SDMI Not Hacked! Maybe!
Music & MP3
10/16/2000; 9:11:37 AM

'''When a publication makes such a completely wrong, unfounded, anonymous slander, I think it deserves a very strong answer,'' Chariglione told Inside, referring to a report appearing on Salon.com Thursday citing anonymous sources that claimed each of the six technologies offered up for hacking by the SDMI had been compromised. ''It's simply not true, because we, ourselves, don't have that information. We have about 450 files, with 450 descriptions of methods -- you know, our testing managing committee started working on this Wednesday morning, and it's simply impossible to say whether this is true or this is false. Nobody knows! And when I say nobody, I mean nobody, because it's 450 music files that have yet to be tested.'''

Perhaps an anonymous source jumped the gun and incorrectly assumed that 450 entries means at least one of them must be good. (Not true.)

Or, given the way beauracracies work, the anonymous source may have already unofficially evaluated the entries, found that all encryption techniques are broken, and there simply hasn't been any official analysis of the results, which could actually be a meeting to try to do some damage control.

I find it hard to believe that there hasn't been somebody unofficially evaluating these things as they come in. While I understand the SDMI-the-group would absolutely not release anything officially this early, these kinds of groups want as much knowlege in advance as possible before dealing with the public, you can rely on that. I do not think that the anonymous source has been completely discredited by this rebuttal.