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Television Media

Still More on News Corp. Hacking Charges 78

Posted by michael from the as-the-world-turns dept.
Spike and others wrote in about this ongoing saga: subsidiary of Vivendi claims that a subsidiary of News Corporation cracked their satellite TV smart cards and posted for public download. (See our previous stories.) Two new stories from the Associated Press and Yahoo note that although the two companies are apparently dropping the original lawsuit (since News Corp. is making a large investment in Vivendi), Echostar is now claiming they were hacked too and the U.S. Justice Department is investigating possible criminal charges.
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Still More on News Corp. Hacking Charges More

Still More on News Corp. Hacking Charges

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  • Me too! (Score:1, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Looks like Echostar would also like a big investment from News Corp.

  • Love! (Score:1, Insightful)

    by e8johan ( 605347 )
    I've heard a saying that 'fighting leads to love'... It seems like it applies to companies too ;-)

  • I got hacked too, honest (Score:3, Funny)

    by iainl ( 136759 ) on Wednesday October 09, 2002 @08:17AM (#4416156)
    Can I have some of Rupert's cash now? I've no evidence, or anything, but that doesn't seem a problem.
    • Sorry, you just get to see all you can stand of Bill O'Reilly and "When Dolphins Attack". Ecch.
    • I've no evidence, or anything, but that doesn't seem a problem.

      Your name isn's Goerge W. by any change ?

  • So they claim... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by viper21 ( 16860 ) <scott@NOspaM.iqfoundry.com> on Wednesday October 09, 2002 @08:19AM (#4416166) Homepage
    But I can't see any reference to a shred of proof in these articles.

    So why did I read them?

    -S

  • Isn't this breaking the DMCA? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by suman28 ( 558822 ) <{moc.liamtoh} {ta} {82namus}> on Wednesday October 09, 2002 @08:28AM (#4416200)
    I am sure there are copyright issues here. So how come a large corporation is able to get away but Dmitri Skylarov is still in jail? It always seems to be one rule for corporations and another rule for everyone else and yet another rule for the government.

  • "Security" (Score:5, Interesting)

    by phil reed ( 626 ) on Wednesday October 09, 2002 @08:30AM (#4416212) Homepage
    It's interesting to note that DirecTV is in the process of sending out new smart cards for all of their satellite receivers nationwide. The letter announcing that fact cites "security", but it doesn't say whose security they are worried about. Unsophisticated DirecTV users will, of course, assume it's the user's security that's at stake.

    • Re:"Security" (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Angry White Guy ( 521337 ) <CaptainBurly[AT]goodbadmovies.com> on Wednesday October 09, 2002 @08:51AM (#4416323)
      Actually, it is for the users security. Not that someone is going to get their personal information or be able to track what they watch, but security of their investment. If anyone remembers the old pay-tv programs ON and IT, they remember that they went out of business because everyone was pirating their signal. Canada was a haven for home-brew on boxes. They filtered accross the border, everyone had them, and nobody was paying for them. Because it was a complete hardware solution, the company had to strike a balance between acceptable levels of piracy, cash flow, and cost to change the boxes of their subscribers.

      This is exactly what is going to happen to DirectTV, but they only have to send out new cards, not entire receivers. When piracy gets too high, they ship another card. It's much easier to ship a card, to have the user install it, and coordinate the effort. But once the piracy becomes rampant, then the legitimate subscribers will have lost their initial hardware investment.

      • Re:"Security" (Score:5, Insightful)

        by elvum ( 9344 ) on Wednesday October 09, 2002 @09:00AM (#4416363) Journal
        They're still twisting the English language to their own ends. They need to explain why users have to install their new cards, but "security" sounds so much friendlier than "to protect our revenue stream", despite the two being far from synonymous...
        • Yeah, I will agree with you, but I've been lied to before, I'll be lied to again, and if someone wants to lie to me without costing me money or time, they have that right. And it's much more pleasing than them telling you to replace your access card within X days or risk having your television subscription revoked.
          Some people might not understand that what they are paying for, people are getting for free. Some people might just turn around and start pirating it, if everyone else is.
          People are strange, and will do strange things. I've worked for millionaires who pirate software, who pirate satellite, hell, even try to cheat me out of money. And it's not being frugal or hard-working that got them their millions, and their actions are definitely not keeping them millionaires.

      • Re:"Security" (Score:2, Interesting)

        by phil reed ( 626 )
        Do you work for DirecTV? This post sounds like it came from their PR department.

        The card upgrade is for the security of DirecTV's revenue stream. Everything else is secondary.

        Since they are not replacing the receivers, that means the cards will be as hackable as before. Somebody will get a legit card, pop it in a debugger and watch the communications between the card and the receiver, then get to work on reverse-engineering the card. It will take a while, but the new cards will ultimately be hacked too.
        • Actually, no. I do not work for DirectTV. Actually, I have pirated their signals in the past, and helped others do so. But when I did do this, I did not delude myself by saying that I wasn't stealing, or helping others steal. I had two reasons for doing what I did: Canadian Television sucked, and money.

          I guess that I'm just honest about my dishonesty.
          • Actually, in canada it is legal, or was until recently.

            Legal = Not stealing.

            But thanks for tossing some sympathy towards Dave, he needs it after all. I'm sure he's grateful to sniveling little asswads like yourself.

            BTW, for those that don't know. Canadians can't by law subscribe to directv, and a court ruling declared their signals to be public domain, across the border. He could have been a billionaire, and he still couldn't have subscribed to them, without immigrating to the US. So, he's not honest at all, and he's not even lying for his own benefit... rather, for the benefit of a big, fat, filthy corporation! Way to go, AWG.
            • No, pirating the DTV signal was not illegal until recently. I, however did not put a timeframe on my activities, nor did I say that I was restricting myself to american satellite companies. We have digital satellite here as well. And there was nothing stopping some of the people from getting the American DTV. Some of the people which I worked for had an american address, and one guy I did occasional work for supplied 100 michigan bars with pirated satellite.
              So before you go lipping off, get your facts straight.
      • In all honesty, that will NEVER happen to DTV. Granted it's isn't exactly rocket science to do some of the crap that these DSS hackers do, but still, the levelof knowledge required provides no small level of trepedation for your average user, and with outages and everything else,it's not likely that even a large portion of the people watching their signal will pirate it. It's just not worth it to most people to lose TV for days at a time while they wait for a new fix, yadda yadda, they just want TV, free is good, but hassle isn't.... For the record, DTV has long since stated that 5% or less hacking is completely acceptable, because thats where their stockholders stop caring, hence, DTV stops caring also. With the recent removal of the H stream they cut down their numbers DRAMTICALLY, new hardware has to be bought, etc. etc. it's a whole new, more complicated game. They are FAR from worried about going broke.

    • CARD SWAP = FALSE! (Score:2, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      DirecTV (aka "Dave") is NOT currently swapping access cards. They finished swapping Period 3 (aka "HU") smartcards [hucards.com] for their Period 2 (aka "H") smartcards [hucards.com].

      Dave's H cards were completely exploited by hackers (aka "testers") and were completely protected from any electronic countermeasures [pirateden.com] (aka "ECM") by a method of testing called emulation. Dave had no choice but to instigate a card swap.

      The problem now is that Dave's HU cards are almost completely exploited also. About the only thing most testers can't do with Dave's HU cards is truly emulate. There is a form of pseudo-emulation out called C-Master and Kryptonite, but those don't truly protect the card from a ASIC-killing ECM.

      Dave's latest card out is called a P4 [hucards.com]. This card is immune to all forms of public testing at this point. There is currently a small group of elite testers who are attempting to perfect a method of bypassing the P4's security measures via a method called "glitching". It involves varying the voltage supplied to the card in a certain way in order to gain entry. Read/write entry via glitching the P4 has be perfected at this point. Bypassing the P4's security measures and reading/writing to the card can be done at will now. The last thing left to do is to finish up something called "unlooping" [dssmili.com]. A smartcard can get looped if the voltages during glitching aren't applied correctly. Basically, the card gets stuck in an endless loop. Unlooping a P4 card is still difficult and can take 15-30 minutes currently. The testers are hoping to speed the time up it takes to do this.

      At some point, Dave may perform a HU to P4 swap. For the testers sake, let's hope that P4 unlooping gets perfected before that point.

      Hope that clears things up a bit.

  • People who illegally recieve SatTV are not Pirates (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 09, 2002 @08:49AM (#4416306)
    Pirates are gruff men on ships who say ARRR and steal your boat. People who illegally decode a signal being broadcast through their private air space are just people who illegally decode a publicly broadcast signal. The news corps is doing a disservice to the public by using slang terms and being unclear in their communication of a story.
    • Arrr...the American Heritage DICTIONARY disagrees with you me hearty. pirate:
      NOUN:
      1 a. One who robs at sea or plunders the land from the sea without commission from a sovereign nation. b. A ship used for this purpose. 2. One who preys on others; a plunderer. 3. One who makes use of or reproduces the work of another without authorization. 4. One that operates an unlicensed, illegal television or radio station.

      VERB:
      Inflected forms: pirated , pirating , pirates

      TRANSITIVE VERB:
      1. To attack and rob (a ship at sea). 2. To take (something) by piracy. 3. To make use of or reproduce (another's work) without authorization.

      INTRANSITIVE VERB:
      To act as a pirate; practice piracy.

      • That's because the English language is defined by usage. That means:

        1. People who say it's right to call copyright infringers "pirates" are correct

        2. People who say it's wrong to call copyright infringers "pirates" are also correct - as long as they're arguing that it's morally, not definitively wrong; if they persuade enough people to adopt their viewpoint they'll eventually be definitively right too!
        • An interesting bit of English trivia, quoted from this page [internetnow.co.uk]:
          Filibuster: This American political term derives from the Dutch vrijbuiter, or free-booter, a term applied to pirates in the Caribbean in the 16th century.... The modern legislative sense was common by the 1850s, probably adopted because the filibusterers were hijacking the debate much like a pirate would hijack a ship.
          So, Congress is full of pirates. Arrr, avast, ye mateys!

  • Corporate hacking (Score:5, Funny)

    by killmenow ( 184444 ) on Wednesday October 09, 2002 @08:57AM (#4416346)
    Frankly, I don't care if companies hack each other...so long as I benefit.

  • Interesting timing . (Score:4, Insightful)

    by AftanGustur ( 7715 ) on Wednesday October 09, 2002 @08:59AM (#4416359) Homepage


    It was only yesterday (*not kidding*) that one of the bigger Vivendi owned satellite TV (Canalsat) upgraded it's encryption system to "Seca2".

    But I'm afraid the Seca2 system is DOA as it has already been cracked by Italian Crackers [virgilio.it].

    • Task that all the true ones interested to the study of the decodifiche are enthusiastic from this new challenge! That stà revealing itself also the misfortune of who wants to earn to the shoulders of who works and studies seriously. For hour nobody is successful to bucare the Seca2, even if is present several Log and tried to you that they demonstrate the vulnerability of the system. After to have of collected a po? and to have studies them, does not make other that riproporveli all together to you. Naturally I do not mean minimally to assume no merit to me. Good Job!

      Where does it say (yes this is an automated Italian->English translation) that Seca2 is hacked?
      • Where does it say (yes this is an automated Italian->English translation) that Seca2 is hacked

        Scroll down a bit and you find links to download the smartcard programs.

        Also, have a look at This page [securitynewsportal.com] (search for "seca")

  • Continuous update (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Zeinfeld ( 263942 ) on Wednesday October 09, 2002 @09:14AM (#4416447) Homepage
    An interesting feature of the satelite smartcard scene is that the protection schemes are designed with the knowledge they can be craked.

    Ultimately no security scheme based on commodity hardware is secure against a determined attack. Even the clipper chip was broken. If the adversary has a scanning electron microscope available they are going to be able to reverse engineer the chip. Ross Andersson [cam.ac.uk] did a paper [cam.ac.uk] on this a while back.

    The strategy the satellite companies use today is economic rather than purely technical. What they do is to design smart cards which are subject to progressive security flaws. They then send out different variations on the smart card to different customers.

    The trick is that the pirate does not know which of the flaws matter and which do not. So if the pirate clones a particular card perfectly the satellite company can respond cheaply and effectively by just replacing the small number of cards that have been compromised.

    If the pirate makes a more general attack the satelite co looks for any small difference between the cloned card and the genuine cards and programs a deactivation code to take advantage.

    Most cloned cards are not perfect since the pirates are in competition with each other. It is better to get a cloned card out in 3 weeks than to wait a n extra couple of months and allow a competitor to steal the market.

    The satelite cos generally wait until the pirates have sold a significant number of cards before sending out the deactivation codes. This discredits the pirates with more customers. If the customers learn that using a pirate card ends up costing them more than being honest in addition to being inconvenient they are more likely to turn honest. Another trick is to disable the cards right before big events.

    • > the satellite company can respond cheaply and effectively by just replacing the small number of cards that have been compromised.
      > Another trick is to disable the cards right before big events.

      that is where this pirating can be a advantage to the "injured" company. I never had cable, or satalite, until I was convinced of the great value in getting something for free. I now have the directv equipment, and so go ahead and subscribe. If it weren't for knowing of the pirated versions of the Directv, I would have either gone with the cheaper Dish Sat service, or none at all.

      (I am not complaining, I am happy with their service.)
    • Ultimately no security scheme based on commodity hardware is secure against a determined attack.

      Rule #1: Security in an insecure environment is unobtainable.

      Be it commodity hardware or not, there is no such thing as 'tamper-proof' hardware and given enough resources, the best tamper-resistant hardware can be reverse engineered.

      The goal of a security system is to make the cost of breaking into it more expensive than what the system is securing.

      I think DirecTV has done a pretty good job at raising the cost (time more than money) of breaking the system above what your average individual considers excessive.
      • I find it interesting that we hear about smartcard cracks with Sat TV systems but we don't hear about people cracking the smart card bank cards. If its worth 10 years in jail to crack a TV system to save $39.95/mo, how many people are going after the bank systems? The last numbers I saw showed chip card fraud something link 10x the dollar amount of mag card fraud and the only people that seem to be reporting chip card fraud to the public are the pay tv compaines.
  • You can send the payment and a handwritten apology letter plus some cookies to DJ FirBee at ....

  • dismay, delight, dismay (Score:5, Insightful)

    by gosand ( 234100 ) on Wednesday October 09, 2002 @10:09AM (#4416787)
    dismay: The title of the article says "hacking" when it means "cracking".

    delight: The text of the article gets the term right, saying that their smart cards were "cracked".

    dismay: The text then misuses the term again, saying Echostar was hacked.

    Come on folks, if a site that supposedly is "news for nerds" can't get the term right, how is anyone else expected to?
    (and don't give me the BS that hacking and cracking are the same thing)

    • I disagree... In general if you monitor the people who make the discoveries, based on their actions you can apply the term Hacker to them. When you take a device or system that you know nothing about and completely take it apart and put it back together in an effort to understand how it works... isn't that the text book definition of hacker?

      Read up on posts by people like p52, AOL9645 and RAM9999 on the den [pirateden.com]. They are explorers.

      • Re:dismay, delight, dismay (Score:4, Insightful)

        by trb ( 8509 ) on Wednesday October 09, 2002 @11:28AM (#4417275)
        The set of hackers and the set of crackers intersect. A person who breaks into a system is a cracker, but the act of breaking in, especially if it involves figuring out how to break in, is a hack as well as a crack. Hackers have been figuring out how to subvert security mechanisms for a long time, it's an interesting pursuit.

        I think of it this way - solving a crossword puzzle is like hacking. Copying someone else's solution to a crossword puzzle is like cracking.

        • Actually, someone who breaks into a computer system is a hacker as well.

          hacker
          n. Informal
          1. One who is proficient at using or programming a computer; a computer buff.
          2. One who uses programming skills to gain illegal access to a computer network or file.
          3. One who enthusiastically pursues a game or sport: a weekend tennis hacker

          The English language is defined in terms of usage.
          • When you give a speech, do you start out with:
            Webster's dictionary defines...

            Honestly, no offense to you personally, but quoting a dictionary is one of the most ignorant forms of educated argument you can make. Dictionaries are collections of what the dictionary writers think they know. Just because the American public misuses a term doesn't mean it is correct. Would you say that the words "your" and "you're" are interchangeable, since most people use them interchangeably? Dictionaries are to information what encyclopedias are to research books, or cliff's notes to literature. It is meant to be a starting point. Just because it is in a dictionary doesn't make it so.

  • ahh simpsons (Score:5, Funny)

    by Jonny Ringo ( 444580 ) on Wednesday October 09, 2002 @10:49AM (#4417027)
    Homer:Well I just bought some shares of News Corp.
    Lisa: Dad that's fox!
    Homer: Sell! Sell!

  • what do vivendi actually do? (Score:2, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Now all this business is all pretty sleazy, vivendi claiming that their systems are invulnerable and could have only been destroyed by their competitor spending millions of dollars.
    And the dodgy business that news corp has done.

    These corporations are both pretty evil.

    However, Noone is really paying much notice to what vivendi has been doing is the last decade.
    You go to the vivendi site and they own everything. Here in australia they own monopolies on bus routes own a majority of the films that we watch and own almost all of the water sources that are here.
    I recently was on a train in sydney next to a farmer. It turned out he was heading to the city to consult with his solicitor. We're in the middle of the worst drought that has been here for a long while, And he was telling me that he had just recently been approached by legal representatives of vivendi water who were claiming that he has no rights to dams on his own land and that he had to pay them money for his own water. He was in sydney seeking legal advice on this matter.

    Whoever controls the water of the world controls the world and can basically hold the world for ransom and charge whatever prices they want.

    Vivendi seems to solely be a corporation bent on world domination.
    • As a letter in the Australian said recently "You really have to pity the Australian farmer; they have the drought of the century every two years."

      People must have short memories, as the rural sector always has its hands out. Telephone services aren't as good? You're living in the middle of the fucking desert! It's getting to the point where you can get better and cheaper high-bandwidth net access in some rural areas than you can in the city, and guess how much that's costing the taxpayers. Agrarian bloody socialism, that's what it is.

  • Actually the sat broadcaster transmits his encrypted content right into my home. I didn't ask him to do so, and I can't prohibit him from doing so. Why shouldn't I be allowed to receive the transmission that he purposefully focuses on my house? I'd be "stealing" if I would go out an tap a subscribers wires or otherwise bring the content into my house. But I'm not doing so. I rather examine what the broadcaster transmits into my house, without my consent.
  • Supervisor: Do you think you understand the basic ideas of Quantum Mechanics?
    Supervisee: Ah! Well, what do we mean by "to understand" in the context of
    Quantum Mechanics?
    Supervisor: You mean "No", don't you?
    Supervisee: Yes.
    -- Overheard at a supervision.

    - this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...

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