Has Adobe ADEPT ePub DRM been cracked already?
Remember that one of the problems with DRM is that it is all-too-easily cracked? And that cracks for the most commonly-used e-book formats (Mobipocket, MS Reader, eReader) can be found on-line in about five minutes of Google searching?
It may have happened again. Mobileread reports that a cracker claims to have figured out how to strip Adobe ADEPT DRM from ADEPT-protected ePub files. "It is the real deal. I’ve done it and it works,” reports a Mobileread forum poster who tried it.
Although Apple famously updated its iTunes program to break cracks each time a new one surfaced to decrypt iTunes store music, most e-book vendors seem to have taken a lassez-faire approach—none of the e-book format manufacturers have updated to render cracks invalid, not even Microsoft. If this ADEPT crack is valid, it remains to be seen which approach Adobe will take.
February 20th, 2009 at 7:40 am
“laissez-faire” instead of “laissaiz-faire”
February 20th, 2009 at 8:51 am
I’m sure Adobe has known all along how easily their DRM could be cracked. A while ago Adobe’s own Bill McCoy wrote in favour of DRM merely as copy deterrence of some sort (http://toc.oreilly.com/2008/11/an-industry-standard-digital-b.html). If his colleagues think the same way, then it’s likely it was never their intention to create something uncrackable.
February 20th, 2009 at 11:22 am
@Arthur Attwell — I’m not sure he does agree. He discusses in the comments how current crypto is effectively unbreakable and the “weak point” of key management is easily changed to fix breaks in the system. This (a) is rather flip given than AFAIK the only DRM system ever broken via weak crypto was CSS, and (b) suggests that Adobe is quite prepared to tweak their key management to break this break.