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It looks like the High-Bandwidth Digital Copy Protection (HDCP) version 2.2 used to protect the 4K video content provided by Netflix and Amazon has been cracked, a wave of 4K video torrents have appeared online.
4K streaming releases have been available for a while already, with Netflix and Amazon as the two key vendors in this market.
Earlier this year the first 4K Netflix leak surfaced, but after that it went quiet. However, a few days ago many more releases started to appear online, as TorrentFreak noted.
Those leaks include new original series such as Jessica Jones, and their file sizes are significantly larger than a typical 1080p video, in some cases topping 10GB per episode.
HDCP 2.2 is a protocol that locks down video as it’s transmitted over HDMI, DVI, DisplayPort, or USB, preventing unauthorized duplication. Windows 10 PCs enable strict DRM at the hardware level. Studios have also started imprinting watermarks on 4K video, allowing them to trace leaks back to the source.
TorrentFreak speculates that new 4K set-top boxes from Amazon and Roku may have provided some sort of opening, since Amazon’s Fire TV uses the weaker HDCP 1.4b protection.
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