Documents leaked in the Sony hack reveal that the Blu-ray Disc Association (BDA) believes that DVD-Ranger's Cinavia removal tool CinEx HD "replaces marked audio streams with unmarked streams". The document is from March 2014.
A sheet that should update members of the BDA with the current stance of Blu-ray attacks reveals that Verance is currently analysing the Cinavia removal module from DVD-Ranger. It also shows that Cinavia developer Verance has updated their technology to counter attacks on their technology.
The sheets starts with mentioning that AnyDVD HD "has been updated at a consistent pace". The sheet also mentions Slysoft's Cinavia fix that makes sure the copy protection is not triggered by several software Blu-ray players. This technology does not remove Cinavia from a disc but instead suppresses the Cinavia (or Cineavia as written in the sheet) detection.
Other software mentioned is DVDFab and MakeMKV, the first has been under fire by AACS-LA, the developers of the AACS Blu-ray copy protection which has taken DVDFab to court. The AACS-LA succeeded in shutting down DVDFab's .com domain, social media accounts and payment provider, however the company succeeded to continue to operate by moving to a Chinese domain and payment provider.
The mention of DVD-Ranger is remarkable. The developer so far always denied that his software is replacing audio streams. Some users on our site believe DVD-Ranger CinEx replaces the original audio stream of a movie with a Cinavia free audio stream that somehow has been obtained. It now appears the developers of Cinavia, Verance underline this hypothesis. The reason some users suspect DVD-Ranger is using this method is due to the requirement of downloading a large database file. According to DVD-Ranger this database contains a so-called "first pass" which should decrease the time to remove Cinavia from the audio track. Users on our site argue that the database contains obfuscated audio that DVD-Ranger somehow rebuilds to a working soundtrack.
Nevertheless, the actual way CinEx HD hasn't been uncovered yet, so these are only guesses.
When asked, DVD-Ranger responds that the information is nonsense and that Verance likely bases its information on boards like ours. The developer stresses that CinEx HD doesn't hide the Cinavia signal but actually removes it and that it's impossible to replace the soundtracks for various reasons.
Update: DVD-Ranger has posted a statement on his website regarding this.
This post is part of a series on the leaked Sony documents and emails published by Wikileaks
