The reverse engineer always wins
Caught the last few minutes of this talk at Black Hat DC yesterday.
Computerworld has a nice summary article with some quotes and an explanation of the scope of the break.
But really, this once sentence captures it:
“Tarnovsky’s examination process involved subtle use of hardware-based liquid chemical and gas technologies in a lab setting to probe with specialized needles to build tungsten bridges.”
The reverse engineer always wins.
I also spoke with someone who knows about the technology in the new DVDs. It seems the rippers usually crack the decryption within a few weeks of each major release. At best, the encryption buys some time for disc sales to make their initial profit. This industry has learned by now not to attempt the impossible (selling millions of discs of data for special-purpose computers without it also ending up on general-purpose computers). Instead, their strategy seems to be to structure the pace of their defeat well enough for it to be economically discounted. I think this is very wise.
Consider this the next time someone proposes a DRM solution to restore the economics of scarcity to a blob of computer data!
Tags: reversing