“Groovy Motherfucker”

Rumours of playfair’s Demise…

From the extreme FUD of “iTunes 4.5 won’t play back files you decrypted using playfair”, we now reach the honest truth:

iTunes 4.5 (and the accompanying iPod update) only fix the loophole that allowed playfair to get to your DRM keys. Once you extract the DRM key (using any unupgraded machine), you can still unlock the files.

If you have a PC running iTunes 4.2, or an un-updated iPod, you can still use VLC to extract the DRM keys. I purchased some tunes yesterday on my 4.5-running Mac, then copied them over to my PC, which still runs 4.2. It played them fine. After running VLC and getting the new drm key, I was able to copy it back to my Mac’s ~/.drms folder and run playfair to break the DRM. (DeCSSJon’s DeDRMS also works fine)

I now have, on my hard disk, unprotected copies of the files I purchased from the iTunes Music Store on Thursday 29th April using iTunes 4.5.