Commercial DVDs, Blu-rays, and UHD Blu-rays come loaded with protection to stop them being copied and redistributed. But we all know such protections don’t last very long and copies of DVD and Blu-ray movies are already easy to find and appear soon after official releases. However, UHD Blu-ray discs using AACS 2.0 encryption have so far remained off limits to rippers. That is, until now.
AnyDVD, which has allowed for protected disc copying since it first launched back in 2003, just released a new version (AnyDVD (HD) 8.2.1.1 beta) introducing support for UHD Blu-ray ripping. The one prerequisite to taking advantage of this support is owning a “UHD-friendly” Blu-ray drive, which I’ll explain in a minute.
As TorrentFreak reports, there is no evidence yet that AACS 2.0 protection has been defeated. Instead, it’s the leaking of 72 AACS 2.0 keys earlier this year that is unlocking these discs for ripping, with AnyDVD taking full advantage of the keys to offer ripping support.
AACS protects discs by encrypting the content using the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES). Playing back the content requires a player have a set of valid decryption keys, with these keys being revoked if found to be compromised. This is where the “UHD-friendly” Blu-ray drives come into play. AnyDVD will rip UHD Blu-rays now, but only using a Blu-ray drive whose firmware hasn’t been patched to close the security hole.
Apparently AnyDVD users are reporting that UHD Blu-ray ripping support works well, so as long as the drive being used can block the firmware update it should continue to function. Meanwhile, drive manufacturers are being instructed to patch their drives, with the LG WH16NS40 confirmed as the first rewriter to do so and block AnyDVD UHD Blu-ray disc ripping.