DVD Jon breaks Apple's Airport Express music streaming system

August 13, 2004

Johansen who originally circumvented the DVD CSS system and the Fairplay DRM system
has now broken yet another recent addition to iTunes - Airport Express which
sends iTunes music securely by wireless to Hi-Fi equipment. Jon had decrypted Apple's wireless Hi-Fi
bridge key as well as published it.

He has
also developed a command line tool code-named 'JustePort' that allows other
software to stream music in a variety of audio codec's over Apple's Airport
Express. Beforehand, only iTunes 4.6 could stream
music over the Airport Express.
While John is interested in circumventing DRM systems, he is not doing
this to encourage piracy but instead trying to free consumers of the restrictive
measures the recording industry is imposing on its consumers. He is also consistently warning
consumers of the danger of being locked into DRM.

Norwegian programmer Jon Lech Johansen has decrypted and published the key that Apple's wireless hi-fi bridge, Airport Express, uses to protect music streams. He's also released the source code to a small Windows command-line tool he calls JustePort. In essence his crack opens the door for other applications to broadcast music to your hi-fi over a home WLAN network using Express, rather than just iTunes 4.6. For users on Linux machines, or with WMA or OGG format files, this could be a boon, as iTunes supports neither format out of the box.

Apple is unlikely to look upon it so charitably.

JusteForte is the third in a series of endeavors by the Mac-using Norwegian to enjoy Apple's services. Johansen has stressed that the tools simply restore rights that Apple and the recording industry giants removed when they devised iTunes Music Store. He has consistently warned citizens against accepting DRM music, as it obliges the user to enter into a contract in which the terms may change at any time.

The first removed the 'Fairplay' DRM wrapper from locked-music purchased from Apple's iTunes' online music kiosk. The second, FairKeys, allowed users to retrieve their Fairplay keys from Apple's servers, saving people the hassle of authorizing and deauthorizing particular machines. The cumbersome process is required by copyright holders.

More derivative software based on JustePort code is likely soon. Johansen's own cross platform command line tool runs on any computer that runs on the Mono framework.

Johansen co-authored the DeCSS program
which circumvented the DVD encryption scheme. He was acquitted after two
trials in Norway earlier this year.

While the entertainment industry is getting new copy-protection measures
enforced one after another, there will always be someone on their back undoing
and unlocking the restrictive measures in an aim to free the consumer of
being tied up with restrictive measures.

It will
be interesting to see how much longer Jon manages to continue circumventing DRM
systems as he is surely one of the entertainment industry's worst enemy's.

Feel free to discuss and find out more about copy protection measures on
our Copy Protection Discussion
Forum.

Source: The Register - Internet & Law