29-August-06, 08:05 AM
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| |  Web News: Windows Media DRM cracked
Windows Media DRM cracked  | Quote: |  | | |  | Originally Posted by arstechnica |  | | | | | | | | |
Windows Media DRM cracked
8/28/2006 7:54:20 PM, by Jeremy Reimer
Digital Rights Management has been a hot-button issue for many years. With the current pervasiveness of high-speed Internet access, coupled with increasingly invasive attempts by content companies to strengthen their digital protection, the debate looks to be far from over.
Now, a new application has been released that will strip Windows Media 10 and 11 files of their DRM. In the online music world, the overwhelming market share winner is Apple's iTunes Music Store, whose protection has been bypassed several times already. Microsoft's Windows Media has been a perpetual also-ran, but it has too received attention from the hackers. In 2001, the version that came with Windows Media Player 7 was defeated by a hacker going by the pseudonym "Beale Screamer." Microsoft then updated their protection, and for years have been touting its invulnerability to hackers. However, this too has now come to an end.
The program, entitled FairUse4WM (Fair Use for Windows Media) requires that the user already owns media files that have been purchased from one of the many Windows Media online stores that exist today. It does not attempt to find encryption keys by brute force, as some other software (most notably DeCSS) has done in the past. Instead, it finds the encryption keys (at least one active key is necessary for the program to work) that have been installed on your computer by Media Player itself. Once these keys have been found, FairUse4WM modifies the .WMA files to remove all traces of encryption on them. The "converted" files can then be played on any player that supports the WMA format, regardless of whether or not it supports WMA DRM—in testing the application, we loaded the converted files on a Macintosh using Flip4Mac. The program does not appear to work with encrypted WMV (Windows Media Video) files.
That the WMA format would be cracked is not that much of a surprise—most DRM formats eventually are. However, in this case, the potential for misuse and lost revenue for WMA stores looms large. Unlike Apple, which has stuck to its 99 cents per song purchasing scheme, many online Windows Media stores have been promoting a subscription model, where the consumer pays a monthly access fee to download as many songs as they wish. Under this model, if the user stops paying the monthly fee their license keys are revoked and they can no longer listen to any of their songs. If the songs have been converted by FairUse4WM, however, they will still be able to be played on any platform.
Microsoft has made no comment so far on the issue, but look for an update to Windows Media Player to try and "patch" the issue, and possibly lawsuits against the creators of FairUse4WM.
Full Story at arstechnica
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