Reaction
Reaction to the utility by Doom9 forum members, bloggers, and mainstream media has ranged from supportive to intensely hostile. By some, the circumvention of AACS was seen as a reaffirmation of fair use. Others felt that the utility was no more than a piracy tool and would bring about group punishment against consumers in the form of player revocation. One article compared proponents of BackupHDDVD to terrorists. When the release of the tool was first publicized, several articles claimed that AACS had been cracked. In fact no cryptographic weaknesses constituting a crack have yet been found in AES, the underlying cryptographic system of AACS. Keys are actually obtained through a side-channel attack.
Initially, it was thought that the compromise of HD DVD's security would entice some studios into adopting the competing Blu-ray format, but Blu-ray's AACS implementation has since been circumvented using a similar method. However, Blu-ray offers an additional layer of protection called BD+.
There was some speculation that the player used by the utility's author to obtain keys would be revoked. Cyberlink, which sells the PowerDVD player software, was quick to deny that its software could be used to obtain keys. Corel was silent about the role its WinDVD software had played in the leaking of volume and title keys. Both companies have since released updates for their player software.
The consortium behind the HD DVD format and the studios delivering films on the format did not release an official statement beyond that they were investigating the utility. On January 24, 2007 AACS LA issued a statement acknowledging that AACS security had been compromised while urging software vendors to limit the availability of keys in memory. Beginning with discs manufactured in late April, versions of PowerDVD and WinDVD responsible for leaking keys have been revoked and free updates are available to owners of affected versions.
Read more about this topic: Backup HDDVD
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