Marker pens, sticky tape crack music CD protection
Source: Security Focus
Music disc copyright protection schemes such a Cactus Data Shield 100/200 and KeyAudio can be circumvented using tools as basic as marker pens and electrical tape, crackers have discovered.
The Blue Peter-style hack, which was first unearthed by a reader of chip.de works by covering up the outer ring of a copyright protected audio disc.
On copy protected discs this outer track is corrupted, which prevents copying, or even playback, by PCs but is ignored (at least in theory) by regular CD players.
Simply covering up the outer track disables the protection, allowing a disc to be played as normal in a PC or Mac.
The cracking technique seems crude, but Reg reader insomnia skunk tells us he was able to use it to defeat the copyright protection on Natalie Imbruglia's 'White Lilies Island' CD, early version of which used Cactus Data Shield 200 anti-rip technology.
