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MIT Hacks XKCD Talk With AACS key

Posted by kdawson on Tue May 15, 2007 06:45 PM
from the hacking-101 dept.
It's funny. Laugh. Encryption Security
Reader Hanji alerts us to a hack pulled off when Randall Munroe, author of the popular webcomic XKCD, spoke at MIT by invitation of the Lab for Computer Science. MIT hackers dropped hundreds of labelled playpen balls onto the audience from hatches in the ceiling. The labels bore XKCD's logo as well as the recently discovered 16-byte AACS processing key. At another point in Munroe's talk he was stalked by remote-controlled mechanical velociraptors; but fortunately he had been supplied with a squirt gun full of grape juice.
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  • thats better than (Score:5, Funny)

    by evwah (954864) on Tuesday May 15 2007, @06:49PM (#19139135)
    thats better than being stalked by remotely controlled mechanical MPAA lawyers

  • Americans demand tougher sentencing for hackers!!! (Score:4, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 15 2007, @06:49PM (#19139137)

    Ask a liberal to define the word "hacker" and he would probably give you a rose-tinted answer. To the liberal, a hacker is a harmless tinkerer. It's unlikely that a FBI agent would agree; nor would anybody who has to commute by air, drive a car, raise a family or pay their taxes.
    All sensible patriots should demand [shelleytherepublican.com] that these atheist hackers are sent to prison. (At the very least, they are suspicious and should be reported to the FBI for going to a "technology" college instead of Bob Jones University!!). I have a modest proposal to go further than the sober ideas presented in that beatiful and well researched article: those who have inflicted cyberterrorism on our great nation by illegally watching HDDVDS should be given the death penalty. This is the only way we can live through these troublesome times, when the rapture is near [shelleytherepublican.com], without losing to inferior and dangerous communist [shelleytherepublican.com] computing [shelleytherepublican.com] products [shelleytherepublican.com].
    • What was the name of that Internet "law" (more like an observation) that once you reach a point far enough to the political right, your viewpoint becomes indistinguishable from satire?

      I assume you posted this in honour of the late Jerry Falwell.

      • Extremisim in any form is pretty tough to distinguish from satire. For instance, it's hard to tell if the thousands of the inane "OMG Linux+OOo+Beryl rocks M$ is the sux0r!" posts here are satire or not. I hope at least some of them are.

      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        by compro01 (777531)
        What was the name of that Internet "law" (more like an observation) that once you reach a point far enough to the political right, your viewpoint becomes indistinguishable from satire?

        i believe you're refering to Poe's law:

        "Without the use of a winking smiley or other blatant display of humor, it is impossible to make a parody of fundamentalism that someone won't mistake for the real thing."

  • LSC != LCS (Score:5, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 15 2007, @06:56PM (#19139203)
    The xkcd talk was hosted by the MIT Lecture Series Committee, not the MIT Labratory for Computer Science (which was merged with the AI Lab to form CSAIL a few years ago, and thus no longer formally exists).
  • For some reason, I expected him to be really thin, and wearing a black hat.

  • tags: encryption, humour (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 15 2007, @07:04PM (#19139289)
    how odd we don't see the two tags together more often

  • Some notes (Score:5, Informative)

    by Hanji (626246) on Tuesday May 15 2007, @07:15PM (#19139381)
    • It was LSC, the Lecture Series Committee, not LCS, the Lab for Computer Science (now known as CSAIL) that invited him. They're a student group that shows movies and sponsors talks like this.
    • /. linked to the second page of photos; The first [mit.edu], which isn't entirely obviously linked from the linked page, has some excellent photos of the balls falling from the hatch.

    • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Shabbs (11692)

      They're a student group that shows movies
      No doubt with the express permission of the MPAA. ;) Is it me or is it totally hilariously ironic that they have "Like free movies" written on the chalk board? Couple that with the AACS processing key attack and it's pretty funny. Indeed.

      Cheers.

  • A squirt gun? (Score:4, Funny)

    by Spazntwich (208070) on Tuesday May 15 2007, @07:16PM (#19139389)
    Pfft, everyone velociraptors fear nothing besides traffic cones.
  • Genericon is trying to get him to come to RPI next year, so with any luck I may get my chance to meet him. Until then I'll just keep plastering comics on my door.

  • References (Score:3, Informative)

    by mu22le (766735) on Tuesday May 15 2007, @07:23PM (#19139475) Homepage Journal
    The playpen balls [mit.edu] were a reference to one of xkcd's more popular comics, Grownups [xkcd.com]. The message on the playpen balls was a reference to some of xkcd's comics "My hobby...".
  • ...that someone, SOMEONE, comes to my local city to chat that is even 1/2 as interesting. It has been YEARS since I was at a guest lecture... seem some good ones (esp Douglas Adams - talking about his book Last Chance to See). Wonder how you get on a mailing list...

  • Velociraptors (Score:5, Informative)

    by Kuvter (882697) <wdeback@gmail.com> on Tuesday May 15 2007, @08:47PM (#19140091) Homepage
    For those who may have missed the Velociraptor [xkcd.com] joke, another one here [xkcd.com], and one more for good measure [xkcd.com].

    I love xkcd!

  • come on, I know you're out there... (Score:4, Funny)

    by Zackbass (457384) on Tuesday May 15 2007, @10:28PM (#19140883)
    LSC..

  • I say =) (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Cervantes (612861) on Wednesday May 16 2007, @12:04AM (#19141473) Journal
    Having only recently been introduced to xkcd (and having read the entirety of the strip in one sitting) I have to say this entire thing is quite amusing. The balls, the raptors... obviously the folks who pulled this have read and understood the strip.

    If you haven't read it yet, I highly recommend it. Geek humour at it's finest (and sometimes most touching)

    Hey Rob, where's my 20 questions with the xkcd author???

  • XKCD: Hover over the comics (Score:5, Informative)

    by gsn (989808) on Wednesday May 16 2007, @12:15AM (#19141553)
    The comics have the Title attribute defined. For example http://xkcd.com/c253.html [xkcd.com]. I read them all and noticed this a week later and then had to go back and read them all again.

    I love xkcd.

  • Heh (Score:4, Informative)

    by glwtta (532858) on Wednesday May 16 2007, @02:40PM (#19150003) Homepage
    So, like 27 people link to the playpen balls comic, but no one mentions that someone actually baked him a cake shaped like the internet [mit.edu] - a deliciously(!) multi-layered reference to XKCD?

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by Nasarius (593729)
      Learn your history [mit.edu], n00b.
    • Yeah arent college pranks supposed to be stuff of legend?

      "Lets drop some things and then set our overpriced RC toys at him!"

      "Genius!"

      "Yep, we're MIT students!"

      • Re:Wow! (Score:5, Informative)

        by MtHuurne (602934) on Tuesday May 15 2007, @07:45PM (#19139657) Homepage
        They chose velociraptors [xkcd.com] for a reason [xkcd.com].

          • Re:Wow! (Score:4, Informative)

            by dysfunct (940221) * on Tuesday May 15 2007, @09:51PM (#19140575)
            Nice ideas, but IMHO this would be blown way out of proportion and not necessarily the right kind of thing for this occasion. xkcd can have quite complex humor but is also quite pragmatic and simple.

            Also, if you don't already know, being afraid of and protecting yourself from velociraptor attacks and playpen balls as sexual innuendo are a common meme at xkcd and on its forum. Simple things like releasing playpen balls and stalking Randall Munroe with velociraptors seem to be the perfect hack considering the general spirit of the comic. In the end, the sophistication doesn't matter if it completely misses the joke and just doesn't feel right for the occasion. There's a right time and place to show off your tech skills, but this one just wasn't.

    • Re:Wow! (Score:5, Informative)

      by EvanED (569694) <evaned@[ ]il.com ['gma' in gap]> on Tuesday May 15 2007, @07:07PM (#19139307)
      Actually, there's a reason [xkcd.com] behind the playpen balls (not pens). It's a reference to the strip.
    • a) We have new lectures halls (See the white elpehant known as Stata)
      b) You should try 26-100
      c) The reason 10-250 blows for this, or rather why LSC sucks, is that this was not a large enough venue.
        • Then why do you say such stupid things you silly millenial super-frosh?
          And why do you gripe about one of the nicer halls, when the real back-breakers are 26-100, 4-270, etc.?

          Things could be worse. You could have to treck out to E50 or climb the three flights of stairs to 54-100.

      • Re:it's (Score:4, Funny)

        by blackicye (760472) on Tuesday May 15 2007, @08:29PM (#19139957)

        It's a little late to be jumping on the spread-the-AACS-key bandwagon, isn't it?
        09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0


        Not if you realize how hard is it to write "09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0" on thousands of playground balls and them load them into chutes in the ceiling!

      • Re:it's (Score:5, Insightful)

        by inviolet (797804) <pineminder&yahoo,com> on Tuesday May 15 2007, @08:50PM (#19140111) Journal

        Honestly, I wish the DRM enthusiasts of the world would get a clue. There is nothing you can try to protect digitally that someone can't break digitally. It's bits of data and there is always a combination of 1 and 0's that will open Pandora's chastity belt.

        The greatest mistake anyone can make, is underestimating one's enemy.

        The RIAA is not stupid. They, of anybody, have money to burn on purchased expertise. They already understand that bits are inherently copyable. And they've been told many times that crypto will always fail in finite time when Eve is given the ciphertext, the plaintext, and the key.

        What DRM is, is their attempt to tilt the economics of copying in their favor. In the same way that we are attempting to tilt the economics of spam in our favor. In both cases, the root problem (copying or spam) is intractable... but it can be satisfactorily tamed by a change in the economics.

        By raising the cost (i.e. the hassle, the legil peril, the hardware requirements, the software expertise, etc.) of copying, and of receiving copies, above the price of retail media, they'll solve the problem enough.

        Yes, you've told us a thousand times that the problem cannot be conclusively solved, but everyone already knows that. They aren't seriously trying to do that. They're just trying to tame it, and they're succeeding. You are blind to this because you've underestimated them. You hang out here on slashdot talking about how stupid they are, but meanwhile BluRay is taking over the world, and most of your and my friends have closed down their bittorrent servers in fear.

        • And they've been told many times that crypto will always fail in finite time when Eve is given the ciphertext, the plaintext, and the key.
          Obligatory XKCD. [xkcd.com]

        • Re:it's (Score:4, Insightful)

          by Fred_A (10934) <fred&fredshome,org> on Wednesday May 16 2007, @07:08AM (#19143403) Homepage

          The RIAA is not stupid. They, of anybody, have money to burn on purchased expertise.
          However large amounts of money with no in-house expertise also tends to attract large numbers of sellers of snake oil. Which has been amply demonstrated by a number of rather silly DRM implementations we've seen floated around so far.

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