A Threat To The Cracking World.

How many of you have come accross this Article. What are your opinions on this article. Is it The End Of Days of the Cracking World.

-http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~rja14/tcpa-faq.html

Any comments?

Horrible!
Bill deserves being killed for this.

Can Palladium (TCPA) be defeated? Of course. I calculate that within minutes of it inconviencing anyone with SoftIce, a solution will be found.

As with all "magic bullets", it only hurts legitimate users. Additionally, It gives a false sense of security to content providers and authors.

Prior to the popularity of 3rd party protectors like ASPR and the like, authors would invest time in their protection, coming up with unique and challanging protections. Now they just get lazy, wrap it up, and usually just have a simple "jz BadGuy" protection inside. It's a false sense of security.

Computers do what they are told, and they like '1's as much as they like '0's. Anything more is just marketing hype. Things like a "Fritz" chip can be emulated, and for that mater, you can emulate an entire VM (witness VM Ware and Virtual PC). A "protected" stream of data can be stripped naked of it's armor once the vunerabilities are determaned.

Legitimate users end up not being able to listen on their MP3 players or playing a game on another PC, things they can currently do. TCPA punishes legitimate users without inconviencing too much the pirate.

I predict a new round of tools, eventually point and click tools, will come into existance shortly before TCPA gains any wide spread acceptance.

TCPA fails because it has one fundamental flaw: It poses a challange to human ingenuity. By throwing a gauntlet down to people who understand what computers really are, some of whom are VERY SMART, that challange can't help but not be accepted.

TCPA isn't a challange, DMCA is. Witness DeCSS, something designed not to pirate but to allow viewing on an unsupported platform. Corporate America says "Jump", and FBI agents hop planes to foreign countries to enforce their will on kids. That sucks.

OK, I'm done. TCPA is just a touchy subject for me. TCPA is BAD, but I can't help but be reminded of the "panic" that Y2K presented to people who should have known better. Maybe I'm over confident, but I'll still place my bet on human ingenuity every time.

[wassim_]

Why should we go so far and assume about TCPA? isn't there any other case of a program well protected that no one was able (till now) to crack?
Well the answer is yes...there is ...

BodyStudio 2 is a recent example... What if other authors implemented the same protection scheme? and I think the chinese will pay after all for the softwere they use lol.

It all boils down to incentive. I don't know the program you refer to (body studio 2).

In 1999, a inteligent but less-than-technical friend asked about Y2K, claiming that stores would run out of food and people would starve. I explained that people could always go to McDonalds. she chuckled, but I wasn't joking.

You see, if it was going to affect profits, you can be darned sure that McDonalds (and the like) would have a darn good solution. I sometimes think their building could be on fire and they'd still attempt to adhere to their 60 second drive thru times.

The same is true for TCPA. The moment someone can't put an MP3 on their RIO, or copy a game to their friends PC, they will have *incentive*.

The most important component to any solution is a problem . Right now, TCPA isn't an issue. Body Studio 2 isn't an issue (never heard of it). I mean, even the cracking groups tend to shy away from stuff that doesn't have 'sex appeal' (ie. popular) and braging rights. Who would brag about defeating something few people have heard of?

The moment TCPA inconviences someone, the moment 10,000 people will say "WOW, you cracked TCPA!", well, TCPA won't stand a chance. Someone will run it thru an emulator, and figure out how to either splice in and get the naked datastream or effectively render it "region 0".

If man can make it, man can break it. If a computer can decrypt it for legitimate reasons, a computer can decrypt it for other reasons as well. It just takes incentive.

if anything has proved anything, this wont do a thing

When i read this article i really panicked....i needed some expert opinion on this....thanks for all ur replies.

The way I look at it, is the first good thing is its being spread around (the info about TCPA that is..) but I hope the public plays its cards right that there wont be a need to crack it because of the outcry its sure to generate. In effect with TCPA you dont owm your computer, what other industry could do something like this? GM still having remote control over your car even after it leaves the lot? I would hope the protests will be so loud, theyll be froced to eiether change it ALOT or totally give up as if TCPA is integrated into hardware (IE a CPU) I simply would not buy another computer that had that in it, and thats a good opertunity for more CPU manufcactures to open up. Nows the best time to protest it tho Id say, so get to work :P

[xobor]

just bla bla bla from TCG

in ordinary English - we want more and more money ... and just a little bit more

just my 0.02$

regards

[JMI]

Sorry. We've recently had to raise the rates for "random thoughts" to $0.04.

Please deposit $0.02 more cents or we will have to erase your previously express thoughts.

Regards,

i rather move to linux on my old p200 than use that shitty platform

but anyway this is some bullshit, what if i plug out the cable, how the fuck they will be able to delete my files remotely? Maybe they will fire up tomahawk coz they found out i broke DMCA

From the site...

15. Can't TC be broken?

The early versions will be vulnerable to anyone with the tools and patience to crack the hardware (e.g., get clear data on the bus between the CPU and the Fritz chip). However, in a few years, the Fritz chip may disappear inside the main processor - let's call it the `Hexium' - and things will get a lot harder. Really serious, well funded opponents will still be able to crack it. But it's likely to go on getting more difficult and expensive.

If this thing ever gets that far, I really don't think the cracking world would be anything like it is today...

But that's a big if.