What is the value added by DRM compared to encrypted streams? - streaming

This question is about video streaming using MPEG-DASH and/or HLS. I am trying to understand the value added by commercial DRM systems (such as EZDRM, BuyDRM, etc.) compared to simple encrypted streaming e.g. AES-128 encrypted HLS. I am a bit lost in the commercial slogans.
So if I have a live or VOD stream I can easily send the stream encrypted with AES-128 if I use HLS "for free". It seems to me that when I set up a paid DRM for my MPEG-DASH streaming, basically the same thing happens, the stream gets encrypted and the details are shared in a standardized way (CENC).
So in both cases on the player side all I need is the key for decryption. It should not be a big deal to fetch that key from any webservice separately. Is that all..?
Based on this it would be very simple to implement some custom key provider service, but apparently the market is owned by big providers, so I must be missing some important aspect here.
(To clarify: I am not talking about everything within DRM, just the case when I have some live or vod videos and a website to offer these)
Any help and good comprehensive article links are appreciated.

It's a valid point. But there are quite a few differences, albeit not entirely obvious at first glance:
"Real" DRM systems don't just deliver a content decryption key as AES-128 HLS does. They deliver what is usually called licenses, which in turn also contain a set of usage rights, such as for example an expiry date (useful for rentals), or the ability to play through HDMI, or a constraint on the max resolution you're allowed to watch, and more.
Real DRM systems typically allow offline storage of licenses, which is useful in those scenarios where playback can also happen offline, or those online cases where you have to maintain state (such as rentals, if for example you play the movie in separate watching sessions).
Real DRM systems require individualization, meaning that the local license database is cryptographically bound to the device on which it was created. This is to prevent situations where user A obtains legally a valid usage license for content X, and then trivially posts the license database on BitTorrent for everyone to use. User A can do that, but the database is unusable for everyone else.
Real DRM systems allow revocation, meaning that -- since each device has a cryptographically unique identity -- if a device (or, more likely, a class thereof) is detected to be rogue, then it can be earmarked as unable to obtain future licenses.
Licenses are signed, meaning that one cannot tamper with one while in transit over HTTP, in order perhaps to extend his rental period or to allow HDMI playback where it was not originally allowed.
And there is more... Also, the above is what most commercial DRM systems have in common, but if you look at individual ones (PlayReady, Widevine, FairPlay, ...) you'll see they also have several individual characteristics that differentiate them from one another and from plain AES-128 HLS.

I can't really better #Guido Domenici answer, but the difference between AES-128 encryption and DRM is immense.
The most obvious example can be seen in the simplicity of ripping off an HLS AES-128 key. The User-agent (browser or app) has to fetch the key to decrypt the content. This is often given in the EXT-X-KEY HLS "header". A simple tcpdump or MiTM SSL proxy (with the certs trusted by the OS) can reveal the key in seconds. It's really no-more than an inconvenience.
In generic terms, with most modern DRMs, a secure plugin or low-level kernel module is responsible for raising a "Challenge Request", containing an identifier for the device, the content id and often a user token. The Challenge is passed, often via an event hook in the application, to the license server that will evaluate the request and on success, issue the decryption key in a signed and encrypted payload. The plugin or kernel module will receive the response and will decrypt the video/audio, passing the media back to the application.
Some DRM solutions also prevent screen recorders.
Another benefit of some DRMs, is that content is rarely completed encrypted and instead employs partial or sample encryption - enough to render the video and audio unplayable. This reduces the overhead required for decryption.

To complete the great answers bellow, DRM is right solution if you want to prevent manipulation on the device playing your video. For instance, if you video is been playing in a browser, it is possible to stole it (think about all download video extension for chrome) DRM prevent this.

Related

Authenticating lots of clients for a REST API

We have a large number of small devices deployed in the wild that communicate with a central server via a REST API. It will send a status update on a regular basis with some sensor data and will also ask the server if there are any software updates that need to be applied. If there are, it will download it etc.
I'd like some way to prevent my server API from being used by unauthorised clients. Here are the solutions that I have and the issues which I anticipate. This question is somewhat open ended but it is mostly a question of best practices for, what I think is, a common situation.
Keep a single username/password on the server and then use basic auth over https. This is simple but if I change it, I'd have to somehow change the credentials on all of my devices (which number in the low thousands). This is hard to do reliably. There's also a problem with how the devices are going to get the update without first changing their creds.
The second is to create a username/password for every device. Then I can update individual ones and manage them but there's a lot of state on the server and I'm worried about having this much data on the server.
Some kind of automatic key based system whereby the devices can ask for an expirable key and then use that for all transactions. If the key expires or is invalidated, that device can't connect anymore. This would necessitate some kind of id for the device which I'm not sure how to handle.
So, how would I do this?
Update
In our setup, we have assigned hostnames for each of the devices we're going to deploy created beforehand. Once the devices switch on, they will contact the server with their hostnames and thereby register themselves. The MAC address and other information is passed as part of the initial registration handshake.
So, the "unique identifer" which was mentioned in the answer (and comment) by Noksi is the hostname. This can be easily spoofed (since the hostnames have a pattern). However, when the devices first come online, we can get the mac and, after that, only refresh the token if the request comes from the same mac. This opens up the possibility of a fake registration happening the first time though.
If there is some way to uniquely identify each device (similar to a MAC address) then that would be the key. Keep a registry of the devices and each device would register with the server. the server would provide the device with a token and associate it (the token) with the registered device. the device uses that token to make requests. tokens can be made to expire and renewed as needed or can be black listed if needed. This seems to be similar to option 3 in the proposed options.

iphone storing password locally and sending it across to a server securely

I am writing an iPhone app which will start with asking the user to register with a login/passwd. These should be :
Saved securely locally
Send securely to a remote web-server
What do I need to achieve the above? Say, for local storage, shall I save them in a file or database? Shall I encrypt it? For sending it over, is HTTPS sufficient?
See this question for storing sensitive data in the iPhone keychain.
Whether you save them in a flat file or a database doesn't really matter security wise. What's important is how you secure the data - in any case you should encrypt the data with an encryption scheme that is strong enough for the type of data you are protecting.
If you only protect trivial things like for instance a high score in a game, then a less strong encryption would probably be good enough. However if you are providing access to more sensitive data, eg. personal information, then you should select a stronger encryption scheme.
Regarding HTTPS then it will only be able to help you out with the transfer of the data across the internet. It will most likely be good enough for you purpose since it is good enough for applications like online banking, etc.

Restricting access to server to iPhone app

I'm building a client/server iPhone game, where I would like to keep third-party clients from accessing the server. This is for two reasons: first, my revenue model is to sell the client and give away the service, and second I want to avoid the proliferation of clients that facilitate cheating.
I'm writing the first version of the server in rails, but I'm considering moving to erlang at some point.
I'm considering two approaches:
Generate a "username" (say, a GUID) and hash it (SHA256 or MD5) with a secret shipped with the app, and use the result as the "password". When the client connects with the server, both are sent via HTTP Basic Auth over https. The server hashes the username with the same secret and makes sure that they match.
Ship a client certificate with the iPhone app. The server is configured to require the client certificate to be present.
The first approach has the advantage of being simple, low overhead, and it may be easier to obfuscate the secret in the app.
The second approach is well tested and proven, but might be higher overhead. However, my knowledge of client certificates is at the "read about it in the Delta Airlines in-flight magazine" level. How much bandwidth and processing overhead would this incur? The actual data transferred per request is on the order of a kilobyte.
No way is perfect--but a challenge/response is better than a key.
A certificate SHOULD use challenge/response. You send a random string, it encrypts it using the certificate's private key, then you get it back and decrypt it with the public key.
Depending on how well supported the stuff is on the iPhone, implementing the thing will be between trivial and challenging.
A nice middle-road I use is xor. It's slightly more secure than a password, trivial to implement and takes at least an hour or two of dedication to hack.
Your app ships with a number built in (key).
When an app connects to you, you generate a random number (with the same number of bits as the key) and send it to the phone
The app gets the number, xor's it with the key and sends the result back.
On the server you xor the returned result with the key which should result in your original random number.
This is only slightly hacker resistant, but you can employ other techniques to make it better like changing the key each time you update your software, hiding the random number with some other random number, etc. There are a lot of tricks to hiding this, but eventually hackers will find it. Changing the methodology with each update might help.
Anyway, xor is a hack but it works for cases where sending a password is just a little to hackable.
The difference between xor and public key is that xor is EASILY reversible by just monitoring a successful conversation, public key is (theoretically) not reversible without significant resources and time.
Who is your adversary here? Both methods fail to prevent cracked copies of the application from connecting to the server. I think that's the most common problem with iPhone game (or general) development for paid apps.
However, this may protect the server from other non-iPhone clients, as it deters programmers from reverse engineering the network packet interfaces between the iPhone and the server.
Have your game users authenticate with their account through OAuth, to authorize them to make game state changes on your server.
If you can't manage to authenticate users, you'd need to authenticate your game application instance somehow. Having authentication credentials embedded in the binary would be a bad idea as application piracy is prevalent and would render your method highly insecure. My SO question on how to limit Apple iPhone application piracy might be of use to you in other ways.

Implementing a Handshake for a Socket Connection

I'm developing a program with a client/server model where the client logs on to the server, and the server assigns a session id/handshake which the client will use to identify/authorize its subsequent messages to the server.
I'm wondering what length should the handshake be for it to be reasonably secure but also short enough to minimize data overhead, since I'd like to have it be low latency.
I'm thinking of using MD5 or murmurhash2 with the username and a random number salt with a collision detection, but I'm wondering if there's a more efficient solution (i.e. a better algorithm) and whether 32bits is too much/too little for this kind of thing.
Any input is highly appreciated.
I would use a HTTPS connection for your client/server communications.
It's easy to use (almost all the major SDKs implement it) and it provides good encription.
Regards.
PD: In reference of encryption method I would use Whirlpool because Mr. Rivest said in 2005 it was broken.
This may not be as simple as it looks. Note that if you send anything in clear over the network (e.g. session id/handshake), anyone can eavesdrop the communication and reuse this value to act as the client.
If you cannot use https, as the first answer suggested, you probably need to look at key agreement protocols. Once both parties agree on a shared secret key (which cannot be reconstructed based on observed communications), you can use it to authenticate all the remaining transmissions with a MAC (e.g. HMAC).
Whatever you do, don't use MD5, it's so totally broken. Whirlpool may also not be the good option, it's slower and there is a recent (theoretical) attack on the main part of it, see
ASIACRYPT 2009 Program.
I would stick with SHA-256 for now.

Deciphering MMORPG Protocol Encoding

I plan on writing an automated bot for a game.
The tricky part is figuring out how they encoded their protocol... To make the bot run around is easy, simply make the character run and record what it does in wireshark. However, interpreting the environment is more difficult... It recieves about 5 packets each second if you are idle, hence lots of garbarge.
My plan: Because the game runs under TCP, I will use freecap (http://www.freecap.ru/eng) to force the game to connect to a proxy running on my machine. I will need this proxy to be capable of packet injection, or perhaps a server that is capable of resending captured packets. This way I can recreate and tinker around with what the server sends, and understand their protocol encoding.
Does anyone know where I can get a proxy that allows packet injection or where I can perform packet injection (not via hardware, as is the case with wireless or anything!)
Where of if I can find a server/proxy that resends captured packets (ie: replays a connection).
Any better tools or methodologies for pattern matching? Something which can highlight patterns from mutliple messages would be GREAT.
OR, is there a better way to decipher this here? Possibly a dissasembly strategy (via hooking a winsock function and starting the dissassembly from there) ? I have not done this before so I am not sure. OR , any other ideas?
Network traffic interception and protocol analysis is generally a less favored method to accomplish your goal here. For most modern games, encryption is a serious factor, and there are serious headaches associated with the protocol analysis for any but trivial factors of the most common gameplay scenarios.
Most modern implementations* of what you are trying to do rely on reading and manipulating the memory space and process of a running client. The client will have already done all the hard parts for you, including decrypting the traffic and sorting it into far more easy to read data structures. For interacting with the server you can call functions built into the client instead of crafting entire series of packets from scratch. The plus to this approach is that you have to do far less work to interpret the data and produce activity. The minus is that there is often some data in the network traffic that would be useful to a bot but is discarded by the client, or that you may want to send traffic to the server that the client cannot produce (which, in my own well-developed hierarchy for such, is a few steps farther down the "cheating" slope).
*...I say this having seen the evolution of the majority of MMORPG botting/hacking communities from network protocol analyzers like ShowEQ and Odin's Eye / Excalibur to memory-based applications like MacroQuest and InnerSpace. On that note, InnerSpace provides an excellent extensible framework for the memory/process-based variant of what you are attempting, and you should look into it as a basis for your project if you abandon the network analysis approach.
As I've done a few game bots in the past (for fun, not profit or griefing of course - writing game bots is a lot of fun), I recommend the following:
If you can code and there isn't cheat protection preventing you from doing it, I highly recommend writing an injected DLL for the following reasons:
Your DLL will be able to access the game's memory space directly, and once you reverse-engineer the data structures (either by poking around memory or by code disassembly), you'll have access to lots of data. This will also allow you to bypass any network encryption the game may have. The downside of accessing process memory directly is that offsets and data structures change between versions - however, data structures don't change very often with a stable game, and you can compensate offset changes by searching for code patterns instead of using fixed offsets.
Either way, you'll still be able to hook WinSock functions using API hooks (check out Microsoft Detours and the excellent but now-commercial madCodeHook).
otherwise, I can only advise that you give live/interactive packet editors like WPE Pro a try.
In most scenarios, the coolest methods (code reverse-engineering and direct memory access) tend to be the least productive. They require a lot of skill (to understand the code) and time, both initially (to go through all the code and develop code to interact with the data structure) and for maintainance (in case the game is being updated). (Of course, they sometimes do allow doing cool stuff which is impossible to do with the official client, but most of the time this is obvious as blatant cheating, and likely to attract the GMs quickly). Most of the time bots are made by replacing game graphics/textures with solid colours, and creating simple "pixel" bots which search for certain colours on the screen and react accordingly (e.g. click them).
Hope this helps, and remember - cheating is only fun when it doesn't make the game less fun for everyone else ;)
There are probably a few reasonable assumptions you can make that should simplify your task enormously. However, to make the best use of them you will probably need greater comfort with sleeves-rolled-up programming than it sounds like you have.
First, it's a safe bet that the encryption they are using falls into one of three categories:
None
Cheesy
Far better than you are likely to crack
With the odds of the middle case being very low.
Next, it's a safe bet that the packets are encrypted / decrypted close to the edge of the program (right as they come in, right before they go out) and that the body of the game deals with them in decrypted form.
Finally, the protocol they are using most likely consists of either
ascii with data blocks
binary goo
So do a little packet sniffing with a card set in promiscuous mode for unencrypted ascii. If you see some, great, you're ahead of the game. But if you don't give up the whole tapping-the-line idea and instead start following the code as it returns from the sending data out by breakpointing and stepping with a debugger. Figure the outermost layer or three will be standard network stuff, then will come the encryption layer, and beyond that the huge mass of stuff that deals with the protocol unencrypted.
You should be able to get this far in an hour if you're hot, a weekend if you're reasonably skilled, motivated, and diligent, and never if you are hopeless. But it is possible in principle (and doubtlessly far easier in practice) to do it this way.
Once you get to where something that looks like unencrypted goo comes in, gets mungled, and the mungled form goes out, then start worrying about what it means.
-- MarkusQ
A) I play a MMO and do not support bots, voting down...
B) Download Backtrack v.3, run an arpspoof on your default gateway and your host. There is an application that will spoof the remote host's SSL cert sslmitm (I believe is the name) which will then allow you to create a full connection through your host. Then fireup tcpdump/ethereal/wireshark (choose your pcap poison) and move around do random stuff to find out what packet is doing what. That will be your biggest challenge; but proxying with a Man in the Middle attack on yourself is the way to go.
C) I do not condone this activity, this information is only being provided as free information.
Sounds like there is not encryption going on, so you could do a network approach.
A great place to start would be to find the packet ID's - most of the time, something near the front of the packet is going to be an ID of the type of the packet. For example move could be 1, shoot fired could be "2", chat could be "4".
You can write your own proxy that listens on one port for your game to connect, and then connects to the server. You can make keypresses to your proxy fire off commands, or you can make your proxy write out debugging info to help you go further.
(I've written a bot for an online in game in PHP - of all things.)