01.08.2005 20:02

Apple for Intel and DRM

Slashdot writes about DRM used in Developer Kit with Apple Mac OS X for Intel. The fact is heavily commented including a (strong) suggestion about moving to Linux.

I don't know what the chip will be doing, in fact. No details. Let's assume worst case -- locking everything so you can open/edit it only on authorized machine. What it means? For me it means the whole thing reverse engineered as soon as someone with enough knowledge and time is annoyed with it (what means: rather month than two).

The fact many people try to ignore is that no protection scheme works when user has physical access to the hardware. Especially when can filter and change all input and output going out of it. Reverse engineering is just a matter of time. The thing that can make it slower (not stop) is law that prevents reverse engineering for compatibility reasons. But even if you have such law in your country, it's still legal in many others. The process of reverse engineering will just be done somewhere else. Just as with DVD encoding, cryptographic algoritms in the time of US restrictive export law and so on.

It's not that I don't think DRM is dangerous. It is. It just doesn't work. Many companies have tried and failed. It looks that learning on someone's mistakes is not the preferred way.


Posted by Mara | Categories: Security, Software