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 purchaseAdvanced PDF Password Recovery, another
program Dmitry has developed.
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.
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:
"standard" PDF encryption,
BPTE_Rot13 (used by New Paradigm Resources Group, Inc.),
FileOpen (by FileOpen Systems),
SoftLock (by SoftLock Services, Inc.),
InterTrust DocBox,
Internet Standards Australia
Adobe's Web Buy
Adobe's eBook Reader (GlassBook Reader)
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:
Dow Jones News Service
Dow Jones Business News
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" .
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 requestonly 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.
07/17/2001 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):
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.