PlayStation Copy Protection
The original PlayStation is a pretty neat thing. Using the CD as a storage medium was a smart move. But, Sony needed to add anti-piracy features to the disc to prevent miscreants from making bootleg copies of Crash Bandicoot. This video tells the story of how that works, why it wasn’t infallible, and also proposes a potentially impervious solution (24 years late, though).
Via SwiftOnSecurity:
PlayStation DRM wasn’t based on hiding data on the CD. You can read them with a PC. They wrote DRM data via the spiral that’s are slightly perturbed in a pattern. At home you can write the data on a CD, but not the vibration of the spiral
Update (2020-03-12): Ashley Bischoff:
If you haven’t seen it already, I can strongly vouch for this video on “How the Sony PlayStation PS1 Security Was Defeated” from @ModernVintageG.
