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Only a day after rolling out free software that lets users watch video clips from its servers, search giant Google has had its latest service hacked by prominent computer cracker, DVD John. Known outside the industry as Jon Lech Johansen, the computer specialist from Norway has successfully reverse engineered Google Video Player, effectively allowing short film clips to be played on any server. His actions break the terms and conditions of the free 1MB software, released on Monday, to enable users to play any film available in Google Video from the company’s Mountain View, California-based servers. Johansen - or ‘DVD John’ as he’s known since cracking software protection on DVDs is expectantly unapologetic; and has posted the modification ‘patch’ on his website - under the portal’s title ‘So sue me.’ According to AP, officials at Google failed to immediately respond on Wednesday to a request for comment left by the news agency on e-mail and voicemail. Yet visitors to Johansen’s website can still access the downloadable patch that “removes the restriction” that Google implemented to prevent users from playing videos that are not hosted on the company’s servers. Running the patch requires .NET runtime. Tinkering with Google products is by no means a new phenomenon, to the extent that stand-alone websites have now been set up to list exposed software secrets, so that hackers can’t claim someone’s discovery as their own. Likewise, tweaking existing technologies is not unfamiliar to DVD John – not only because of his DVD accreditation, but also due to his successful attempt in March to break into online music store, Apple iTunes. With the aid of a colleague, the 21-year-old hacker created a quasi-legal programme to strip DRM software from the existing software safeguarding iTunes, thereby allowing users to file-share from Apple without cost or copy protection. Both Johansen and his then aid, Cody Brocious, explained at the time they developed the programme to benefit the internet community and open up Apple’s music store to Linux users. In this latest attack on Google Video Viewer, Johansen has targeted software in its beta phase that was designed simply to stream Google-stored flicks through IE and Firefox. As a result, the search site has been accused of playing ‘catch up’ to richer video services already offered by Microsoft and Yahoo, but with Johansen tweaking for Google, the company’s newest product might not be so bad after all. Jun 30, 2005 Email this article Printer friendly page Previous Page
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