HDCP Anti-Copy Software Exploit Released: Can Crack 1080p In Real-Time

Intel's suggestion that they didn't expect a software exploit using the cracked HDCP anti-copy protection seems to have been a red rag to a bull (or at least to the coding community), as its taken less than two weeks for just such an exploit to be developed.  Rob Johnson and Mikhail Rubnich have created an open-source decoding system which they're describing as a proof of concept, yet which is still capable of cracking HDCP on 1080p sources in real-time (on a powerful enough machine).

Right now it basically does in software – the block cipher, stream cipher, and hashing algorithms necessary to perform an HDCP handshake and to encrypt or decrypt video – what Intel expected hardware to do.  As a result, it's very system-intensive:  a 2.33GHz Intel Xeon is capable of 180fps 640 x 480 encoding, but falls short of real-time 1080p.

For that, they say, you'd need a high-end 64-bit CPU with at least two cores and 1.6GB of RAM, with the processes parallelized across those cores.  Still, it's likely we'll see plenty of optimization work done as more coders get their hands on it.

[via Slashdot]