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Microsoft PlayReady – Complete Client Identity Compromise

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Re: Microsoft PlayReady – Complete Client Identity Compromise

#31

Post by gjsman-1000 »

gorkish wrote: post #27
ricktdotorg wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

^^^ great comment. hard to imagine a better synposis of 4k DRM in ~2 grafs. thanks!

Not mentioned above, but should be noted that all of this DRM is still only protecting the compressed and encoded video content. Schemes to protect the uncompressed digital video data are all permanently and universally broken or bypassed. The 'analog hole' has gone fully digital. One would think that alone would be enough to seal the deal on the pointlessness of DRM, but unfortunately there are a lot of gullible exe…

As long as it stops even 100,000 people from not downloading videos off of Netflix, from an executive’s perspective, it pays for itself.

To them, it’s like saying Speed Limit signs are useless, because cars can go faster than the number posted by literally pressing a button. That’s not the point.

Re: Microsoft PlayReady – Complete Client Identity Compromise

#32

Post by ParetoOptimal »

makin wrote: post #9
londons_explore wrote: post #6

Is there any video DRM scheme which successfully protects video content appearing on the pirate bay within 24 hours? I really don't see why so many millions (billions?) of dollars have been spent on technologies which so far have never kept the bad guys out.

Denuvo mostly works. Allegedly they have a custom approach to each new game, so cracks can take months to appear, with some unpopular games never having been cracked at all. The price is lowered performance, of course.

> Denuvo mostly works.

Not for users: https://gamerant.com/denuvo-outage-servers-down-persona-5-ro...

> Allegedly they have a custom approach to each new game, so cracks can take months to appear, with some unpopular games never having been cracked at all

From what I hear, it's cracked in a matter of days or weeks. I haven't checked whether this is true or not, so I can't say you are wrong about some (most?) cracks taking months.

Re: Microsoft PlayReady – Complete Client Identity Compromise

#33

Post by hannob »

londons_explore wrote: post #6

Is there any video DRM scheme which successfully protects video content appearing on the pirate bay within 24 hours? I really don't see why so many millions (billions?) of dollars have been spent on technologies which so far have never kept the bad guys out.

DRM schemes never worked, and it has been speculated that the people building them always knew it, but had other goals.

Backn in the days it was: Of course you can break DVD copyprotection schemes. But you cannot build a legal opensource DVD player software. Today it's: Of course every Netflix series can be found on the pirate bay. But you're not legally allowed to build an alternative netflix player frontend.

Re: Microsoft PlayReady – Complete Client Identity Compromise

#34

Post by ParetoOptimal »

andsoitis wrote: post #22
gwbas1c wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> have never kept the bad guys out Careful who you call the bad guys. A lot of "piracy" comes from the people who spend the most money on the content they pirate. I personally think the best DRM approaches are those that keep "the honest people honest:" IE, metadata that identifies copyright owners, flags that identify content that has restrictions due to copyright, and casual protections. (Think of a "do not enter"…

> A lot of "piracy" comes from the people who spend the most money on the content they pirate. That doesn’t strike me as a valid statistic. Where are you getting that data from?

> That doesn’t strike me as a valid statistic. Where are you getting that data from?

I'm going to assume they are trying to say in other forms of support like word of mouth marketing, user created content, or purchases in other areas such as video game merchandise for instance?=

Re: Microsoft PlayReady – Complete Client Identity Compromise

#35

Post by probably_jesus »

londons_explore wrote: post #6

Is there any video DRM scheme which successfully protects video content appearing on the pirate bay within 24 hours? I really don't see why so many millions (billions?) of dollars have been spent on technologies which so far have never kept the bad guys out.

[dead]

Re: Microsoft PlayReady – Complete Client Identity Compromise

#36

Post by gorkish »

tawa9102930 wrote: post #14
londons_explore wrote: post #6

Is there any video DRM scheme which successfully protects video content appearing on the pirate bay within 24 hours? I really don't see why so many millions (billions?) of dollars have been spent on technologies which so far have never kept the bad guys out.

HDCP is broken so none of it really matters. The resulting files ("webrips") aren't a lossless copy of the original, but are good enough for most.

I posted elsewhere in the thread but it bears repeating, "The analog hole has gone fully digital." The generational loss from one recompression is effectively unnoticeable. What a ridiculous arms race!

Re: Microsoft PlayReady – Complete Client Identity Compromise

#37

Post by somenameforme »

londons_explore wrote: post #6

Is there any video DRM scheme which successfully protects video content appearing on the pirate bay within 24 hours? I really don't see why so many millions (billions?) of dollars have been spent on technologies which so far have never kept the bad guys out.

If you approach it at the most fundamental level, it seems like a clearly impossible goal to achieve. You are having users playing back content on their private devices, and then want to try to prevent them from copying that. That's basically impossible to achieve on somebody's own machine, and literally impossible to do once two enter into the picture. In the absolute worst case a high resolution/hertz cam on one's own screen with a quick ML software polish job, would look near to completely indistinguishable from the original content.

I imagine the reason so much money has been spent on it is because studios prefer to blame piracy than content for increasingly poor sales. So they see it as their salvation and are willing to pay big bucks, even if it's impossible. That's a primo ground for hucksters and charlatans to make a killing. Something similar happened in poker where players wanting to use fully automated software to make their decisions ended up just stepping outside the cat&mouse game and using a setup with a second computer + cam - completely and absolutely impossible to detect.

Re: Microsoft PlayReady – Complete Client Identity Compromise

#38

Post by gjsman-1000 »

hannob wrote: post #33
londons_explore wrote: post #6

Is there any video DRM scheme which successfully protects video content appearing on the pirate bay within 24 hours? I really don't see why so many millions (billions?) of dollars have been spent on technologies which so far have never kept the bad guys out.

DRM schemes never worked, and it has been speculated that the people building them always knew it, but had other goals. Backn in the days it was: Of course you can break DVD copyprotection schemes. But you cannot build a legal opensource DVD player software. Today it's: Of course every Netflix series can be found on the pirate bay. But you're not legally allowed to build an alternative netflix player frontend.

From the executive’s perspectives, DRM is working just fine.

People can’t just go get a random browser extension to save videos.

Alternative and unlicensed clients are illegal.

Sure, there’s some piracy - but even at the end of the day, pirates would watch a smartphone recording to save a buck.

To them, DRM does not have to be perfect to be a good investment; any more than copyright needing to be perfect or Speed Limit sign enforcement needing to be perfect.

Plus, every layer of complexity that gets broken, is another line for convincing the DOJ or the Jury about malicious intent.

Re: Microsoft PlayReady – Complete Client Identity Compromise

#39

Post by h4x0rr »

jsheard wrote: post #11
londons_explore wrote: post #6

Is there any video DRM scheme which successfully protects video content appearing on the pirate bay within 24 hours? I really don't see why so many millions (billions?) of dollars have been spent on technologies which so far have never kept the bad guys out.

4K streaming content is hit or miss because most services lock that behind Widevine L1, which requires implementors to use a secure enclave and the entire signal path to use strong encryption. If an L1 implementation gets compromised it quickly has its keys revoked and is downgraded to L2/L3, so piracy groups have a limited time window to dump as much 4K content as possible. Those lower Winevines tiers are permanentl…

Couldn't scene groups just keep the exploits for decrypting streams for themselves? Is there any way for Netflix/Widevine/PlayReady to detect this?

Re: Microsoft PlayReady – Complete Client Identity Compromise

#40

Post by nonrandomstring »

londons_explore wrote: post #6

Is there any video DRM scheme which successfully protects video content appearing on the pirate bay within 24 hours? I really don't see why so many millions (billions?) of dollars have been spent on technologies which so far have never kept the bad guys out.

> I really don't see why so many millions (billions?) of dollars have been spent on technologies which so far have never kept the bad guys out.

Sunk cost investment bias [0].

Past a certain point, even when the outcome is obviously futile, it becomes a mixture of accumulated momentum and pure bloody mindedness to "build it if it kills us". Companies like Microsoft or Sony have entire departments of people working on "rights management".

Nobody has the courage to just say, "Sorry guys, this is a fool's errand, we're going to shut it down and move you all onto something more productive".

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunk_cost

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