New iPods reengineered to block synching with Linux

[Freakster]

New iPods reengineered to block synching with Linux

Posted by Cory Doctorow, September 14, 2007 4:21 PM | # | Discuss (29)

The latest iPods have a cryptographic "checksum" in their song databases that prevents third-party applications from synching with the portable music players. This means that iPods can no longer be used with operating systems where iTunes doesn't exist -- like Linux, where gtkpod and Amarok are common free tools used by iPod owners to load their players.

 

Notice that this has nothing to do with piracy -- this is about Apple limiting the choices available to people who buy their iPod hardware. I kept my iPod when I switched to Ubuntu Linux a year ago, and I've been using it happily with my machine ever since (though it took me a solid week to get all my DRMed Audible audiobooks out of iTunes -- I had to run two machines 24/7, playing hundreds of hours of audio through a program called AudioHijack, to remove the DRM from my collection, which had cost me thousands of dollars to build). I'd considered buying another iPod when this one started to show its age -- it's a perfectly nice player to use, provided you stay away from the DRM.

 

The new hardware limits the number of potential customers for Apple's products, adding engineering cost to a device in order to reduce its functionality. It's hard to understand why Apple would do this, but the most likely explanations are that Apple wants to be sure that competitors can't build their own players to load up iPods -- now that half of the major labels have gone DRM free, it's conceivable that we'd get a Rhapsody or Amazon player that automatically loaded the non-DRM tracks they sold you on your iPod (again, note that this has nothing to do with preventing piracy -- this is about preventing competition with the iTunes Store).

 

It won't be the first time Apple has rejigged iTunes/iPod to lock out competitors: back when Real built a DRM player for its own music that would run on an iPod, Apple threatened to sue them and engineered a firmware update to break their code (again, nothing to do with fighting piracy). This is the soul of anti-competitiveness: Real made code that iPod owners could use to get more legal use out of their iPods, Apple threatened to sue them for endangering their monopoly over delivering iPod software.

 

This is all par for the course, of course. Businesses have taken countermeasures to prevent competitors from interoperating with their products for decades. Apple had to break Microsoft's file-formats to give Numbers, Pages and Keynote the ability to read Office files -- they're enthusiastic participants in "adversarial compatibility." Decades ago, IBM lost a high-profile lawsuit against competitors who'd been making compatible mainframe accessories and selling them for less than IBM, wrecking IBM's business-model of selling cheap mainframes and charging a fortune for accessories. The law of the land has generally been that compatibility is legal, even if it undermines your profitability -- making a product does not create a monopoly over everything that your customers might do with that product.

 

That was then. Now, Apple has the Digital Millennium Copyright Act on its side, which makes it illegal to "circumvent an effective means of access control" -- that is, to break DRM. I don't know if Apple will invoke the DMCA against people who break this latest measure (they threatened Real with the DMCA before) but I guarantee you that the attorneys and investors advising potential iTunes competitors are going to be very conservative about this. The upshot is that iPod owners and the public interest lose out, because competitive products that expand the utility of the iPod are less likely to come into existence, thanks to the DMCA and Apple's locking technology.

 

I guess my next player won't be an iPod after all.

With the release of the new range of iPods - the new Nano, the iPod Classic and the iPod Touch, we were expecting more of the same - a few tweaks here and there and everything would be fine. No so.

 

At the very start of the database, a couple of what appear to be SHA1 hashes have been inserted which appear to lock the iTunes database to one particular iPod and prevent any modification of the database file. If you try to do either of these, the hashes will not match and the iPod will report that it contains "0 songs" when the iTunesDB would otherwise be perfectly adequate.

 

http://www.boingboing.net/2007/09/14/new-ipods-reengineer.html

[windward]

I guess my next player won't be an iPod after all.

 

Δε θα έπαιρνα ipod ξανά (το πρώτο ήταν δώρο) μιας και:

1)Το iTunes σε pc μου έβγαλε την πίστη

2)Δεν έχει καλή αυτονομία

3)όποτε του τη δώσει αρνείται να εγκταστήσει/αναβαθμίσει το λειτουργικό του

4)Η Rainbow στο επισκευάζει τσάμπα εντός εγγύησης αν έχεις απόδειξη, αλλά αν δεν έχεις δε το επισκευάζει ΚΑΘΟΛΟΥ

 

Αυτό θα είναι το τελειωτικό χτύπημα, αφού με το Amarok μόνο είχα καταφέρει να βρώ την υγειά μου...

[Eusebius]

Τελείως κίτρινος ο τίτλος του Boing Boing.

 

Και γελοίος επίσης: κάθισε δηλαδή κοτζάμ Apple και ξανάφτιαξε το iPod μόνο και μόνο για να κάνει δύσκολη τη ζωή των χρηστών Linux;

 

H Apple δεν έκανε κάτι για να αποκλείσει ειδικά τα λινουξοπρογράμματα.

 

Δεν ξέρουμε καν αν σκοπός ήταν να αποκλειστούν τα προγράμματα συγχρονισμού που προέρχονται από τρίτους (σε όλες τις πλατφόρμες) ή αν πρόκειται για παράπλευρες απώλειες κάποιων αλλαγών που έγιναν για άλλο λόγο.

 

Και στο κάτω-κάτω η Apple δεν λέει πουθενά ότι το iPod συνεργάζεται με Linux. Ούτε λέει πουθενα ότι είναι δυνατός ο συγχρονισμός μέσω προγραμμάτων εκτός του iTunes.

[chek2fire]

H apple παρά το φανταχτερό της περιτύλιγμα είναι από τις χειρότερες εταιρείες σε θέματα κλειστού λογισμικού και hardware.Εβγαζε,βγάζει και θα βγάζει τις πιό ασύμβατες συσκευές που υπάρχουν φυσικά για να έχει τον απόλυτο έλεγχο πάνω στο hardware.

[sotos65]

Καθόλου γελοίος, εξάλλου αυτή η αναφορά υπάρχει και αλλού. Γιατί δηλαδή το έκανε αν όχι για να αποκλείσει προγράμματα τρίτων (ξέροντας φυσικά ότι συγχρονισμός γινόταν ήδη από αυτά); Ασχέτως αν είναι για linux ή windows...

 

http://ipodminusitunes.blogspot.com/2007/09/apple-cuts-us-off.html

 

Apple cuts us off

 

So, it's finally happened. Unhappy with other media players being better than iTunes, Apple have apparently decided to stop them from working with the new range of iPods.

 

Who does this affect?

 

This affects Linux users - there's no iTunes for Linux, so popular Linux iPod management tools like gtkpod and Rhythmbox will not work with the new range of iPods.

 

Windows users who just plain don't like iTunes and perfer an alternative like Winamp, Ephpod or many of the other iPod management applications out there.

 

How?

 

The iPod keeps track of the songs and playlists in your iPod with a database file - the iTunesDB, found in the iPod_Control/iTunes/ hidden folder on the iPod.

 

Back in the early days of the iPod, the format of this file was quickly reverse-engineered by people who wanted to use iPods without iTunes. This was more important back then because iTunes only existed on the Mac, so Windows users were stuck with Real Player (which was just awful), and Linux users had exactly nothing.

 

The format of this file has evolved over the years as the iPod added support for video, podcasts, album artwork, smart playlists etcetera. The basic structure of the file has always remained the same, so these changes were easy enough for us to work out and keep up to date with.

 

With the release of the new range of iPods - the new Nano, the iPod Classic and the iPod Touch, we were expecting more of the same - a few tweaks here and there and everything would be fine. No so.

 

At the very start of the database, a couple of what appear to be SHA1 hashes have been inserted which appear to lock the iTunes database to one particular iPod and prevent any modification of the database file. If you try to do either of these, the hashes will not match and the iPod will report that it contains "0 songs" when the iTunesDB would otherwise be perfectly adequate.

 

Can't you get around this?

 

Well, maybe. We really need people who are excellent at reverse engineering to help.

 

This is what we know so far about the start of the iTunesDB file:

 

MHBD header:

0x00 4 mhbd

0x04 4 header size = 0xBC (changed)

0x08 4 filesize

0x0C 4 unknown = 1

0x10 4 version number = 0x19 (changed)

0x14 4 child count = 0x05 (changed)

0x18 8 itunes databaseid

0x20 2 unknown = 2

0x22 2 unknown = 0x0263 (changed, 0x0000 before)

0x24 8 ipod identification? (changed)

0x2C 4 zero padding

0x30 2 unknown = 1

0x32 20 unknown, changing completely from itdb to itdb

0x46 2 language, seen: de, en

0x48 8 library persistent id

0x50 4 unknown, seen: 1, 5

0x54 4 unknown, seen: 0x08, 0x0D, 0x1D, 0x4D, 0x8D

0x58 20 unknown some similarities between versions

0x6C 4 timezone offset in seconds. +2*60*60 -> 0x00001C20, -4*60*60 = 0xFFFFC7C0 (really?)

0x70 76 zero padding 0x00000000

 

0x32 is most likely a SHA1 hash, and 0x58 also could be.

 

The question is, could you help? Hop along to freenode #gtkpod if you have some serious technical expertise in this kind of thing and are able to obtain a new iPod Classic or Nano.

[dealer]

έλεος ρε πούστη μου...

κ ήθελα να πάρω ενα ipod touch αργότερα

[konnak]

[...]

2)Δεν έχει καλή αυτονομία

 

Say what?:?

[windward]

Say what?:?

 

iPod nano 12/05. Χάλια, μετά το βελτίωσαν. That.

[azamanis]

σίγουρα θα μπορέσουν λινουξοειδή προγραματα συγχρονισμού με ipod να συνεργαστούν στο αμεσο μέλλον.δεν συμφωνείτε?

[Freakster]

Σιγουρα, αλλα αν τωρα σκεφτεσαι να αγορασεις ενα απο τα νεα ipods και τρεχεις λινουξ.. dont do it..

[azamanis]

ρε τους πούστ*δ*ς

[chek2fire]

Για άλλη μια φορά δεν μπορώ να καταλάβω πως αυτές οι μεγάλες εταιρείες είναι τόσο στενόμυαλες και δεν καταλαβαίνουν ότι κλείδωμα και να βάλουν αργά η γρήγορα θα σπάσει.

[Freakster]

Αυτη τη φορα ηταν πραγματικα γρηγορα.

 

Ελπιζω να μην ηταν δειγμα των προθεσεων της apple, να κλειδωσει δλδ το ipod γιατι με ενα update μπορει παλι να τρεχουμε (; )

 

Αν καταλαβα καλα το touch δεν το καταφεραν ακομα ομως..

[gtroza]

We've won!

 

iPod Linux lock-out defeated 11:38AM, Monday 17th September 2007

http://www.pcpro.co.uk/news/125039/ipod-linux-lockout-defeated.html

 

http://ipodminusitunes.blogspot.com/

 

.