Quickie: Kerckhoffs's Principle

Kerckhoff's Principle (or Shannon's Maxim) says that a system should be secure even if the hacker knows everything about it except the key. This has important ramifications for closed encryption systems such as DRM.

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[evensgrey]

The encryption used on Blu Ray discs was broken so quickly, the format hadn't even reached full launch before it was completely compromised. It wasn't just the algorithm and keys used for decryption, either. The mechanism used to distribute keys was broken, making the entire system unsecurable. This was confirmed all the way back at be beginning of 2007, 13 years ago, before full launch of Blu Ray (and a month or so after HD-DVD encryption suffered a similarly embarrassing defeat by the same investigator.)

[shanedk]

By the way, what do people think of the audio quality on the latest Quickie? Better? Worse? No different? What about the ear monitors, conspicuous? Don't matter?

[jackmcslay]

I remember in the late 90's early 2000's when arcade manufacturers attempted to encrypt their games to prevent copies, it didn't work as emulators worked them out almost instantly after release, in the end they served no purpose other than make it a pain in the ass for collectors, such as the case of the infamous CPS suicide in which the decryption key is stored in volatile memony powered by a battery soldered to the cartridge board so that if the battery dies out so does the cartridge