San Francisco - The AACS digital rights management (DRM) technology that protects content on Blu-ray and HD DVD discs against unauthorized copying has been cracked, Wired News reported on Wednesday.

Previous efforts by hackers to unlock the security technology resulted in the posting of keys that would unlock only specific titles.

The new hack, posted on a forum at Doom9.org by a programmer named Arnezami, appears to work on all discs, when coupled with each title's unique "Volume ID." Arnezami found that the Volume ID on at least one movie turned out to be simply the name of the movie and the date it was released.

"The AACS is investigating the claims right regarding of the hack," AACS spokesperson Jacqueline Price told Wired News. "It is going to take a appropriate action if it can be verified."

Wired reports that the new method works better for HD DVD, which relies on AACS alone for encryption, as opposed to Blu-ray, which uses two other security technologies called ROM-MARK and BD+.

Options for plugging the security hole include changing the processing key -- which could mean either current or future players would not be able to play all discs -- or randomly generating Volume IDs in future releases.

Related Links:

http://blog.wired.com/gadgets/2007/02/the_new_hddvdbl.html