Thfire.com Everyday news that matters The encryption that protects most of the high-definition video content has officially been cracked. Intel has confirmed it.
This doesn’t mean that you will be able to buy illegal hardware in the market anytime soon. This is because just cracking the code is not enough. It can be implemented only though a silicon chip.
Things are looking very grim in the High-definition industry following the crack in the encryption code. Intel confirmed Thursday to FoxNews.com that the High-bandwidth Digital Content Protection (HDCP) — the digital rights management software that governs every device that plays high-def content — had in fact been compromised.
“It does appear to be a master key,” said Tom Waldrop, a spokesman for Intel, which developed and oversees the HDCP technology.
“What we have confirmed through testing is that you can derive keys for devices from this published material that do work with the keys produced by our security technology,” he told FoxNews.com. In other words, “this circumvention does appear to work,” Waldrop said.
The hack unlocks protected content by providing a “master key,” which could be used to strip that encryption from, say, the link between your cable box and your DVR. Without those restrictions, a nefarious user could make unlimited copies — rendering the copy-protection software useless.
A portion of the code, Intel confirmed that this contains the 'Master Key' required to unlock the HD content
