Author Archives: wunderbarb

DSi Hacked?

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It was not long. Yves was right. In november, I announced that Nintendo DSi was running with linkers/flash cards or whatever name. Yves prophetized that it would not take long.

Yesterday, AceKard announced that it cracked DSi and will soon release a new product Acekard 2i. Acekard posted a 7 minute video on YouTube to demonstrate that it works. And it seems to work. Two weeks ago, Acekard already posted a video with its first advances. Nevertheless, they announced “This is a lab work, it works ONLY in LAB. Even though we can go this far, it is almost impossible to make a commercial product.
There is a major problem that can’t be resolved, at least for now.” It seems they solved the problems.

DSi is alredy a commercial success for Nintendo. They already sold more than 500,000 consoles! Being the first, if proven that it works, will also be a commercial success for Acekard. NOw we will see would will the next ones. In any case, Acekard seems to have proven that it was feasible.

Once more, law 1 was true.

Game and DRM

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Grand Theft Auto IV will be protected by SecuRom. The fury starts again. It seems to be a shame that a game is protected by a DRM. 2008 will be the year where things changed:
– For many years, games were protected by anti copy systems. No body was seriously complaining. You found hacked versions of the games. Some ripping software (for instance Alcohol 120) were even providing tools to by pass the protections (physically, or in virtual drives).
– SecuRom, LaserLock, … were not called DRMs. They were called game protection systems.

And nobody complained! Gamers were happy. In my editorial of security newsletter #3, I was even highlighting this difference between game protection and DRM.

And suddenly, the world changes. Game protection becomes DRM (although using the same tricks and limitations). Game protections become unacceptable for users. The first fury was Spore. GTA IV will be the next one. Nevertheless, I am sure that GTA IV will be a blockbuster even with “DRM”.

What has changed? Media focus? Has somebody a good explanation to propose?

Cutlery and counterfeiting

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The French town Laguiole is known for its famous knives. Unfortunately, the name “Laguiole” is not protected by a trademark. Thus, many low cost cutlers sell low cost and low quality knives with the name “Laguiole” embossed in the blade. Furthermore, genuine Laguiole knives have a metallic bee on the handle. In the mind of many people, the bee is the “signature” of the authentic knive. Of course, the “Laguile” knives that are not manufactured at Laguiole have also a bee. And it is totally legal.

Of course, Laguiole manufacturers wanted to stop this bleeding. they have registered the trademark “LAGUIOLE ORIGINE GARANTIE” (Laguiole guaranteed origin). The knives manufactured at Laguiole will display on their blade “LAGUIOLE ORIGINE GARANTIE” with a dedicated.
Will it change something? I am not sure. Many people will still trust the bee. Furthermore, I am not always sure that people are so naive to believe that they are able to purchase an authentic quality knive at 10% of its original price. As long as it will not be broad general knowledge that the authentic knives have to display the mark and the punch, it will change nothing, except for the initiates.

It is the same with the holograms on software package. How many people do test its presence? its actual “content”? Price is an awfully attractive selling argument.

WPA hack

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You probably noticed that I have some delays in reporting news. This month was rather busy for me. I could not avoid to say some words about WPA attack.

Ars Technica made an excellent coverage of the attack. In addition, they provide a short history of the Wifi encryption story.

Are we safe? I am sure that you are all using WPA2 or at least WPA with AES. In that case, you are perfectly safe. The attack works on TKIP without AES and only for short packets. That means it is not possible to decrypt a complete normal stream WPA protected. Nevertheless, the attack is a first hit to WPA. The attack was extremely clever and required a deep knowledge of the different 802.11 flavors.

Some people may question the interest of attacking a protocol that is quasi obsolete in the field (hopefully, most Wifi networks should be WPA2 and AES). Any exploit is a new lesson on how a protocol is attacked. Next generation of protocols should be resistant to this type ofg exploits. Thus, it is always useful to increase the knowledge in security, and widen the database of attacks.

Probably a topic for next newsletter.

Wizzgo: Last round?

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Last week, I reported the latest court decision that banned Wizzgo to offer its service for TF1, France Television and NT1 channels.

Latest episode occurred yesterday. Wizzgo has been sentenced to pay 480,000€ (about $600,000) in damages to M6 for infringement. They will soon have a similar sentence for TF1, France Television and NT1. The judge did not consider that Wizzgo was doing private copy. A private copy has to be done by the user of the private owner, and not by a third party.

The sentence is heavy and will probably sign the death of Wizzgo. Wizzgo stopped its service. They will have to provide to broadcasters the description of their advertisement revenues to estimate the losses they may have generated for broadcasters.

The message in favor of respect of copyright laws is also extremely strong.

Doom9 and BD+

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It is now public knowledge. Doom9 hackers have reverse engineered the virtual machine at the core of BD+ protection (See issue #7 of security newsletter about more information on SPDC). The work is a master piece of reverse engineering (although the VM is rather simple and very near old 8-bit assembly language). Reading the thread of Doom9 is extremely instructive. You see how they operate and confirm our law #1.

One of the interesting lesson is the use of CRI’s patent to help understanding how it works. We always face the dilemna between securing Intellectual Property Rights through a patent or keeping trade secrets.

Can we claim that BD+ is broken? The answer is no. It would be similar to state that Java cards are broken because you have the java virtual machine. Paul Kocher’s team was wise enough no to base the trust model on the secrecy of the VM. I had discussion with him on that topic. The fight will now be at the level of the BD+ application. They will have to distinguish between good guys and bad guys. This will be the new arm race. The objective of BD+ designers will be to force to require a new pirate application for each title.

The speed of “erosion” of the different protections is impressive. We will follow the story.

The evolution of copyright

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Andy Oram published a very interesting document that describes the history of copyright laws. It explains how it drifted with time and what are the internal concepts of copyright. For instance, he highlights the difference between patent and copyright. Patent protects a function whereas copyright protects an expression. You have to fight to get the protection of patent whereas you have to fight to leave the protection of copyright (that is “on” by default)
The document is really interesting to read if you are interested to understand what copyright is, and how it arrived where it is. The only critic is that (as for many paper on this subject) is mainly US centric.

The address of the paper is How copyright got to its current state

Thank you Jean Jacques for the pointer. :Wink: