Attacking the copy protection on HD media has a long history - remember when Muslix64 circumvented the copy protection on HD DVD and Blu-Ray discs? Today brings news of something much worse - the HDCP master encryption keys that copy protect Blu-Ray discs may have been leaked into the wild.

Each device that plays back an HDCP compliant disc is issued a set of encrypted keys. As long as the keys haven't been revoked, the device should play the disc without any problems. With a master key leaked out into the wild, we can only wonder at the potential problems facing the movie and TV studios. According to ZDnet, if the master keys are changed – perhaps in a knee-jerk reaction - every playback device could potentially be rendered useless.

If this news turns out to be true, the master keys could be used for a variety of purposes- especially defeating the copy protection of HD content. Engadget reports the master key could be used to create the content and sync keys - granted with a bit of programming and technical knowhow. But this isn’t much of an impediment, and if this story turns out to be true, we are looking at a new era of DRM failure and fallout that can only be described as epic.


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