The beeb announces fix for iPlayer hack

The BBC has announced that it has released a fix for the iPlayer to prevent hackers from keeping programs for longer than is legally allowed.

DRM means programs can only be streamed from the iPlayer up to 7 days after they have been broadcasted on telly. Alternatively, users can keep the programs for up to 30 days on their PC giving them the option of watching whatever they’ve downloaded at their leisure.

Of course, we couldn’t expect that to last too long. Not long after the Beeb released a version of the iPlayer for portable devices, hackers had found a way to save these downloaded programs to their hard disk to keep for as long as they pleased.

Last week saw the launch of the iPlayer for iPhones and iTouches. The content is streamed as an MP4 file without DRM and it didn’t take hacks long to figure out that they could access the file if they downloaded the appropriate plugin for Firefox and masqueraded their browser as an iPhone.

The says that while they’ve fixed those hackers wagon for now, they’re not naïve enough to think they’ve done the job for good.

It’s an ongoing, constant process and one which we will continue to monitor”

"Like other broadcasters, the security of rights-protected content online is an issue we take very seriously"