AACS LA responds to HD DVD/Blu-ray security breach

The AACS (Advanced Access Content System) LA group responded to the recent BackupBluray and BackupHDDVD activity with the following press release.

RESPONSE TO REPORTS OF ATTACKS ON AACS TECHNOLOGY
January 24, 2007
AACS LA has confirmed that AACS Title Keys have appeared on public web sites without authorization. Such unauthorized disclosures indicate an attack on one or more players sold by AACS licensees. This development is limited to the compromise of specific implementations, and does not represent an attack on the AACS system itself, nor is it exclusive to any particular format. Instead it illustrates the need for all AACS licensees to follow the Compliance and Robustness Rules set forth in the AACS license agreements to help ensure that product implementations are not compromised. AACS LA employs both technical and legal measures to deal with attacks such as this one, and AACS LA is using all appropriate remedies at its disposal to address the attack.

The AACS group declares that it “does not represent an attack on the AACS system itself”, but we know the system was circumvented by obtaining encryption keys stored in memory by PC software players. It will be interesting to see what the HD DVD / Blu-ray software player developers will try in the future in an attempt to prevent this type of memory-held key discovery.