Intel Threatens to Sue HDCP Crack Users
Bad news for crack addicts.
Last week Intel confirmed that the master key for HDCP has been cracked and revealed to the public.
"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," Intel spokesman Tom Waldrop said.
"For someone to use this information to unlock anything, they would have to implement it in silicon -- make a computer chip," he added. "As a practical matter, that's a difficult and costly thing to do."
While Waldrop gave the impression that Intel wasn't scrambling to somehow rectify the situation, the spokesman was quoted in a Wired story that Intel would take legal action against anyone who used the HDCP code for a crack.
"There are laws to protect both the intellectual property involved as well as the content that is created and owned by the content providers," said Waldrop. "Should a circumvention device be created using this information, we and others would avail ourselves, as appropriate, of those remedies."
How did this code get published on the internet? Intel doesn't believe that it was leaked in any way, since it's developed and structured in a way that nobody sees it.
"Someone has used mathematics and computers to be able to work back to what the master key is," Waldrop said.
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Uh oh, someone used mathematics and computers! This is truly the end!
The restriction on hdcp is extremely annoying, it limits creativity and innovation from hardware manufacturers....
I'm currently waiting for someone to make a box that splits a 3d-bluray player output to two projectors for proper polarised passive 3d...
I suspect while intel holds the key, and big players have invested ridiculous cash on inferior shutter glasses technology, nobody is going to be allowed to legitimately develop such a device....
If Intel keeps up with this crap and the CPU unlocking they are going to get hurt financially, people will just buy AMD
I agree in principle with the existence of HDCP, but charging a fee for access and not just acting as some sort of benevolent administrator seems rather wrong of Intel.
I assume that Microsoft doesn't charge developers for verifying/validating software drivers; so long as they don't then that would seem to me to be how the HDCP thing ought to work. Intel or some not for profit body (maybe funded by media producers) reviews applicants and carries out some basic monitoring to check that they aren't designing devices especially for pirating and then authorises them.
It shouldn't be a jolly way for Intel to print money just because it got accepted right up front as the system to use.