Microsoft “Output Content Protection”
[Output Content Protection and Windows Longhorn|http://download.microsoft.com/download/5/D/6/5D6EAF2B-7DDF-476B-93DC-7CF0072878E6/output_protect.doc]
Excerpt:
-break->
”* PVP-OPM
Protected Video Path – Output Protection Management (PVP-OPM) makes sure that the PC’s video outputs have the required protection or that they are turned off if such protection is not available.
- PVP-UAB Protected Video Path – User-Accessible Bus (PVP-UAB) provides encryption of premium content as it passes over the PCI Express (PCIe) bus to the graphics adapter. This is required when the content owner’s policy regards the PCIe bus as a user-accessible bus.
- PUMA Protected User Mode Audio (PUMA) is the new User Mode Audio (UMA) engine in the Longhorn Protected Environment that provides a safer environment for audio playback, as well as checking that the enabled outputs are consistent with what the content allows.
- PAP Protected Audio Path (PAP) is a future initiative, under investigation for how to provide encryption of audio over user accessible buses.
- Hardware output attacks
These attacks concern the various outputs from the PC. For premium content, digital outputs such as Digital Visual Interface (DVI) and High-Definition Multimedia Interface (HDMI) need to have High-bandwidth Digital Content Protection (HDCP) enabled, to prevent someone recording the digital stream. Even analog TV-style outputs typically need protection, as provided by mechanisms such as Macrovision and CGMS-A. Some output types such as S/PDIF (Sony/Philips Digital Interchange Format) typically don’t have a suitable protection scheme available, so these need to be reliably turned off if the content so specifies.
In Longhorn, the robust control of PC video outputs is provided by PVP-OPM, which is essentially the next generation of Certified Output Protection Protocol (COPP) introduced in Windows XP. However, rather than being a software API, PVP-OPM operates with the Windows media components in the Protected Environment.
- User-accessible bus attacks
This relates to the capturing of premium content from the PCIe bus connecting the motherboard to the graphics adapter. Some content owners have specifically disallowed the sending of their content in unprotected form over the PCIe bus in their content licenses. In Windows Longhorn, PVP-UAB addresses this threat.”
Update:
- [slashdot article|http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/07/15/155216]
- [engadget|http://www.engadget.com/entry/1234000143050582/]
- [Microsoft overview|http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/device/stream/output_protect.mspx]
Commenting is closed for this article.