CYBERSPACE – A hacker who goes by the handle “arnezami” has reportedly cracked the keys used to unlock digital rights management (DRM) for both HD-DVD and Blu-ray discs, enabling the copying of content on next-gen discs to hard drives.A blog posting on the “DVD backup” forum Doom9.com announced the development, stating that arnezami had isolated the processing key to decrypt DRM for all next-gen discs.

“That’s pretty significant,” Jeff Moss, organizer of the hacker convention DefCon, told ComputerWorld.com. “Now you can purchase the [next-gen DVD] content, store it, organize it, and arrange it anyway you want.”

In December of last year, a hacker known as “Muslix64” posted statements online detailing how he allegedly had cracked the next-gen encryption, which is known as the Advanced Access Content System (AACS). AACS is supposed to prevent high-def discs from being copied illegally and restrict which devices can read and play the discs.

Upon investigation, it turned out that Muslix64’s “BackupHDDVD” software did not actually crack AACS itself, but the hack did lay the groundwork for more extensive decryption of the high-def DRM.

AACS was developed as a collaborative effort of a number of huge companies, including Intel, Microsoft, Toshiba, Walt Disney, and Sony, and was designed to protect both next-gen formats.

Currently, there are no automated tools available that will execute next-gen DVD “backups,” but Moss told ComputerWorld.com that he believes within the next few months, someone “will create a nice graphical tool – if the hack is for real – that will allow you to back up your HD DVD just like you back up your DVDs.”

Moss doesn’t see that possibility as a bad thing, necessarily.

“It might actually help create a whole new group of products for people to help manage their own media,” Moss said. “So I’m not shedding a whole lot of tears over it.”

In his posts explaining how he performed the hack that uncovered the licensing key, arnezami states that he was equipped with only an Xbox 360 and a next-gen copy of the movie “King Kong,” and cracked the encryption of HD-DVD and Blu-ray without relying on any hacked software or compromised hardware.

“Most of the time I spend studying the AACS papers,” arnezani wrote. “A good understanding of how things worked have (sic) helped me greatly in knowing what to find in the first place.”