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A Cost Analysis of Windows Vista ContentProtection
Peter Gutmann, pgut001@cs.auckland.ac.nz
http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~pgut001/pubs/vista_cost.htmlLast updated 12 June 2007 (but see the note below)Distributed under theCreative Commonslicense (seeAppendix
 
)(In case you're wondering why the June-dated version of this page suddenly reverted to a mucholder March or April-dated copy in early August, there was a problem with backups and all web pages here got rolled back about six months. Unfortunately by then various caches hadoverwritten the newer copies with the older ones, so it's taken awhile to restore this version).In early August of this year I gave a talk at a security conference with a significantly more up-to-date and cleaned-up version of this material (the writeup here was originally written for commenton a private security mailing list and had to be somewhat hastily retrofitted for non-security-geeks). In addition this text was mostly written nearly a year ago and predates a number of events such as the appearance of hardware with PVP-UAB support, about 100-odd MB of Vistaupdates, and entire stories like the GigE slowdown issue (although that has nothing to do withcontent protection). This means that this writeup exhibits the inevitable bit-rot of broken links,stories that have changed, updated or changed technical information, and so on. Finally,numerous images and diagrams don't integrate too well into this text-only writeup (the talk material is in PDF form, which makes it easier to include graphical content). So theslides for thetalk are the recommended form if you want to read about this, with an optional version annotated for the humour-impaired. I've also put up a brief commentabout statements by the George and Ed tag team at ZDNet for people who were wondering about that.
Executive Summary
Windows Vista includes an extensive reworking of core OS elements in order to provide content protection for so-called “premium content”, typically HD data from Blu-Ray and HD-DVDsources. Providing this protection incurs considerable costs in terms of system performance,system stability, technical support overhead, and hardware and software cost. These issues affectnot only users of Vista but the entire PC industry, since the effects of the protection measuresextend to cover all hardware and software that will ever come into contact with Vista, even if it'snot used directly with Vista (for example hardware in a Macintosh computer or on a Linuxserver). This document analyses the cost involved in Vista's content protection, and the collateraldamage that this incurs throughout the computer industry.
Executive Executive Summary
The Vista Content Protection specification could very well constitute the longest suicide note inhistory [ Note A].
 
(In case you missed the note at the top, this writeup hasn't been current for some time now, andmany links and information are outdated. It's only kept online because of the large number of sites linking to it. If you want the current version, see the note at the top).
Table of Contents
IntroductionDisabling of FunctionalityIndirect Disabling of FunctionalityDecreased Playback QualityElimination of Open-source Hardware SupportElimination of Unified DriversProblems with DriversDenial-of-Service via Driver/Device RevocationDecreased System ReliabilityIncreased Hardware CostsIncreased Cost due to Requirement to License Unnecessary Third-party IPUnnecessary CPU Resource ConsumptionUnnecessary Device Resource ConsumptionHow Effective is it Really?Final ThoughtsAcknowledgementsSourcesUse, Modification, and RedistributionAppendices and FootnotesMini-FAQOpen QuestionsMicrosoft's ResponseAbout the Author GlossaryQuotesFootnotes
Introduction
This document looks purely at the cost of the technical portions of Vista's content protection[ Note B]. The political issues (under the heading of DRM) have been examined in exhaustivedetail elsewhere and won't be commented on further unless it's relevant to the cost analysis.However, one important point to keep in mind when reading this document is that in order towork, Vista's content protection must be able to violate the laws of physics, something that'sunlikely to happen no matter how much the content industry wishes that it were possible [ Note C]. This conundrum is displayed over and over again in the Windows content-protectionrequirements, with manufacturers being given no hard-and-fast guidelines but instead beinginstructed that they need to display as much dedication as possible to the party line. Thedocumentation is peppered with sentences like:
 
“It is recommended that a graphics manufacturer go beyond the strict letter of the specificationand provide additional content-protection features, because this demonstrates their strong intentto protect premium content”.This is an exceedingly strange way to write technical specifications, but is dictated by the factthat what the spec is trying to achieve is fundamentally impossible. Readers should keep thisrequirement to display appropriate levels of dedication in mind when reading the followinganalysis [ Note D].A second point to note is that the term “premium content”, or in more recent statements byMicrosoft, “commercial content” (I've used “premium content” throughout this writeup for consistency) goes well beyond the HD-DVD and Blu-Ray examples that I've used above andencompasses not just the obvious definition of “HD content in any form” but even non-HDcontent, or as Microsoft put it“commercial content generally, independent of resolution”. While premium content is currently still somewhat scarce, in five years' time it'll be hard to find amovie or similar content that isn't HD or similar premium content. So although Microsoft havetried to downplay the perceived impact of Vista's content-protection by stating that it'll onlyapply when premium/commercial content is present, this conveniently sidesteps the fact thatMicrosoft hopes that this situation will become universal in the near future. The whole future of Vista's content protection is predicated on this fact, because without near-universal premiumcontent there's no point in having content-protection features in the first place.
Disabling of Functionality
Vista's content protection mechanism only allows protected content to be sent over interfaces thatalso have content-protection facilities built in. Currently the most common high-end audio outputinterface is S/PDIF (Sony/Philips Digital Interface Format). Most newer audio cards, for example, feature TOSlink digital optical output for high-quality sound reproduction, and eventhe latest crop of motherboards with integrated audio provide at least coax (and often optical)digital output. Since S/PDIF doesn't provide any content protection, Vista requires that it bedisabled when playing protected content [ Note E]. In other words if you've sunk a pile of moneyinto a high-end audio setup fed from an S/PDIF digital output, you won't be able to use it with protected content. Instead of hearing premium high-definition audio, you get treated to premiumhigh-definition silence.Say you've just bought Pink Floyd's “The Dark Side of the Moon”, released as a Super Audio CD(SACD) in its 30th anniversary edition in 2003, and you want to play it under Vista (I'm justusing SACD as a representative example of protected audio content because it's a well-knowntechnology, in practice Sony has refused to license it for playback on PCs). Since the S/PDIF link to your amplifier/speakers is regarded as insecure for playing the SA content, Vista would disableit, and you'd end up hearing a performance by Marcel Marceau instead of Pink Floyd.Similarly, component (YPbPr) video will be disabled by Vista's content protection, so the sameapplies to a high-end video setup fed from component video. In fact even the most basiccomposite video out (a.k.a. “TV-out” on video cards) is disabled, at least by nVidia's drivers:
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Medway08

glad you noticed...

reply02 / 09 / 2008
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