Feel Like a Hacker 3: Hack Netflix and Download Movies! · Common Sense
Ξ August 10th, 2007 | → 0 Comments | ∇ Software, Tweaks, Video Stuff, Hot news! |
Quoted from http://talentshowdown.com/?p=188:
Feel Like a Hacker 3: Hack Netflix and Download Movies! · Common Sense
Feel Like a Hacker 3: Hack Netflix and Download Movies!
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*UPDATE*: From what some folks have been saying, it looks like Netflix updated the version of IBX (Individualized Blackbox component) used for their WM-DRM wrapping of the movies. This is no big deal. If you get the error “”IBX Version 11.0.6000.6324 isn’t supported yet”, there is only one extra step one would have to do. The only thing that has changed is that one can now use the mirakagi add-on (see http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=127943) for FU4WM to sniff out the keys, and then launch FU4WM to clean the files. In other words, here are the revised steps 12 and 14 (all the other steps remain the same):
12. Immediately after you click Yes and are presented with a ‘media usage rights acquisition’ dialogue, launch mirakagi and click ‘Start’ as soon as you see the ‘Play’ button become active in the rights acquisition dialogue in WMP. Mirakagi should then tell you that it has found a couple keys and that it’s done processing.
14. Now open up FU4WM and hit Next to get to the file selection dialogue, and click on ‘Add File’ to select the data.wmv file so that it appears in the list of files in the FU4WM window. Highlight the data.wmv file and click Next.
HOW TO RIP NETFLIX ‘WATCH NOW’ MOVIES
BY: DIzzIE [antikopyright 2007]
Disclaimer
The following is presented for informational purposes only. I do not take any responsibility for the actions you may take after reading the contents of this document. Circumventing DRM restrictions may (or may not) be in violation of various laws. Check to make sure the process is legal in your jurisdiction and does not go against Netflix’s own TOS. I most certainly do not advocate the breaking of any laws (save for public urination, which I hold to be an inalienable, worldwide right. In other words: it’s not my fault if your Netflix account gets terminated, you get a fine, go to jail, do not pass Go, do no collect $200, or your son gets run over by an unmarked black sedan (though he swears he saw a Netflix/M$ logo flicker in the windshield…).
Prelude
At the start of 2007 Netflix started offering a ‘Watch Now’ (netflix.com/watchnow) service that lets subscribers watch flicks and tv shows online at no extra cost. The limit is one hour per dollar, so if you pay $18 for your subscription, you get 18 hours of credits to watch shit online. All well and good, but the trouble is that Netflix doesn’t easily allow you to save the flicks and watch them at your leisure because the films are entrapped in some shittastic Windows Media DRM wrapper. Let’s see if we can fix that. This guide will thus show you how to save and decrypt the movies from Netflix so that you can convert them to other mediums and watch them at your leisure.
Tools of the Trade
In order to run the Watch Now service you’ll need a subscription to Netflix (duh), as well as be running Windows XP with Service Pack 2 or Windows Vista, Microsoft Internet Explorer 6 or higher (though there is a way to use the IEtab add-on in Firefox: hackingnetflix.com/2007/01/firefox_instant.html), and Windows Media Player 11. To decrypt the media files, you’ll also need a handy little program called FairUse4WM. (Oh, and we’ll use Notepad a little bit as well 
). The output media files will be unprotected WMV files, suitable for conversion to XviD or whatever format you prefer, using one of the hundreds of converter programs out there, such as the free Super ©, available at erightsoft.com/SUPER.html.
The Step-by-Step
1. Log in to your Netflix account and browse on over to netflix.com/watchnow to pick a flick to watch (you can usually watch the trailer within Netflix prior to picking a movie as well).
2. Click the blue Play button next to the movie of your choice. If this is your first time trying out the Watch Now feature, the Netflix Movie Installer (Netflix_Movie_Viewer_Installer.msi) dialogue will pop-up. Click yes to go through the installation process.
3. You should now see a Windows Media Player (WMP) dialogue pop up, saying ‘you do not have the rights to view this file…would you like to connect to the website…’. Hit NO.
4. In your browser window you should now see an error message from WMP bitching about not having the license to play the file. Ignore that shit, and open the source code of the website (right-click in the browser window and select View Source, or go to Tools and then View Source).
5. Hit Ctrl-F in Notepad (assuming that’s what the website source code opened in) and put in ‘WNPlaylistMovies’ (type that without the quotation marks and hit enter). The bit of code you’re looking for will look something like this:
Code:
ar WNPlaylistMovies = {”movies”:[{”id”:”4937292″,”title”:”Scat Girls From Space”,”streams”:[{”url”:”http://index.ehub.netflix.com/item/?x=sdjkdsjHDEFJKHE38DFAWKDJdjieEWIUiDWJIDWI.”,”bitrate”:500,”dlid”:473289292,”requiredBandwidth”:700},…
You’ll see a few more URLs listed, each with a different bitrate. You can pick the last URL which should have the highest bitrate and will also have the highest filesize (upwards of a gigabyte for full-length movies). Despite the bitrate listed in the source code, GSpot always seems to show that the bitrate is 6154 kb/s for the flicks downloaded for the highest listed bitrate.
6. Copy the ehub URL that you picked (including the quotation marks), and open up a new Notepad window.
7. Here’s the template you can paste into Notepad to make a link to the file:
Code:
<html><a href=”http://index.ehub.netflix.com/item/?x=sdjkdsjHDEFJKHE38DFAWKDJdjieEWIUiDWJIDWI.”>scat girls</a> </html>
8. Still in Notepad, go to File and Save As. Type in something along the lines of netflixrip.htm and under ‘Save as type’ select All Files. Save the htm file you just made wherever you want.
9. Open the netflixrip.htm file and right-click on the link you made. Select ‘Save Target As…’. You should now see the usual save dialogue pop-up in Internet Explorer, asking you to pick a location where you want to save a file called data.wmv.
10. The file will be around a gig or two, so pass the time as it downloads by going to the park and masturbating to some dead pigeons (or what have you…).
11. Back already? Well OK, assuming the file has finished downloading, time to exorcise the Micro$oft DRM demon. This part is a wee bit tricky and might take you a couple tries to get it down pat. Open the data.wmv file in Windows Media Player, and you should see the same alert you saw back in step 3. This time click YES to connect to the Netflix site and acquire the license. (In Internet Explorer 7, you might get a security warning about an ActiveX control, click on the security bar and select ‘allow ActiveX controls…’).
12. Immediately after you click Yes and are presented with a ‘media usage rights acquisition’ dialogue, launch FairUse4WM and click ‘Recover Keys’ and then ‘Start’ as soon as you see the ‘Play’ button become active in the rights acquisition dialogue. FU4WM should then tell you that a couple keys were found, and after you hit OK, it will then ask you something about a DLL file (to which you click Yes as well).
*UPDATE*:12. Immediately after you click Yes and are presented with a ‘media usage rights acquisition’ dialogue, launch mirakagi and click ‘Start’ as soon as you see the ‘Play’ button become active in the rights acquisition dialogue in WMP. Mirakagi should then tell you that it has found a couple keys and that it’s done processing.
13. At this point, swap back to the WMP player, which should now be playing the movie, and go ahead and close down WMP.
14. Now going back to the FU4WM window launch FU4WM, click Next and click on ‘Add File’ to select the data.wmv file so that it appears in the list of files in the FU4WM window. Highlight the data.wmv file and click Next.
15. If you screwed up, you’ll now see an error in FU4M telling you that the file “does not appear to be licensed to you”. Go back and click Recover Keys in FU4WM right after the license window pops up in WMP. When the ‘play’ button becomes active in the license acquisition window in WMP, click on Recover Keys in FU4M and try again. The timing can be a bit iffy, so keep trying and you’ll get it. If, on the other hand, everything went smoothly, you should now see a conversion status bar in FU4WM, telling you to “please wait while your files are converted” 
.
16. The conversion doesn’t take nearly as long as the download did, so I’m afraid there’ll be no time for pigeon masturbation at this stage 
(well, unless you’re quick…), though don’t do anything else for the few minutes that FU4WM is doing its thing, or you might get a rather glitchy video file.
17. Once the conversion is done, you should have a duplicate copy of the data.wmv file (sans the encryption, that is ), in the default save folder of FU4WM (…\My Documents\My Videos\, or wherever you specified). Feel free to open the file in Media Player Classic, VLC, or whatever, or convert the file to another format. Close down FU4M, and delete the yucky encrypted data.wmv file.
18. Rinse and repeat.
What about the Time Limit Thingy?
You might remember that in the first version of this textfile I boasted that there was a way to get around the time limit and get unlimited movies. No such luck. For, while the flicks you download don’t immediately show up in your Watch Now Viewing History (netflix.com/WatchNowViewingActivity), they do show up after 24 hours, no matter how much of the movie you view (that is, even if you watch only ten seconds of a flick, its full length will be recorded in your account after 24 hours). Other alleged ways of beating the time limit, like unplugging your modem, and flushing your cache/temporary files after downloading the flick also don’t appear to work as the time still gets deducted after 24 hours. As such, if you do manage to find a way to beat the time limit, do let us all know .
Now Don’t Get Cocky…
And lest you’re all too ready to start making torrents of the flicks, keep in mind that there have been some rumours about Netflix putting in uniquely identifying watermarks into the video files. Though I haven’t spotted any (while viewing my films legally within Netflix’s Watch Now viewer ), keep your eyes open.
And remember that it may be possible to track uploaders of files to torrent trackers (or other mediums) based on their viewing history (much like these dudes Arvind Narayanan and Vitaly Shmatikov recently demonstrated that users could be identified based on their ‘anonymous’ film ratings. See “How To Break Anonymity of the Netflix Prize Dataset” arxiv.org/PS_cache/cs/pdf/0610/0610105v1.pdf).
***
And there you have it, an easy way to rip and decrypt Netflix’s Watch Now media, enjoy!