Hackers beat Media Player NSC encryption
One of the world’s favourite hacker’s: DVD Jon (aka Jon Lech Johansen), famed for cracking the DVD copy protection code in 2002, beating Apple iTunes‘s DRM in 2005 and generally sticking two fingers up at the mega-corporations has just revealed his latest triumph against the man. Windows Media Player NSC encoding, originally designed for the now largely obsolete task of protecting the source’s IP address and so on, also restricts the content from being viewed on other media players and on other platforms. Through reverse engineering, Johansen has made it possible for competing products to support the NSC format streams and thus offers a great deal more options for people not using Window Media Player. Schools and small enterprises benefit the most from
this breed of hacking; improved functionality in open source or free software
can mean massive savings for any one struggling to keep up with the high cost
of computing.
via The Register
