Jeremy A. Kaplan, writing for Fox News, reports that the HDCP (High-bandwidth Digital Copy Protection) key that leaked a few days ago was indeed real.

Speaking with Fox News, an Intel spokesman said, “It does appear to be a master key.”

I’m a little surprised that it has taken this long for HDCP to become compromised. Usually things like this are cracked within a year, but HDCP took over six years to become compromised.

To most people this leak means absolutely nothing, but what it means to people who care is that HDCP has now become the weak link in the copy-protection chain. The analog hole will be around for quite some time but this leak creates a second, digital hole that likely won’t be fixed for a while.