AACS Encryption Scheme Remains Uncracked

It was widely reported last week, that the ACCS protection scheme used on all HD DVD and Blu-Ray discs was cracked by an anonymous hacker. Ars Technica reports today that this is not entirely true. The “crack” that was released, simply decrypts AACS discs based on its own decryption implementation. The crack requires keys, unique to each disc, be used to break the encryption. The crack does not work around the AACS encryption but uses its decryption algorithm to play the discs. These keys are used by DVD playing programs to decrypt the disc and read it. The method by which the keys are obtained is being called into question. The author of the program apparently found them in memory after loading the discs using PowerDVD Ultra. So far, nobody has been able to locate these keys which effectively makes his program useless. As of today, the AACS encryption scheme has yet to be cracked.