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Technology Stocks : Hide & Seek - The Copy Protection Solution -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: denekin who wrote (584)	8/13/1998 1:11:00 AM
From: Enam Luf	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 690

LOL.... Actually Hooper, it's not a bad question. To the best of my knowledge, i wouldn't think such a solution would not be feasible on HST's technology unless you added some really sophisticated electronic hardware, which, of course, would wipe out any advantage it had over existing technologies. HST's polymer code is never scrambled in the first place, it's difficutly of the detection or replication of the physical polymer defects that makes the solution work. However, such solutions DO EXIST in the high-end encryption hardware world. Here is my understanding of how it works (which is probably a little off, but pretty close). The effect you describe is technically known as "Zeroizing" and is used in high level encryption devices to protect the encyption key from being hacked. In addition, most hardware encryption relies on some sort of random number generation (or pseudorandom) to scramble data. Theoritically (actually it has been done recently, but only in a lab setting) it is possible to guess the key by figuring out the state of the internal condition that the device is using to generate random numbers. If you know the internal quantities that are being used, you can back into the answer, or at least eliminate many of the possible solutions that you would have to check to guess the key, making the key hunt much more efficient. Trying to guess an encryption key without any knowledge of what is being used to generate it is called a "brute force attack", best exemplified by the article IPO posted on the team who cracked the 56 bit DES key in 56 hours by randomly guessing at the right answer by checking something like 40% of the 100 quadrillion possibilities. In order to prevent a hacker from extracting the internal conditions of an encryption device, or from extracting the key directly, some high end solutions "zeroize" when they detect any physical breach or electronic probing aimed at getting them to reveal their secrets. In such a case, the device basically wipes out any relevant information such as the encryption key immediately, making it utterly useless to the potential hacker. But such technology is normally limited to very high end government and possibly financial data networks. Here are two great sites for anyone who wants a better understanding of how this stuff works. counterpane.com or any of the companies listed on security-online.com and a good overall encryption primer can be found at: rsa.com and rsa.com Some the stuff on these sites gets pretty complicated.... but after a couple hundred pages, your mind turns to mush anyway..... I wouldn't say i understand most of it... but here and there... some gets through.. Ok.... that's it... i'm checkin out for the night... later all.... Enam (techie wannabe) dunt...... dunt...... dunt dunt........ dunt...... dunt....... dunt dunt........DUNNANNAAAHHH!!!!

To: denekin who wrote (584)	8/13/1998 11:16:00 AM
From: Chloe R	Respond to of 690

Lawrence, It's really funny that you make that comparison, because HST actually calls their expiring discs the "mission impossible" discs. This is achieved one of two ways. Either an oxidative approach is used such that the disk simply expires over time when exposed to air or ambient light. (This is the one they actually put a working demo together on). Or, a polymer microdot is placed on a disc and when it is darkened by the laser the disc becomes unusable (or after X number of plays). I don't really know about its possible uses in the copy protection arena (in regards to attempts to circumvent it), but it can certainly "explode" for limited play means or for data conveyance that needs to "dissapear." Clo