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aiolos

Wed 31 Jan, 2007


Vista DRM broken already?

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Two controversial aspects of Microsoft's Vista were conspicuous by their absence at yesterday's launch event <b style="color:#FFA34F"></b>-<b style="color:#FFA34F"></b> neither digital rights management nor the way Microsoft will shut down or reduce the functionality of software it considers to be an illegal copy were mentioned.<b style="color:#FFA34F"></b>
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But Microsoft's DRM protection has already been broken according to a well-known security blogger and Microsoft Student Ambassador.<b style="color:#FFA34F"></b>
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DRM restricts the kind of media content you can use on your Vista machine.<b style="color:#FFA34F"></b> This is meant to make life harder for pirates but in practice,<b style="color:#FFA34F"></b> as Sony learnt,<b style="color:#FFA34F"></b> it can make life harder for honest users too.<b style="color:#FFA34F"></b>
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Alex Ionescu said on his blog that he had written code which could be used to bypass Vista's DRM <b style="color:#FFA34F"></b>-<b style="color:#FFA34F"></b> more details here.<b style="color:#FFA34F"></b> Ionescu has not published the code but promises in a later post to publish <b style="color:#FFA34F"></b>"some safe,<b style="color:#FFA34F"></b> generic,<b style="color:#FFA34F"></b> proof of concept code that targets what I believe is a flaw in the Code Integrity/Driver Signing model.<b style="color:#FFA34F"></b>"<b style="color:#FFA34F"></b>.<b style="color:#FFA34F"></b>
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Ionescu should know what he's talking about.<b style="color:#FFA34F"></b> He's a <b style="color:#FFA34F"></b>(possibly soon to be former)<b style="color:#FFA34F"></b> Microsoft Student Ambassador.<b style="color:#FFA34F"></b> These straight arrows are apparently:<b style="color:#FFA34F"></b> <b style="color:#FFA34F"></b>"the most talented students from around the world for their dedication,<b style="color:#FFA34F"></b> passion and involvement with Microsoft.<b style="color:#FFA34F"></b>"<b style="color:#FFA34F"></b>
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This is likely to be the first of many such problems as an informal army of unwashed hackers starts to target the software.<b style="color:#FFA34F"></b>