BD+ busted - Blu-ray on Linux one step closer?
A small group of dedicated researchers over on the Doom9 forum have successfully defeated BD+, the Blu-ray copy-protection system. This was the copy-protection mechanism that Richard Doherty, a media analyst with Envisioneering Group, claimed wouldn’t likely be broken for 10 years.
The thread on the Doom9 forum is very (very) heavy going but what’s happened here is that the researchers have recreated BD+ virtual machine, similar to that which resides inside a normal Blu-ray player. The forum posts are highly technical in nature but fascinating to follow - it’s quite amazing to see this mechanism being unraveled over the course of a few weeks
The real weakness for BD+ has been that Blu-ray works with both hardware and software players. This break, while not easy by any stretch of the imagination, would have been much harder if it had to be carried out on hardware.
