Coder claims MS Reader cracked

Only days after Russian cryptographer Dmitri Sklyarov was indicted after pleading not guilty to breach of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), another coder claims to have cracked the encryption on Microsoft Reader.

In a similarly controversial move, the as yet unidentified US cryptographer says he has cracked the Redmond Giant's version of the eBook software.

Although the cryptographer has not been identified, presumably for fear that he will receive the same treatment as Sklyarov, an MIT website, TechReview.com, claims to have seen the decrypting software in action.

Like Adobe's eBook, Microsoft Reader is another method of distributing electronic books in a copy protected format. Users are able to purchase the books online and then download them, but they are not able to make copies of the book due to its encryption.

At hacker convention Def Con in June, Sklyarov revealed a program he had devised capable of highlighting weaknesses in Adobe's encryption format and copying the electronic book.

He was quickly arrested by the FBI for breaching the controversial DMCA.

The DMCA, which has come under heavy fire from the hacker community, states that it is illegal to distribute technology that circumvents copyright protection.

But according to TechReview.com, the author of the Reader decryption software will not be releasing it to the public.