Blackhacker

This article from the WSJ ran on the 9th. The most telling paragraph :

The talks are driven by media companies’ belief that the fast-growing YouTube has built a huge business off their video content. Although many of the videos on YouTube are homemade videos uploaded by users, some of its most popular clips are pirated copies of television shows. YouTube was acquired by Google for nearly $1.8 billion in stock last month.

I’m sorry but I missed it. Did YouTube turn a profit, before it was bought by Google ? Ars Technica thinks it is a case of corporate survival.

TV networks mulling YouTube rival
But with YouTube already so well established, is striking out on their own really a good idea for the networks? Probably not, but that doesn’t mean they won’t do it. If they allow sites like YouTube to become “the network” and companies like Google to become “the ad guys,” there’s not much left for the TV networks to do, and that’s a thought that must keep executives awake well into the balmy California night.

Sounds more like a case of corporate executive survival. The companies could still survive because each one has a resource that few other companies have, nor could develop easily: A news department. Think about it. Do we go to YouTube to see last nights “Greys Anatomy”, or “Seinfeld” re-reruns ? NO Mostly it’s stupid stuff that people upload, and sometimes its a news clip that a blogger wants to highlight. If the networks provide a central place for these news clips, freely accessible by the public and paid for by advertising, people could use these instead of uploading there own. If the clips where indexed and tagged properly, users could build feeds for news they care about, share it with others, and build communities around the clips just like YouTube, but in a way that makes money.

This piece from Engadget is reporting how a hacker broke AACS, the encryption that is used by both Blue Ray and HD-DVD.

AACS DRM cracked by BackupHDDVD tool? - Engadget
Can it be? Is Hollywood’s new DRM posterchild AACS (Advanced Access Content System, see more here) actually quite breakable? According to a post on our favoritest of forums (Doom9) by DRM hacker du jour muslix64, his new BackupHDDVD tool decrypts and dismantles AACS on a Windows PC. Just feed the small utility a crypto key.

I am hardly a rocket scientist, especially when it comes to cryptography, but how can any REAL copy protection be achieved, Assuming that every Blue-Ray or HD-DVD player has to decrypt every disc that it plays, The key(s) for the media has to be found somewhere on the disc or every possible key has to hardcoded somewhere in the player. Either way its like writing your PIN on the back of your ATM card. Like any cryptographic system, the vulnerability is not the cryptography but how to deliver keys in a secure way.

Dap: /.

A wise man once said :

One might note that easiest way to “prevent tampering, counterfeiting, or duplication of the document for fraudulent purposes” is to NOT PUT IT ON THE CARD.

This was in reference to the Federal Government’s decision to use RFID, as part of the Government Issue IDs that comply with the REAL ID act.

I hate to say I told you so but …

BBC NEWS | Programmes | Click | ePassports ‘at risk’ from cloning
It will, we are promised, keep the unwanted and dangerous outside our borders, while streamlining entry for those welcome to come and visit.

But as the implementation of the scheme gets underway it is becoming clear that there could be serious problems with it.

Dap: Wiki News

This is what happens when people in congress, who have very little if any idea how the internet works, try to regulate it. Sen. McCain has proposed legislation that would basically require EVERY ONE ON THE INTERNET, to report illegal activity.

According to the proposed legislation, the following are required to file reports: any Web site with a message board; any chat room; any social-networking site; any e-mail service; any instant-messaging service; any Internet content hosting service; any domain name registration service; any Internet search service; any electronic communication service; and any image or video-sharing service.

Dap : DarkStar

note: I had this whole post just about written when I saw this. Seemed like a shame to waste it. Here it is…

Everybody is rushing to put as many applications into one device. We have phones that take pictures, play music, play video. PDA, that double as phones, pagers, that double as PDA. This leads has lead us to a soup of wireless devices that might do one thing well, and others not so well.
The backpack disk drive. The drive is really like a mini fileserver, that could be mounted on ANY digital device. It should have a USB 2.0 and a fast Ethernet port. It should be bluetooth enabled. It should be a flash memory / magnetic hybrid drive (30+ GB), and a Lithium batter that should allow 24 continuous hours of use.

The backpack drives gives you a central, portable media storage. That can sync with your iPods, mp3 players, cameras, PDAs, blackberries, phones and any new digital device that could dreamed up. You could simple sync it with desktop, and then sync with all of your devices as needed. It would just need to be bluetooth enabled. (I realize that not all of the devices come with bluetooth. bare with me this is a fantasy.)

The secrete is it being enabled with some ubiquitous wireless technology. For the purposes of this article I will just call it bluetooth. The idea is that the backpack drive stays in the backpack. you never see it, or touch until you get home.
Hop in the car and turn on your bluetooth enabled car stereo (another device that should have hit the show room by now) and sync up with the backpack drive to get podcasts, today’s playlists. Hours and hours of music goodness with NO commercials.

You can go on vacation or to your child’s piano recital, with your bluetooth enabled camcorder. Never have to worry about how much memory you brought again. When particular shot is over just “push” it back to the BPD.

You finally get on the train, and settle in to for your 45 minute commute to the city. You pull out the bluetooth mp3 player. You pull in a soothing playlist of late 80 & early 90 hip hop from the BPD.

I remembered that ClickStar, a movie download site, that is partly owned by Morgan Freeman, opened on Friday. In an effort to check it out, I was greeted with I uses a Windows2000, at work. One word for Clickstar, BOOOOO!!!! I can imagine setting up such restrictions for download or video play, but at least let me look around. What about Mac, Linux and FeeBSD users? Oh well. Looks like I’ll have to wait till I get home.

UPDATE:

Should have known they would not like Firefox. Once a again BOOOOOOO!!!!!!

Something has always bothered me about cell phones. As they are become more and more complex, they have shifted from being mere communications devices to platforms for applications, but in my opinion we don’t have as much control over what applications are being run on our phones as we don on our PC. If I anted to could I wipe my cell phone, and boot it with an other operating system? In actuality I don’t know. (I don’t even own a cell phone. really) But I doubt it. Somebody correct me if I’m wrong. Here is a good reason why I think we need more control over our cellphones.

FBI using cell phone microphones to eavesdrop
In his memorandum opinion, Judge Kaplan described the roving bug as a “listening device” installed in the defendants’ cellular phones that functioned regardless of whether the phone was powered on. Many models of cellular phones, however, can have their microphones remotely activated via a download—even without the knowledge of the owners. That could be what happened with Ardito and Peluso’s cell phones. It is also possible that the FBI installed a bug directly on the phones. (emphasis mine)

This is not a post disparaging law enforcement. The article sited how this capability should be done. They go a court order to turn a cell phone in to a “roving bug”. But I can that if some intelligent yet unscrupulous hacker could sneak an app onto your cellphone to record your conversations, and send him the mp3. Remember phones are much more complicated now. Complexity is where hackers live. For all of our sakes and I think this has to be they net frontier in the open source movement. To have open source phones that we can use on any cell network. TO use open protocols so that they masses can examine, debug, and improve the protocols that the few engineers that dreamed this up will undoubtedly miss. I know you need to get buy fro the Cell carriers. They loose their “lock in” in such an environment. But if at least ONE forward think company emerges to embrace these methods, and provide free software to switch phones from other carriers to their own. And provide and open platform that developers can cheaply right apps for, and they can provide service and value on par with the major telecoms that might be disruptive enough to force other to do the same.