Intel has confirmed the leak of its HDCP master key, but since any implementation would have to be done in hardware, the chip giant claims it isn’t worried. On Friday however they also confirmed that they would take swift and decisive legal action against anyone planning to produce a product that circumvents HDCP in any way.
“There are laws to protect both the intellectual property involved as well as the content that is created and owned by the content providers,” said Tom Waldrop, a spokesman for the company, which developed HDCP. “Should a circumvention device be created using this information, we and others would avail ourselves, as appropriate, of those remedies.”
The leaked master key is a particularly devastating blow since it is used to create all of the lower level keys that are embedded within devices. It makes creating HDCP compliant recording devices a simple task, and its only a matter of time before black market devices begin to appear.
Intel still hasn’t released how the master key was exposed, or if any criminal investigation is pending. The news is especially painful for movie studios who just a few months ago convinced the FCC to let them remotely switch off analog ports on cable boxes for certain content. It remains to be seen what long-term impact this will have on copy protection for HD content, but Intel is clearly willing to back its mistake with an army of lawyers.
Will this deter the black market?
