4K UHD Blu-rays introduced AACS 2.0. The industry promised this was "unbreakable." It introduced a concept called . In theory, even if you had the keys, your player had to phone home to verify the disc wasn’t a rip.
Prior to LibreDrive, your Blu-ray drive’s firmware was an enemy. The firmware was programmed to refuse reading certain areas of the disc if the AACS handshake failed. makemkv aacs
The AACS LA is currently rolling out AACS 3.0 . Very little is known about it, but rumors suggest hardware-enforced trusted execution environments (Intel SGX-like requirements) and mandatory online authentication for every playback session. If that happens, MakeMKV may face its final boss—one that might require hardware key extractors, not just software patches. 4K UHD Blu-rays introduced AACS 2
The implementation was sloppy. While the bus encryption was tighter, the underlying Volume Unique Keys were often still stored in memory unprotected. Once a few "leaked" keys for major studio releases hit the internet, MakeMKV could use LibreDrive to grab the MKB and cross-reference it with known keys. Prior to LibreDrive, your Blu-ray drive’s firmware was
This creates a massive security risk for the average user. Clones of MakeMKV are rife with cryptocurrency miners and remote access trojans. The real MakeMKV is beta software that requires a constantly rotating "temporary activation key" (which the developer provides for free while it is in beta).
While decrypting a disc you own is arguably legal under Fair Use (USA) or Private Copying (EU), distributing the keys (the KEYDB file) is technically circumvention of a technological measure, which violates the DMCA.