SDMI offers $10,000 challenge to hackers

[William Knowles <wk () C4I ORG>]

http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1005-200-2730039.html?tag=st.ne.1002.bgif.ni

By John Borland
Staff Writer, CNET News.com
September 8, 2000, 4:55 p.m. PT

The record industry and companies hoping to create bulletproof digital
music protections are challenging all comers to a duel by hacking:
Break their safeguards, and they'll pay $10,000.

The challenge is the first time the developers of the Secure Digital
Music Initiative (SDMI) technology have opened themselves so broadly
to a trial by fire. The goal for any ambitious hacker will be to strip
out the identifying "watermark" from songs, which is the piece of code
intended to keep a pirated song from playing on an SDMI-complaint
device.

Nearly a dozen different proposals for the security component of the
copy protection will be up for grabs, according to SDMI executive
director Leonardo Chiariglione. Any of the versions that are cracked
will be thrown out of contention for the final standard, while the
others will go on for other tests.

"Here's the invitation: Attack the proposed technologies. Crack them,"
Chiariglione wrote in an open letter to the digital music community.
"By successfully breaking the SDMI-protected content, you will play a
role in determining what technology SDMI will adopt."

The SDMI effort was launched at the end of 1998 as a way for the
music, consumer electronics and software industries to settle
collectively on a way to protect digital music from piracy. The idea
has been to create a voluntary standard under which music companies
could insert an inaudible bit of information into every song that
would block it from being played on devices manufactured to comply
with that standard.

The effort has proved rocky, as analysts and some companies in the
industry have questioned whether consumers would accept the standards
and whether manufacturers would be willing to create devices unable to
play the millions of songs downloaded illegally online.

The initiative is in its second phase as it develops the mark that
will tell the devices whether the song has been illegally copied. This
is the technology that will be opened to attack online.

Chiariglione said the contest will kick off Sept. 15 and go at least
through Oct. 7.


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