“We apply our BrainTrust™ proprietary video encryption to your movies before we upload them to our servers. If someone ever was able to gain access to your content, the files would be useless and unplayable, because they are stored in a scrambled, encrypted format. Once downloaded to the user’s hard drive, the files are still encrypted and only readable via the MOD Machine Player by a legitimate owner. We are not aware of a better DRM scheme than ours. Where Windows Media DRM is easily crackable, and doesn’t run on Macs, BrainTrust™ works great on Windows 8, Vista, Windows XP and Mac, and is virtually uncrackable.”
Virtually uncrackable? Well, since they load the file from a Python script, it’s easy to make a copy of the “decrypted” file before it’s reverted. Having done so, I was curious to see the encryption scheme. By comparing the binary files, I discovered the “proprietary video encryption” algorithm: for the first 15kB, each 1kB block has its initial bytes xor’d with the string “RANDOM_STRING”. That’s the “scrambled, encrypted format” that leaves these files “useless and unplayable”.
I fail to understand how reasonable knowledgable people can think that there’s some way of delivering information to a person without actually “Delivering the Information”! If you’re providing me with the video/music/text, in whatever format, in whatever encryption, and then you provide me with a key and/or player program, you ARE PROVIDING ME WITH THAT DATA!
The “security” around my content can be broke, it will be broke and there’s no way in hell that anything built under this logic is unbreakable. Because you’re not trying to keep the information safe from me, you’re just trying to control how i can access it. So you’re forced to surrender a way of rendering it “readable” but then you try to control when or how i can read it. Does any of this seem any logic to anyone?
“Hey, here’s my encrypted book, and here’s a key for decrypting it, but be advised you may only read it at daytime.”
What will stop me from reading it at night? Even if the letters in the decryption key or book were only visible at daytime due to some magic ink, why couldn’t i just make a copy of it at daytime and read it at night? If this kind of reasoning and problem thinking seems ridiculous to you, congratulations, you’re a giant step ahead than the entire Media Industry executives, worldwide. (( And some software executives as well. Specially the Gaming executives… ))
Everyone that has given this two minutes of serious thinking will tell you that the only way to curb piracy is to offer a good service and value for money. Or simply abandon the current line of business and try to make your revenue in other related service line such as Support or Merchandising. It strikes me as unbelievable stupid that this kind of “unbreakable security” myth lives on and is relied upon.