track down the "Volume unique key" instead of title key.
I found it also! I'm preparing BackupHDDVD V1.00, that will support volume key and title keys.

December 25:

Merry Christmas!

December 26:

I create a thread on the Doom9 forum about BackupHDDVD. People don't believe it..