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Old 08-29-2010, 12:57 AM   #1
paulkoan
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Understanding Adobe ACSM

Hello,

As I understand it, the idea of the acsm file is to give information to ADE so that it can pass your public key to Adobe (or whoever is hosting the ebook) which will take the key, encrypt the book, then download it to ADE.

The acsm file is an XML file, and contains the url of the ebook. I purchased a book looked at the acsm file (which never went near ADE as it is not installed), and downloaded the epub file mentioned in the acsm from the site I bought the book from. I was expecting that the book wouldn't have been at the download location until the key was sent, but it was.

So this epub book isn't encrypted with my key, as I don't have one. It is encrypted of course, but with what?

Cheers,

Paul
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Old 08-29-2010, 04:28 AM   #2
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I think the mechanism of encryption is a bit different than you describe. There is one encryption key for each differnt book (same content = same key). What the Adobe server does, when ADE downloads the book, is to insert the key for the book in it. Since it would be stupid to just give everyone the key without protection, the key itself is encrypted with your personal key.

Adobe puts encrypted keys for all your registered devices in the encrypted book and the registered ADEs then are able to first decrypt the key and afterwards decrypt the book.

The ACSM is only a link, all important information for the encryption of the key and the information which keys have to be inserted in the book come from ADE.
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Old 08-29-2010, 04:58 AM   #3
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Ahh, ok. So what I have is the encrypted book, but without an encrypted (with my key) decryption key, because I did not pass my keys to Adobe for them to encrypt the decryption keys and insert into the book.

Is that it?!
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Old 08-29-2010, 05:00 AM   #4
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As far as I understand the system - yes.
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Old 08-29-2010, 10:32 AM   #5
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I think Sunlite has the answer here, this sort of nested key system is quite common. Also note that if you simply download the epub from the link provided inside the ACSM it will lack a rights.xml file inside the META-INF directory. Since this contains the key needed to decrypt it, ADE can't open the epub.
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Old 08-29-2010, 06:14 PM   #6
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No the main pdf decryption section in the pdf is encrypted with Adobe's private key and your public key.

Your RSA key is encrypted with your hardware configuration and some custom information blocks. After decrypting your private RSA key with your hardware information you can decrypt the encrypted information within your ADE pdf or epub.

Now you get your symmetric encryption/decryption key (RC4 or AES) and it is possible to decrypt your pdf with the algorithm specified in the INFO section (V = 1 ... 5)-
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Old 08-29-2010, 06:33 PM   #7
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Originally Posted by joblack View Post
No the main pdf decryption section in the pdf is encrypted with Adobe's private key and your public key.
The point is that the payload isn't encrypted with your key at all. Your key is only used to retrieve the key needed to decrypt the payload.
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Old 08-29-2010, 07:55 PM   #8
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Ahh-ha! That makes sense - if the whole book was encrypted with the customer's key, each download would have to wait on encrypting a big file. As Charleski describes it, only the relatively short (1024 bits? whatever...) payload-key needs to be encrypted for each customer.

I think.... something like that...
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Old 08-29-2010, 11:30 PM   #9
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Quote:
Originally Posted by pholy View Post
Ahh-ha! That makes sense - if the whole book was encrypted with the customer's key, each download would have to wait on encrypting a big file. As Charleski describes it, only the relatively short (1024 bits? whatever...) payload-key needs to be encrypted for each customer.

I think.... something like that...
Asymmetric encryption algorithms (like RSA) are a huge amount slower than the symmetric one.

Almost all public key encryption schemes (OpenSSH, ...) work the steps: decrypt symmetric key with asymmetric ones and then use the faster symmetric decryption (like RC4 or AES).

The pdf won't be changed later on. As far as I can see only the device key is adjusted. That's the reason why you can reauthorize a newer hardware with an Adobe ID.

The symmetric and asymmetric key remain the same only your decryption information for the asymmetric key has to be adjusted (because of the changed hardware information)
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