Blu-ray cracked with cheap hardware and clever coding

Where there’s a will, there is a way – and the same applies to the ingenious human mind. Well, some German folks have managed to successfully launch an “attack” on HDCP copy protection, and they do not require any form of expensive laboratory equipment or anything of that sort, but rather, will rely on cheap hardware as well as plenty of lines of clever coding in the process. Intel’s HDCP (high-bandwidth digital content protection) will enable the encrypted transfer of high definition video signals over DVI, HDMI, DisplayPort and other connectors and between TVs, Blu-ray discs or set-top boxes, and even though the HDCP master key leaked out in 2010, finding an exploit was not easy.

Taking the road less traveled by skipping a customized chip design, computer scientists in the Secure Hardware Group at Germany’s Ruhr University decided to develop a custom board that sports relatively affordable FPGA chips, costing a wee bit over $200, where it is also part of a research project in copy protection. According to the research team, “Our intention was rather to investigate the fundamental security of HDCP systems and to measure the actual financial outlay for a complete knockout. The fact that we were able to achieve this in the context of a PhD thesis and using materials costing just €200 is not a ringing endorsement of the security of the current HDCP system.”