Quote:
Originally Posted by DuckieTigger
Thank you for answering that. Couldn't have said it better. For sure would not been able to go into that much detail and make it so easy to understand.  And you are right the way you interpreted my wording of terms, even though I am not 100% sure they are the ones used in Cryptololy. |
"Reverse engineering" is not the correct term for what is at issue. PD correctly understood and answered what was at issue but he did not mean to define the term you used, he merely acknowledged that someone used the term in this thread, and explained what that person was referring to.
To be needlessly pedantic, reverse engineering in any context means examining the finished product and figuring out how it works. Reverse engineering was used to find out how the key was employed, then that knowledge was used to apply the key in other ways.
It might be fair to say in those cases that the DRM was cracked...that is, the mechanism for enforcing and limiting certain behaviors by the authorized user, was cracked, but the underlying encryption was not cracked.
There are indeed methods of bypassing DRM in this fashion that did not involve reverse engineering at all. Analog hole methods for example.
Reverse engineering might also be employed in the process of actually cracking encryption as well, so it's not really suitable as a differentiating term between these two ways of getting around DRM: Cracking the DRM by making use of the available key, or cracking DRM by cracking the underlying crypto, and thereby not needing to have the key already available.
Maybe there is another term besides "crack" more precisely referring to what we're talking about. PD and DD, not to mention Apprentice Harper, would know if anyone here would.
If there isn't, maybe we can coin one. How about "Key-Liberation?"