JustePort breaks Apple AirPort encryption

Norwegian programmer Jon Lech Johansen, who is known for his work with DeCSS and PlayFair, is continuing his efforts to un-cripple DRM crippled hardware and software.

Johansen has released a software called JustePort, which lets owners of Apple’s AirPort Express to stream MPEG4 Apple Lossless files to the device from any source — not just iTunes. Since iTunes is only available to Windows and Mac users, JustePort gives for instance Linux users the opportunity to take advantage of AirPort.

JustePort itself supports only MPEG4 Apple Lossless (.m4a) files as input, but since the RSA encryption key used is now available, it is easy to develop full-featured third-party streaming clients for AirPort.

Earlier this year Johansen developed PlayFair (now known as Hymn), which removed the DRM wrapping from songs sold at the iTunes Music Store. Last month he released FairKeys, which lets iTMS users to extract FairPlay keys from Apple’s servers. The keys are required to authenticate computers to play songs purchased from iTMS.