Aaron Adams’s Blowhard Blog

The fact that someone has figured out the public key part of Apple’s AirPort Express encryption does nothing to harm Apple or the AirPort Express, and as usual, most of the Internet is missing the point.

Apple never designed AirPort Express’s encryption for the purpose of locking third parties out of their hardware. It may have been a happy side effect, but Apple had to know from the beginning it would be temporary. The very smart folks at Apple understand how encryption works and had to know well ahead of time that eventually someone would figure out the public key and be able to stream from an app besides iTunes. And I’m sure Apple doesn’t care. Apple benefits from additional streaming methods. Apple gains nothing by writing the only software that can stream to the AirPort Express.

The purpose of the encryption is to protect the music being streamed between iTunes and the AirPort Express from interception by a third party not legally entitled to its possession. Breaking that encryption requires knowledge of the private key, and there simply isn’t enough computing time on this Earth to do that. Therefore, the private key remains private and the encryption’s purpose remains intact.

It has not been hacked. It is not a vulnerability. It is not some kind of victory for the anti-DRM movement because the music being streamed is still protected. The encryption still serves its purpose.

This is yet another case of a non-story being spun into something it isn’t by people who either don’t understand the facts, don’t want to understand the facts, or don’t care about the facts at all.