Dmitry Sklyarov, the author of Advanced eBook Processor and DefCon speaker, has been arrested by FBI; the reason is an Adobe's complaint. If you want to help him to get out of jail, please purchase Advanced PDF Password Recovery, another program Dmitry has developed.

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Advanced eBook Processor - Truth and Myths.

There was a lot of press coverage all over the world about our Advanced eBook Processor software. We are glad to be recognized so widely, but unfortunately, most of these publications contain severe mistakes about our goals, the program facilities, and the situation in general. You can find the full story below.
 
Please make sure to revisit this page in the future for additional information about this conflict. If have any questions and/or would like to link to this page (or write your own story about that), please contact us at ebooks@elcomsoft.com.

HOT NEWS

[FBI Reportedly Detains ElcomSoft Employee in U.S.]  Dmitry Sklyarov, an employee of ElcomSoft, Ltd. of Moscow, Russia and author of the "Advanced eBook Processor" software program that Adobe Systems has alleged is in violation of Sec. 1210 of U. S. Copyright Law, was reportedly detained today as he was attempting to return home after making a presentation at the DefCon 9 Conference in Las Vegas over the weekend.
 
NEW!  Our DefCon'9 presentation: "eBook Security: Theory and Practice" (in PowerPoint format)
 
Unfortunately for Adobe's arguments, that doesn't sound like the depraved ethos of the ominous "determined hackers" they invoke in their statement. It sounds more like a tool that allows non-U.S. residents to make legal backups of their data that U.S.-centric restrictions don't provide. It being a world-wide Web, after all, our local laws shouldn't be allowed to dictate what other countries' residents can do. [...] Instead of blowing smoke about this matter and merely labeling it another instance of "piracy and software hacking" and making questionable claims about other companies' behavior, the folks at Adobe could actually fix the problem themselves.
 
If Adobe comes out of this looking like a less secure option than its main competitor (which, for the desktop ebook market, is Microsoft), they will lose the support of major publishers and find themselves pushed to the sidelines in the electronic publishing world.
 
Several PDF gurus are now in agreement with the developers of the cracking software, by maintaining that the PDF security mechanism offers very weak protection at best.
 
This isn't so different from the right to buy an album, transfer the songs to tape and listen to them on my car's tape player. That right has already been established in the courts.
 
We have found that in Acrobat eBook Reader 2.2, the protection has not been improved at all. The changes are minimal, and exactly the same (weak) encryption is being used. So we have released AEBPR 2.2, which is fully compatible with Acrobat eBook Reader 2.2: get it here, here or here.
 
Note: this version is able to decrypts 25% of the content -- only to demonstrate that Adobe technology (used in Adobe Content Server, Adobe WebBuy and Acrobat eBook Reader) is still weak. Fully functional version of AEBPR is available to editors and reviewers only on request.

Note: you can subscribe to our mailing list to get all the latest news about AEBPR.

Now it's time for the brutal truth on Adobe eBook protection

We claim that ANY eBook protection, based on Acrobat PDF format (as Adobe eBook Reader is), is ABSOLUTELY insecure just due to the nature of this format and encryption system developed by Adobe. The general rule is: if one can open particular PDF file or eBook on his computer (does not matter with what kind of permissions/restrictions), he can remove that protection (by converting that file into "plain", unprotected PDF. Not very much experience needed. In brief: ANY security plugin (actually, eBooks are protected with security plug-in as well: EBX) does nothing but returns a decryption key to Adobe Acrobat Reader or Adobe Acrobat eBook Reader. Plug-in can make various hadrware verifications, use parallel port dongles, connect to the publisher's web site and use asymmetric encryption, etc, but all ends up with a decryption key, because the Reader needs it to open the files. And when the key is there, we can use it to decrypt the document removing all permissions.
 
Below is the list (not complete) of Acrobat-based protections supported by Advanced eBook Processor: We claim that by aggressively pushing of standards, unapproved by professional cryptologiests, to the fast growing electronic books market and with pursuing of independent researchers who tries to highlight the problems, Adobe Systems violates the rights of books authors and publishers, which may result the unauthorised distribution of their books in the Internet.
 
In addition, we would like to state our intention to publish the sources of our software in the Internet, and do our best to make them available to everyone all over the world if Adobe Systems continues to pursue us.

Full story, events and documents

06/20/2001 We have released our new program and called it AEBPR (Advanced eBook Processor). The only thing the program does is: converting documents from Acrobat eBook format (compiled for Adobe Acrobat eBook Reader) to the plain Acrobat format (PDF). Again, that's all: from one Adobe format to another. But PDF is much wider used, because there are (free) PDF viewers for a lot of hardware platforms (from workstations to PDAs) and operating systems (Windows, Mac, Linux etc), while Acrobat eBook Reader is available for Windows and Mac only.
 
This program works only with eBooks you legally own, i.e. purchased from one of online stores like Amazon or Barnes & Noble. So we were absolutely sure that the owner of eBook has all rights to read the book he *purchased* where he wants and how he wants.
 
The demo version of AEBPR allowed to convert only first 10% of the book content. To protect unauthorized distribution of eBooks on the piracy market, we have set the "border" price for this program - $99, which is much more than an average eBook cost (most eBooks are being sold from $10 to $30, and there are a lot free ones). This version is still available here, but works with Acrobat eBook Reader 2.1 (or older) only, because that was the latest available version at that time.
 
06/25/2001 We have received a notification from Adobe Anti-Piracy Enforcement Team team in which they claimed that our program is illegal and we need to remove it immediately from our site. They said they give us 5 days otherwise they will "pursue us aggressively". Click here to see full version of letter we received from Adobe.
 
06/26/2001 We have received an email from our ISP, Verio Inc. They wrote that Adobe has contacted them to shut down our Web site (again, immediately). As Adobe wrote to Verio, the reason was: the site "offers downloads to their copyrighted software published by Adobe Systems."
 
Obviously - this is not true, we never distributed any software copyrighted by Adobe Systems. But as you can see, Adobe is not even going to collect the correct information (what laws, copyrights and terms-of-use have been violated), but just started their aggressive actions before 5-day period (they set themselves) has expired. Really, they did not want to give us a time to consult with our attorneys!
 
Verio gave us 6 hours to remove this page (the one you are reading now). So we moved the site to another ISP.
 
Click here to read the full text of e-mail we have received from Verio.
 
06/27/2001 (2:19:30 PM) Verio has contacted us again, this time not asking for something, but just with a notification:
 
"Host blocked: www.elcomsoft.com/aebpr.html - 198.63.210.56 port 80 (www)"
 
You can see, that since they were not able to close our web site completely, they simply disabled access to it on their routers. Moreover, they have blocked the whole IP address of our server, so not only this site, but also lots of other (not only ours) web sites became completely out of reach!
 
But we already had a few mirrors ready, and after this unfriendly action from Verio, we have updated appropriate DNS records. In 6 hours, our web site was accessible again!
 
06/28/2001 (10:57 AM) Adobe has sent a complaint to RegNow , our billing service (5 days are still not expired!). This time they called it "unauthorized distribution of software". You can read full text of this letter here.
 
RegNow asked us for advice what they should do in this situation. We didn't want them to be involved in our problems, and so asked to stop sales of AEBPR.
 
06/28/2001 Heise Online magazine (Germany) published an article about this story. Not all in this article was correct, but we would like to thank German journalists for their publication - they were first who covered the real problem. From this article, we have found out that this story first appeared in Wall Street Journal, and that Barnes & Noble has stopped sales of the books in Adobe Acrobat Reader format.
 
Wall Street Journal Online article is available only in the paid access here, so here is the excerpt of the article:
Barnes & Noble.com Inc. temporarily pulled certain electronic books from its Web site (...) Books available in the Adobe Acrobat eBook Reader format (...) were listed as out-of-stock on the site for about 24 hours, starting around 6 p.m. EDT Tuesday
 
Michael Fragnito, vice president of the digital group at Barnes & Noble.com, declined to comment on the nature of the problem...
 
Susan Altman Prescott, vice president of product marketing for cross-media at Adobe Systems Inc., said (... they) learned last Friday that a Russian software program (...) was capable of decrypting e-books using the 2.1 version of Adobe's Acrobat eBook Reader. She said Adobe worked through the weekend to resolve the problem and by Monday had a new 2.2 version ready.
 
A spokeswoman for Amazon said (...) Amazon never stopped selling Acrobat-format e-books because the Reader software "was something we were able to swap very quickly."
 
... E-books in the ... Microsoft formats weren't affected by the problem, according to Barnes & Noble.com ...

And where is the truth? Adobe said that they have fixed the problem on Monday; B&N stopped sales on Tuesday evening (after the problem was fixed); and Amazon didn't stop the sales at all, because they didn't see any problem there! Isn't it a result of competition between Amazon/Adobe and B&N/Microsoft?
 
I think that you can find some answers on these questions on B&N site:
 
"Can't Decide Which eBook Is Best for You?" According to Barnes&Noble, Microsoft Reader is good for "Businesspeople, Professionals, and Academics"; while Adobe eBook Reader is good for "Kids (who) like the full-color, high-quality graphics".
 
The fun is also here. For Adobe eBooks funs, B&N recommend to "search our selection of Gay & Lesbian eBooks to find everything from fiction to politics. Start with Girls Will Be Girls, a collection of stories about women and their relationships, from the author of Heather Has Two Mommies."
 
Do you want you Kids learn more about Gay & Lesbian relationships? Thus, you need Adobe eBook Reader! :-)
 
Correction: as of 07/05, Gay & Lesbian eBooks are not advertised at B&N anymore. Unfortunately, we haven't made a screenshot...
 
The same day this story was covered by: But we highly recommend you to read article on our favorite Planet eBook - that was the first media that tried to highlight the problem instead of publishing something "hot" about "Russian hackers again" .
 
06/29/2001 The story was covered by: The press coverage now moves to Europe and Asia.
 
07/02/2001  More and more European media: 07/03/2001  More coverage: 07/04/2001 New version of AEBPR now available
 
We have found that in Acrobat eBook Reader 2.2, the protection has not been improved at all. The changes are minimal, and exactly the same (weak) encryption is being used. So we have released AEBPR 2.2, which is fully compatible with Acrobat eBook Reader 2.2: get it here, here or here. Note: this is a demo version: it decrypts only 25% of the content, but cannot be "registered" (to have the full functionality) at all. Full version is available on request only to journalists and cryptanalysts for reviewing and evaluation purposes.
 
You can download a demo version of AEBPR here, here or here. And yes, it works with new version of Adobe Acrobat eBook Reader (2.2), "which addresses a security issue" of Reader 2.1.
 
07/05/2001 More coverage: 07/11/2001 More coverage: 07/13/2001 More coverage: 07/15/2001 More coverage: 07/17/2001 Dmitry Sklyarov, ElcomSoft' employee and author of AEBPR, has been arrested by FBI and now in jail in Las Vegas (Nevada, USA). That situation has been covered by a lot of media, for example (sorry, unsorted): If you want to help Dmitry to get out of jail, please purchase Advanced PDF Password Recovery, another program he has developed.

Please also make sure to revisit this page in the future for additional coverage of this conflict! If have any questions or would like to link to this page (or write your own story about that), please contact us at ebooks@elcomsoft.com. You can also subscribe to our mailing list to get all the latest news about AEBPR.