A few days ago, the developers over at SlySoft released the very first commercial HD-DVD ripper, named AnyDVD HD. The application would allow users to circumvent and strip out the digital rights management policies that have shackled the format since its release. AnyDVD HD will remove all of the content protection contained on the disc, including HDCP, so that users will be able to make “back-ups” of their (il)legally acquired HD-DVDs.

The biggest hurdle that had to be overcome by SlySoft, as well as by other hackers who have tried to bypass the encryption, was the Advanced Access Content System, or AACS. Although the company isn’t necessarily the first to successfully get around AACS, they are the first to actually take the daring leap to implement their hack into a commercially available product.

SlySoft claims to have developed a different technique for getting around the encryption standard than Muslix64 and Arnezami over on the Doom9 forums, who respectively discovered the encryption and the processing keys used by AACS.

Interestingly, neither method used by Muslix64 or Arnezami – and probably neither that used by SlySoft – is a hack, per se.

Muslix64’s method of getting around AACS consists of using a memory dump taken while the HD content was being played and performing a rolling slide of that dump data through the decryption algorithm. In the words of Steve Gibson, this means that:

“All you do is take the first four bytes and assume that they’re the decryption key, try to decrypt a piece of encrypted content. You know what the beginning of the encrypted content looks like because it’s a standard MPEG frame. So if that doesn’t work, you take bytes two, three, four, and five. Then you take bytes three, four, five, and six; then four, five, six, and seven [and so on]. You just slide along through. And our PCs are all fast enough; in a very short time you’ve searched the image […] for the key. Once you find it, you can decrypt all the content on the disk.”

Ironically enough, performing this hack probably takes less computing time than actually trying to legitimately decipher the AACS encryption scheme.

Arnezami took a slightly different approach. Instead of trying to analyze memory dumps, he decided to look for security vulnerabilities in the logs made by a USB sniffer assigned to monitor the connection between his/her HD-DVD addon for the Xbox 360 and his/her Mac. In doing so, Arnezami discovered that the AACS standard does not require an encrypted connection between the HD-DVD playback device and the software player, allowing him/her to read the key. Just as in the method employed by Muslix64, Arnezami did not have to reverse engineer, or otherwise disassemble, any of the software involved.

As Muslix64 and Arnezami have demonstrated the implementation of AACS in the HD-DVD and Blu-Ray formats is not as secure as the movie industry might have hoped for. There appear to be plenty of weaknesses in the standard, and the fact that SlySoft claims to have found yet another method only illustrates this point further.

AnyDVD HD will not only get rid of AACS, but it will also absolve users from having to play the movies on HDCP complaint video cards and monitors. Not only will all forms of DRM be gone with a few simple clicks of the mouse, but so will those obnoxious logos and trailers before the actual feature presentation – quite impressive, to say the least.

AnyDVD HD currently only supports HD-DVDs, as the name implies, but SlySoft has already stated that Blu-Ray support will be available shortly.

AnyDVD HD is now available and will retail for $79.