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List:       dmca-discuss
Subject:    [DMCA_Discuss] Hacker Exploits Chink in iTunes DRM Armor
From:       Vladimir Katalov <vkatalov () elcomsoft ! com>
Date:       2003-11-26 10:39:27
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[November 25, 2003]
Hacker Exploits Chink in iTunes DRM Armor
Paul Thurrott
InstantDoc #40972
Paul Thurrott's WinInfo  

http://www.winnetmag.com/Article/ArticleID/40972/40972.html

Jon Johansen, the Norwegian programmer who created DeCSS, the first
widely used tool for decrypting the copy protection in commercial DVD
movies, announced a similar hack this week for the Digital Rights
Management (DRM) technology that protects songs purchased from Apple
Computer's iTunes Music Store. The hack, which Johansen calls
QTFairUse, casts doubts on Apple's ability to protect the intellectual
property rights of artists who sell music on iTunes Music Store and
comes just a month after the company opened the service to Windows
users.

Johansen posted QTFairUse to his "So sue me" Web site this past
weekend. QTFairUse is a small command-line utility for Windows that
shows developers how to bypass the security features in Apple's
protected Advanced Audio Coding (AAC) format, which the iTunes Music
Store uses. The utility doesn't create a workable, playable,
protection-free music file, but its source code will help other
hackers bypass Apple's DRM security in their own applications,
eventually leading to a complete breakdown of Apple's licensed DRM
system, FairPlay.

Critics have long alleged that in the past much of Apple's
software-development advantage came from its small, tightly controlled
market. Now that Apple is pushing DRM-enabled products such as the
iTunes Music Store and the iPod into the wider Windows world, the
company is finding out how difficult it is to control the teaming
masses. This week's iTunes Music Store hack is actually the second
time programmers have hacked the service in the past month and the
third time this year. A tool called MyTunes, released last week, lets
Windows users steal music that other Windows and Macintosh iTunes
application users share for streaming, although it doesn't decode
songs purchased from the iTunes Music Store; Apple patched a similar
problem in its Mac version of the iTunes application earlier this
spring.

Apple's primary competitor, Microsoft, created its own DRM scheme for
its popular Windows Media Audio (WMA) and Windows Media Video (WMV)
formats but built renewing capabilities into the technology, which
helps Microsoft survive security exploits. Whether Apple's FairPlay
technology supports this renewing functionality is unclear at this
point, and Apple has been characteristically quiet about its DRM use,
preferring instead to foster the impression that the company is more
customer-centric than Microsoft and less beholden to content creators.
But the reality of the situation is that Apple has worked hard to
strike deals with the recording industry and did a fantastic job of
jump-starting the concept of inexpensive, downloadable, legitimate
music. Let's hope that this DRM breach won't cause record companies to
reverse their decisions to work with online music services.

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