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Norwegian programmer cracks Apple DRM

updated 03:45 pm EST, Tue November 25, 2003

iTunes DRM cracked

The Norwegian programmer who distributed the first widely used tool for cracking the copy protection technology found on DVDs has turned his attention to Apple's iTunes. Late last week, programmer Jon Johansen posted a small program called , which evades the anticopying technology wrapped around the songs sold by Apple in its iTunes store. Johansen's program, which works only for the Windows version of iTunes, is the most recent move in the ongoing struggle digital rights management technology creators and hackers.

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11/25, 03:58pm | report spam | close Reply |
Typical

Leave it to a Windroid to ruin a good thing. Idiots.

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11/25, 04:13pm | report spam | close Reply |
isn't...

...that the kid that got in trouble because of his DVD hacking? Guess he didn't learn his lesson. While I think DeCSS is basically a good thing (I am really annoyed with all the "barriers" Hollywood managed to get into DVDs...region codes etc.) hacking Apple's anticopying code is a completely different thing. Apple provides a mean for fair use, DVDs in general don't (unless they're unscrambled and region free).

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11/25, 04:14pm | report spam | close Reply |
Scumbag!

Why doesn't this scumbag just steal his music from Kazaa? There are those of us who are willing to pay for a service that gives us good quality downloads without trojan horses, virii, dropped connections, mislabelled songs, crappy rips, etc. Instead of potentially ruining our service by making it unpalatable for recording companies to participate, why doesn't he go back to downloading p***!

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11/25, 04:15pm | report spam | close Reply |
No surprise..

..that some pimple-faced windows hacker would bother with such a thing. I suppose that Kazaa just doesn't do it for this guy anymore. This guy should spend more time on the dating scene and less time staring at a computer display. If he was getting any he wouldn't have to prove his prowess with a ridiculous haxie.

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11/25, 04:19pm | report spam | close Reply |
blah!

IT'S NOT CRACKED!

People need to read this story before spouting off about it. he's simply hijacking the audio from AAC streams that he already has authorized. It's not a DRM hack at all, in fact, it's not even a hack, it's been done for years on the platform. I hate this bullshit.

He can't open up an unauthorized AAC file, therefor this is NOT news. When he can do that, I'll be impressed.

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11/25, 04:23pm | report spam | close Reply |
innocent kid?

This kid's defense for the DVD decoding was "I just wanted to view my DVD's on my Linux machine, your honor" which I could totally agree with. I'm a fan of fair use. But this is stretching it. I think he is just looking for headlines. As was said above, itunes already offers fair use including unlimited burning. The kid is over the line.

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11/25, 04:27pm | report spam | close Reply |
AudioHijack anyone?

Doesn't AudioHijack already do this job on Mac? Or does it not work on Apple's iTMS songs? I couldn't verify this yet because I don't live in the States (thankfully!).

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11/25, 04:35pm | report spam | close Reply |
Look...

Given that it's already common knowledge about the liberal allowed playing authorizations and CD burning (and re-ripping), this is a bit too much like work to be a real threat to the iTMS - h*** - if you can already download anything on the store from a P2P network for free, then why is anyone buying songs, and/or what's the point of cracking this format?

Plus it's likely a nearly-trivial fix for Apple if he IS exploiting QuickTime itself.

Jon had a semi-legit reason for providing DVD playback under linux, he also had a big helping hand from the dolts at Xing that forgot to encrypt the key on their DVD playback package... You can't stuff the genie back into the bottle, but Quicktime will be patched if it can be.

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11/25, 04:42pm | report spam | close Reply |
headlines

As a previous poster said, this guy's a headline seeker... and sites like News.com, MacCentral, and MacNN are as guilty as this guy.

"Look, here's the recipe to make a bomb! But don't use it, we're just reporting 'news'".

Way to spread this guy's filth, MacNN.

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11/25, 05:17pm | report spam | close Reply |
you dolts should read it

Read the damn article first. He didn't "crack" the encryption, he just intercepts the unencrypted audio stream. And it seems that his target is not to distribute the files that are "cracked", but to allow you to use them on non-Apple music players and stuff like that. This is no more or less useful than burning a CD and re-ripping that CD...

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11/25, 05:17pm | report spam | close Reply |
closemindedness...

Look at the first several posts. Typical Mac zealot banter. According to some of you people, it is justification to call someone a "pimple-faced teenager looking for his next p*** fix" because it happens someone who uses Windows. There seems to be so many close minded people it makes me sick. Maybe if you'd read the article you'd see that the world cannot clearly be devided Bush style into "good" and "evil", in this case applying to Windows users. pathos should not come before logos--it is best to look at the facts and make your decision based on the facts rather than being a bigot and looking for facts to support your possition

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11/25, 05:21pm | report spam | close Reply |
STFU TROLL

wtf cant stupid windoze usrs stay off macnn you dont like it fine then heres your shoes and there's the door a******

sheesh somepoeple just never learn

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11/25, 05:33pm | report spam | close Reply |
Even if

this was a freely distributable cross-platform hack that created playable raw AAC files working on any device, would it even be such a bad thing. I think it was pitiful that this story received any attention, and splashing it around like it's cold fusion is sure to make some idiots think ITMS and Apple have poor security. I don't want to see ITMS lose contracts after one year just because of paranoia.

I admire this kid for being able to get anywhere w/ the DRM. Why crucify someone because they take computing a level above where you are? It's not like pretty much everything on ITMS isn't available for free on P2P networks. Yes, there may be some exclusives, but they aren't the top ten of what ppl download.

Let's just face the music here. A lot of people use ITMS because it's legal and easy and the DRM is a reminder that they're doing a good thing, nothing more.

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11/25, 05:41pm | report spam | close Reply |
Losers...

What a bunch of self righteous losers you people are!! The only filth I'm reading here is the bleating of sheep crying because someone else was smart enough to get something for free that you still have to pay the robber barons for.

Jon Johansen for President!

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11/25, 05:53pm | report spam | close Reply |
News Flash!!

There are millions of perfect masters of almost every Apple iTunes song available pretty much worldwide. These are called CDs or Compact Discs. A lot of people actually own these 'CDs' and they can make all the fair use copies they want with them, as well as offer them on P2P networks.

The iTMS also allows people to make their own CDs, which could be re-ripped and shared on P2P networks.

What, it doesn't sound as good when you do that? What did you expect for free?

This won't kill iTunes any more than his previous hack of WMA killed Microsoft.

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11/25, 05:53pm | report spam | close Reply |
Windows bug?

Hmmm, not that I know much of this low level stuff, nor how his program works, but the article states it reads the data from the computer's temporary memory after its decoded. My question would be this: Isn't windows supposed to have protected memory (i.e. one program can't read/write to another's memory location)?

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11/25, 05:55pm | report spam | close Reply |
IT'S NOT CRACKED!

IT'S NOT CRACKED!

People need to read this story before spouting off about it. he's simply hijacking the audio from AAC streams that he already has authorized. It's not a DRM hack at all, in fact, it's not even a hack, it's been done for years on the platform. I hate this bullshit.

He can't open up an unauthorized AAC file, therefor this is NOT news. When he can do that, I'll be impressed.

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11/25, 05:55pm | report spam | close Reply |
Uh... AAC to Audio CD?

Doesn't iTunes do this already? What's to crack?

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11/25, 05:56pm | report spam | close Reply |
IT'S NOT CRACKED!

IT'S NOT CRACKED!

People need to read this story before spouting off about it. he's simply hijacking the audio from AAC streams that he already has authorized. It's not a DRM hack at all, in fact, it's not even a hack, it's been done for years on the platform. I hate this bullshit.

He can't open up an unauthorized AAC file, therefor this is NOT news. When he can do that, I'll be impressed.

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11/25, 06:03pm | report spam | close Reply |
Back where we started...

I'm just constinately amazed at irony in the media. One story has a posting about hacking (or hijacking) legal downloads and another story today has a report on legal downloads in the United States has doubled..

Its just so flipping funny..

Anyway, I have one iTunes record that I burned immediately into a CD. I then reripped it back into MP3s...and thus it bypassed the AAC. I didn't do this for that purpose..I did it for trying to transfer it to another Mac. Anyway, hows that different?? People could just simply convert the songs to MP3s... I'm not advocating it, just pointing out the obvious.

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11/25, 06:04pm | report spam | close Reply |
IT'S NOT CRACKED!

IT'S NOT CRACKED!

People need to read this story before spouting off about it. he's simply hijacking the audio from AAC streams that he already has authorized. It's not a DRM hack at all, in fact, it's not even a hack, it's been done for years on the platform. I hate this bullshit.

He can't open up an unauthorized AAC file, therefor this is NOT news. When he can do that, I'll be impressed.

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11/25, 06:21pm | report spam | close Reply |
wtf??

"wtf cant stupid windoze usrs stay off macnn you dont like it fine then heres your shoes and there's the door a******"

wow. with comments like that, you add tremendous value to the message quality here at macnn. keep up the great work and thanks for making the mac community not look like a bunch of uninformed zealots.

this guy didn't crack jack. if memory serves me right, he got lucky with DeCSS because some DVD manufacturer's chipset was reverse engineered easily.

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11/25, 06:38pm | report spam | close Reply |
Re: its not cracked

People need to read this story before spouting off about it. he's simply hijacking the audio from AAC streams that he already has authorized.

Umm, no he's not. He's reading it from temporary memory. There's a difference.

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11/25, 07:17pm | report spam | close Reply |
Re: its not cracked

Yeah there's a difference, but that difference is almost technical in nature. In the end, with his method you have a pure data stream that came directly from the file. If you instead capture the audio stream, you end up with a processed data stream. I say big deal. It's simply technically better quality than burning to CD then ripping to AIFF. It's not like he's got added capabilities with this file now. In order to play it in the first place, he has to have access to a computer that's authorized to play it.

Call me when he can take an iTMS file, copy it to computer X, run crakitms.exe and play the file without any restrictions. Oh wait, we can do the same thing by burning to CD and ripping to MP3. Sound quality difference? Yeah, but anyone caring about such a small difference shouldn't be using iTMS or MP3s in the first place!

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11/25, 07:18pm | report spam | close Reply |
DRM

oh, btw, it's really Digital RESTRICTIONS Management. we should start calling it for what it really is. it's not about protecting our rights, it's about protecting the music monopoly's rights. as far as i'm concerned, it's digital restrictions management.

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11/25, 08:28pm | report spam | close Reply |
gawd fscking damit

DeCSS does NOT crack the DVD copy protection.... it allows or prevents the VIEWING of DVD matierals.

the disticntion is that i can copy a CSS encoded DVD 10000 times, and sell them all - and they will work on authorized players... what i CAN'T do is ensure that i can play the files without DeCSS because if my player is not authorized, it's not supposed to play.

its not YOUR data on the DVD to watch - you've got no reasonable expectation to be able to view your DVD on any player. Thats why he cracked CSS and wrote DeCSS - to allow you the ability to view any DVD anytime you want.

holy c***.. come on, MacNN.

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11/25, 10:54pm | report spam | close Reply |
DRM

Meaning Digital Rights Management is not about YOUR rights, dipshit. It's about the rights of the CREATOR or OWNER of the work.

So no, calling it "digital restriction management" isn't really accurate -- particularly in Apple's case -- because there's almost no restrictions that one would encounter in normal use (burn CD, copy to iPod, play on another computer). What little is there is to protect the idea that a CREATOR should PAID for their creation.

If any of you Kazaa thieves ever created something in your lives with more value than your excrement, you'd appreciate it.

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11/25, 11:30pm | report spam | close Reply |
Re: DRM

Hey DUMBFUCK, it restricts me from doing things with the stuff I BOUGHT. Sure Apple barely restricts things, and that's the way it should be. But DRM in the hands of Microsoft and most other companies is really sucky.

I'm not a Kazaa thief, I use and love iTMS. But face it, from a user's point of view, it's all about restricting what we can do. Apple's the exception in the case of DRM. Imagine a computer system with DRM integrated into the hardware. Imagine a hard drive that won't let you copy a song file because it detected an audio pattern similar to Britney's last song. That's where DRM is head dipshit!

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11/25, 11:57pm | report spam | close Reply |
re: AudioHijack anyone?

Doesn't AudioHijack already do this job on Mac? Or does it not work on Apple's iTMS songs? I couldn't verify this yet because I don't live in the States (thankfully!).

If you "thankfully" don't live in the States, then what do you care? Seeing as how you can't use the ITMS anyway.

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11/26, 12:27am | report spam | close Reply |
Kill that pimp...

...called the music industry. Those thieving b******* want to talk about the 'poor artists' that we're 'stealing' from when we share music. I'd pay a little attention if I wasn't a musician myself who knows the music industry firsthand. I don't give a c*** about Metallica or any other whores rushing to defend their pimps--this is a war and the ordinary musicians and listeners are finally striking back at the parasites who've been cheating them since the dawn of recorded music. If you aren't too addled or ossified to see the need for change go read these:

http://www.downhillbattle.org/itunes/

http://www.negativland.com/albini.html

(not big on this last person but she makes the point)

http://dir.salon.com/tech/feature/2000/06/14/love/index.html

And shut up about stealing. You people would have had all the perpetrators of the Boston Tea Party arrested too I bet.

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11/26, 12:44am | report spam | close Reply |
Why mention it????

Could someone please give a serious explanation for this sudden urge to give URLs to hacks????????? What's this all about? Does any site have a conscience or what? Are we going to have a hacks-don't-matter kind of society?

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11/26, 01:15am | report spam | close Reply |
y

IT'S NOT HACKED!

People need to read this story before spouting off about it. he's simply hijacking the audio from AAC streams that he already has authorized. It's not a DRM hack at all, in fact, it's not even a hack, it's been done for years on the platform. I hate this bullshit.

He can't open up an unauthorized AAC file, therefor this is NOT news. When he can do that, I'll be impressed.

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11/26, 01:36am | report spam | close Reply |
Yawn...

Move along trolls, nothing to see here.

And to the "Kill that Pimp" guy, get a life. Its only music, not your civil liberty. There is no war there is no Jihad against RIAA.

99% of the people in US don't care about you having to pay for music. It's a luxury item not a necessity. You can live without music.

Guess what, you want to hurt RIAA, don't buy or listen to any music.

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11/26, 02:04am | report spam | close Reply |
typical...

Leave it to the Windows crowd to ruin something good. iTunes Music Store for Mac users = record companies happy, consumers happy.

Open it up to the Windoze (l)users, and they start pirating stuff left and right.

These people have no taste, they have no morals, they have no class. They deserve to be running Windoze on their S***** $199 beige piece of s***.

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11/26, 02:12am | report spam | close Reply |
Yes it's hacked!

I won't get into the politics of this but one thing i'm pretty sure is that this is NOT just like hijacking the audio. Sure Apple themselves released an audio hijacking tool in the days of System 7.x it was called AIFF Writer, but this is different.

Deencryption and decoding are 2 seperate proceses with AAC. ITunes first Deencrypt the AAC using the provided use key, while copying the resulted unencrypted data in RAM. This raw AAC is then Decoded from RAM while it plays. This data is the same Apple had just after encoding the masters from the actual Audio Data and before encryption. The hack called QTFairUse just dumps the decrypted AAC data to disk. It doesnt create headers for now so files dont play in iTunes, but it's a matter of days till someone builds up a complete all-in-one solution for extracting raw decrypted ACC data and creating corresponding headers on the files. Maybe the real reason for this hack is that the P2P free-for-all gang are jealous of the iTunes exclusives and want a way to get the original content and do "whatever they want to" with it. But how much better is it than audio hijacking and converting back to ACC or mp3? I've not tested it myself but I suspect it could be possible that at least in some cases, reencoding a lossy CoDec using an other lossy CoDec could actually amplify some compression artifact, and interference between the 2 algorithms could create new artifacts. I dont think the hack is big deal, but its quicker and simpler than converting the file twice and it garanties access to the original (AAC) audio on any machine that can play AAC audio.

So i'll let you debate about the implications :)

Marc Dupont

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11/30, 12:53am | report spam | close Reply |
Sigh

#34: You are a jackass.
#35: Yes it is just hijacking the audio. The DRM isn't hacked. For the DRM to be hacked, you'd be using a stand-alone program that would unwrap the encrypted AAC, meaning the guy who wrote the program knows how to break the DRM. This isn't breaking the DRM, this is using QuickTime to decrypt the file and call a library which reads the decrypted data out to disk.

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11/30, 02:45pm | report spam | close Reply |
Not a "hacker"

Relax! This boy has done notthing. Here in Norway we have joutnalist without any computer knowledges. This kid is a script-kid wich suceeded to get the attention from a tabloid-newspaper in Norway. He did not crack the DVD code, we wrote the GUI! The person that cracked this is a German which did not have this need, the boy just published it. The Itunes hack is as well old code he reuses to get attention, with a GUi I Guess.

Do not give this person more attention. Here in Norway we just have a good laugh, not because a common tenager is named as "the big hacker" but because he suceeded in getting this attention. The norwegian technical police has these days a trial going on against him in the DVD case, but they lost the last court round because he just wrote the GUI, and the last court did not find his knowledge about cracks good enough for knowing what he published! He is just a tenager screaming.

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Norwegian programmer cracks Apple DRM

updated 03:45 pm EST, Tue November 25, 2003

iTunes DRM cracked

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