Ministry of Fandom Department of Circumvention

The Ministry of Fandom runs a classified branch of the agency called the Department of Circumvention. Officially it doesn't exist.

This branch is dedicated to the circumvention of Technological Protection Mechanisms that control access to copyrighted works AKA DRM.

Various Warez and Cracking Release Groups along with individuals who hack protected devices on the outernet are secretly supported by this branch and are offered server hosting, secure and deniable cloud storage, funding, and assistance. High level experts the specialize in bypassing and subverting DRM systems are hired by the branch to assist them.

For hardware protection mechanisms like DRM Chips in game consoles, the Department of Circumvention has the Bureau of Hardware Accessibility which specializes in subverting such systems. Chips will be reverse engineered and the results shared with cracking groups.

Other times if the chips are too difficult to reverse engineer, the design teams are infiltrated and the plans for the chips are stolen and shared. If there are no known vulnerabilities in the chips or their code, the plans will be secretly modified to include subtle vulnerabilities that act as backdoors but look like simple flaws.

If all else fails, devices are intercepted during shipping and backdoored from there.

Software based DRM is tackled by the Bureau of Software Accessibility.

An advanced classified reverse engineering decompilation program called BLADE is used to dissect the DRM in action and contains various classified tools to monitor, deobfuscate, decrypt, and dump data to a file. The extraction of embedded crypto keys is done here along with the infiltration of developer teams to steal the source code and master keys. This branch also specializes in introducing "bugs" in these programs that can be exploited to gain backdoor access.

For globally mandated DRM standards in devices, the Department works closely and secretly with the groups that design them to insert kleptographic backdoors in them. This ensures that cracking groups can still access the protected works regardless of the device it is used in. Sort of like the Duel-EC-DRBG standard that the NSA subverted before it was even published.

The department also works to suppress any enforcement of anti-circumvention laws using loopholes and clever use of the legal system as well as derailing investigations to get cases dismissed. They will also invoke National Security to suppress evidence that could convict people of breaking these laws. This is also done to suppress lawsuits under these laws as well.

All of these activities are considered so classified that information about them is kept on a strictly need to know basis.