Simple hack bypasses hdcp security

With the necessary soldering work in an LCD TV, a hacker has succeeded in circumventing the HDCP encryption of an HDMI signal. This enabled him to make a lossless digital copy of an HD stream using a capture card.

The high-bandwidth digital content protection protocol developed by Intel was commissioned by the film industry and must protect the video content that flows through HDMI and DVI connections by means of encryption. However, a hacker with the alias GRitchie seems like a simple one way to outwit the hdcp encryption. He unscrewed an undisclosed brand of television to examine the HDMI inputs. The device was equipped with a InstaPort Fast HDMI chipset from Silicon Image. The Instaport technology should make it possible to switch more quickly between different HDMI inputs on an HD TV. The technique has already been used by some television manufacturers and another part would have a warm interest in the technique.

GRitchie soldered eight wires from an HDMI cable to the HDMI output of the InstaPort switch. The output connection of the switch module is connected to a chip on the television’s printed circuit board. GRitch discovered that his soldering allowed him to tap into an unencrypted HD signal. He used an HDMI capture card from Black Magic.

It is clear that the Silicon Image hardware in this device skips a step in the entire hdcp encryption chain, but whether all InstaPort hardware contains this ‘error’ seems unlikely; when GRitchie tried to repeat his trick on another device with the same chipset from Silicon Image, the signal turned out to be encrypted.