YouTube user claims to have cracked HD DVD copy protection

AACS was supposed to be safer than DVD's DRM

28 December 2006 11:54 GMT / By Amber Maitland

A YouTube user claims to have done what no one has done before by cracking the AACS copy-protection used on both Blu-ray and HD DVD discs.

Going by the name of Muslix64, the hackers has posted a video on YouTube advertising his code cracking methodology, and has uploaded a version of his BackupHDDVD software to RapidShare.com for download.

According to a posting to a Doom9 forum, Muslix64 found an HD DVD encryption key and was then able to copy the movie to his computer and then decrypt the video.

His utility, BackupHDDVD, supposedly finds keys from memory, and then copies an unencrypted version of a film on to a hard drive.

Admitting that the code is very unstable, the hacker has promised to update the utility on 2 January that will allow for the extraction of other files from any HD DVD.

There's no word yet from programmers if BackupHDDVD is as effective as Muslix64 claims, but if it is efficacious, expect to see firmware and software updates from manufacturers issued fairly soon.