Zune DRM successfully cracked

The digital rights management scheme that guards media bought from the Zune Market place has been compromised, says a forum post and subsequent reports from users themselves. An updated version of the controversial FairUse4WM now exposes and strips the secret keys for the proprietary format as well as any song or video that uses the more widespread Windows Media format, allowing any of these files to play without their earlier usage limits. The update also supports Windows Vista, whose change in code had previously restricted any attempts to break DRM.

FairUse4WM had until now been silenced for several months, after a lawsuit by Microsoft failed to identify the creator of the software for alleged theft of source code but successfully discouraged short-term development. The programmer, known only as "viodentia," has denied ever using special data and claims that his techniques work using only information provided with Microsoft's own publicly available software tools. [via Ars Technica]