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Announcing PallyCon Anti Capture Product Depreciation
15 Sep

Announcing PallyCon Anti Capture Product Deprecation

by PallyCon
in Content Security
Release Date: May 1, 2020
End of Service Life : October 31, 2021

PallyCon’s anti screen recording product for Windows Chrome browser will be discontinued at the end of October 2021 and will no longer be supported. In this article, we explain the reasons for the decision to discontinue the product and provide alternative solutions along with the issues that customers using the product must address.

Reasons for discontinuing the product

PallyCon Anti Capture product was released in May 2020 to compensate for the vulnerability of Windows Chrome browser and Widevine DRM (L3-based) about screen recording. Unlike Windows IE11/Edge (with PlayReady DRM) and macOS Safari (with FairPlay DRM) browsers, which support the recording prevention of DRM contents by the OS kernel level implementation, Chrome browser allows screen recording for contents to which Widevine DRM is applied.

PallyCon Anti Capture product has provided a screen recording prevention solution for Chrome browser by monitoring the execution of various recording tools through our  Windows service application and the Chrome extension installed on the end user’s PC. However, this technical approach had the following limitations and problems.

Problems of PallyCon Anti Capture product

  • Separate program installation required:
    Like other plug-in-based security solutions such as ActiveX, end users need to separately install Chrome extensions and Windows service applications.
  • Requires closing or disabling of the recording tool:
    In order to play a protected video in an environment where various screen recording functions such as the Windows Gamebar are activated, it is necessary to deactivate the recording function or terminate the program.
  • Cannot prevent recording 100%:
    Due to the limitations of the blacklist type detection, it is difficult to completely detect and block new recording programs or screen sharing functions of video conferences.

We decided to discontinue the product as it was difficult to overcome these limitations with the technical approach.

Alternative solutions

Instead of PallyCon Anti Capture, the alternatives that can compensate for the screen recording vulnerability of the Chrome browser are as follows.

  1. PallyCon Forensic Watermarking:
    Invisible watermark information is inserted into the video on-the-fly to trace the illegal leakage such as screen recording
  2. PallyCon Visible Watermarking:
    Display visible watermark information such as user ID and IP address on video to suppress illegal leaks
  3. Multi-key DRM packaging:
    By applying different encryption keys for each video resolution such as SD and HD, the quality of content provided in environments vulnerable to screen recording, such as Chrome browser, can be limited.
  4. Upcoming Chrome browser update:
    Through Widevine L1 CDM scheduled to be released at the end of this year, the screen recording prevention similar to E11/Edge browser (with PlayReady) can be supported in Chrome browser

If you have any questions about the solution #1 to #3, please contact us via our Helpdesk.

In the case of Chrome browser update, which is the fourth method, specific requirements (CPU, GPU, etc.) for the feature have not been announced yet, so currently it is not possible to determine in what environment Chrome’s own recording prevention works.

What to do about the deprecation

For customers who are currently using the PallyCon Anti Capture product, the following related modules will be available until October 31, 2021.

The customers must perform the following tasks in their service sites before October 31st to prevent failures due to the discontinuation of the product.

  • Customers using v1.0.0: Remove PallyConLib.js file and related code from the service page
  • Customers using v1.1.0: Remove SecureVideoWatch.js file and related code from the service page

PallyCon team will continue to do our best to protect your valuable content and business model. If you have any questions, please contact us through the Helpdesk or the contact form on the website.