

THE REAL DEAL DAN OFFICE 2010 KEYGEN KEYGEN
Because keygen uses the secret master key, only the central authority can do keygen.Įach HDCP device (e.g., a DVD player) has baked into it a public key and the corresponding private key. Keygen uses the secret master key and a public key, to generate the unique private key that corresponds to that public key. There is a special key generation algorithm (“keygen” for short) that is used to generate private keys.

Each device has a public key, which isn’t a secret, and a private key, which only that device is supposed to know. HDCP has a single master key, which is supposed to be known only by the central HDCP authority. From a security standpoint, the key step in HDCP is the initial handshake, which establishes a shared secret key that will be used to encrypt communications between the two devices, and at the same time allows each device to verify that the other one is licensed.Īs usual when crypto is involved, the starting point for understanding the system’s design is to think about the secret keys: how many there are, who knows them, and how they are used. HDCP is supposed to do two things: it encrypts the content so that it can’t be captured off the wire, and it allows each endpoint to verify that the other endpoint is an HDCP-licensed device. HDCP is used to protect high-def digital video signals “on the wire,” for example on the cable connecting your DVD player to your TV. What does the leak imply for HDCP’s security? And what does the leak mean for the industry, and for consumers? I don’t know if the key is genuine, but let’s assume for the sake of discussion that it is. On Monday, somebody posted online an array of numbers which purports to be the secret master key used by HDCP, a video encryption standard used in consumer electronics devices such as DVD players and TVs.
