DRM protection reached the cat litter

Programmer Jorge Lopez (Jorge Lopez) is very fond of cats. The only unpleasant thing he calls a constant need to remove the filler used - due to a sharp odor. Six months ago Jorge fulfilled his dream and bought a pet cat supernavorochennoy automatic toilet CatGenie, which automatically collects and cleans plastic filler for reuse.

Cleaner cartridge lasts for 2-4 months (in a year it takes about $ 350). Once Jorge did not have time to buy a spare cartridge and decided on their own to change the fluid. Here cat owner got a nasty surprise. His sincere indignation he shares in blog on Medium.

Gulf cartridge plain water, he hoped to reach a couple of days until you reach the store. But after refilling, to the surprise of the engineer, the cartridge refused to work, and continued persistently CatGenie beeping to indicate an empty cartridge.

Jorge Lopez again climbed to google the problem - and found that in cartridges SaniSolution SmartCartridge from CatGenie installed RFID-chips, watching the liquid level. If cleaner ends working device return state is no longer possible without reprogramming the chip.

Thus, to protect intellectual property of the manufacturer, who reserves the right to refill cartridges only own proprietary tool.

The system works similarly to the same DRM-mechanism in conventional desktop printers. Thanks to DRM printer manufacturers get the basic income is the sale of consumables, ink-jet inks are one of the most expensive liquids on the planet ( about 4 dollars per milliliter).

"In fact, CatGenie, you've added a rather complex system of DRM in the cat's tray?" - Refers kotovladelets device manufacturer. He finally understood that it is not in reality the owner of this gadget, but only rents it in accordance with the terms of the contract.



Fortunately, the internet was able to find the hackers who have already released a modified firmware CatGenius to crack cat litter, as well as established manufacturing DRM -emulyatorov CartridgeGenius .



What is most interesting, in the opinion of users, when filling the cartridge with plain water with the installation of DRM-emulator CatGenie works even better than with a proprietary cleaner plastic granules filler lose stickiness and no longer stick to the cat's fur.

Source: geektimes.ru/post/243379/