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Cyber Security Researcher Helps Combat Online Piracy

Cyber Security Researcher Helps Combat Online Piracy

June 28, 2016

Homeland & Cyber Security

Wired — For years Hollywood has waged a war on piracy, using digital rights management (DRM) technologies to fight bootleggers and hackers. Now two cyber security researchers have found a new way, using a vulnerability in the Google Chrome browser, to bypass these protections.

David Livshits, a Ph.D. student from BGU’s Cyber Security Research Center, along with Alexandra Mikityuk from Telekom Innovation Laboratories in Berlin, alerted Google to the problem on May 24, 2016, but the company has yet to issue a patch.

The researchers say people could exploit the flaw to save illegal copies of movies they stream on Chrome through sites like Netflix and Amazon Prime.

“The simplicity of stealing protected content with our approach poses a serious risk for Hollywood studios which rely on such technologies to protect their assets,” says Livshits.

The researchers have yet to release the precise details of the bug out of concern that the information could fall into malicious hands. To prevent this, time is of the essence.

“A vulnerability in the product of Google which is distributed by Google, and users and studios expect to be secure, should be highly prioritized and fixed to prevent theft of protected content,” says Dudu Mimran, chief technology officer of the Deutsche Telekom Innovation Labs@BGU.

Read more on the Wired website >>