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72-513: The combination of third-party developers and network connectivity which facilitates card sharing , makes DBox2 (and the DBox2 based Dreambox ) use particularly common among enthusiasts and those who intend to obtain services without payment . It also enables the receiver to store digital copies of DVB MPEG transport streams on networked filesystems or broadcast the streams as IPTV to VideoLAN and XBMC Media Center clients. In 2001, following

144-442: A breach of security in the smart card, exploited by computer hackers in order to gain complete access to the card's encryption system. Once access has been gained to the smart card's encryption system, the hacker can perform changes to the card's internal information, which in turn tricks the conditional-access system into believing that it has been allowed access, by the legitimate card provider, to other television channels using

216-546: A broadcaster deliberately transmitting signals in a non-standard, scrambled or encrypted format in order to charge viewers a subscription fee for the use of a special decoder needed to receive the scrambled broadcast signal. Early pay TV broadcasts in countries such as the United States used standard over-the-air transmitters; many restrictions applied as anti-siphoning laws were enacted to prevent broadcasters of scrambled signals from engaging in activities to harm

288-559: A cable or satellite receiver's internal software, and offered for download on the internet as a firmware upgrade. This allows access to the encrypted channels by those who do not even own a smart card. In recent times, many underground forum websites dedicated to the hobby of satellite piracy and encryption emulated Free To Air (FTA) receivers have been set up, giving up-to-date information on satellite and cable piracy , including making available firmware downloads for receivers, and very detailed encryption system information available to

360-485: A footprint which sends full-strength DBS signals to many if not all of the contiguous 48 US states . This is desirable not only to receive Canadian-only content, but because some US-produced programs air in Canada in advance of their US broadcast. The question of signal substitution , by which Canadian cable and satellite providers substitute the signal of a local or domestic channel over a foreign or distant channel carrying

432-471: A jury was not convinced of the allegations Echostar had made against NDS and awarded damages only for the factual claims that were proven and for which the jury believed an award should be given in accordance with the laws of the United States. In some cases, fraudulent cloning has been used to assign identical serial numbers to multiple receivers or cards; subscribe (or unsubscribe) one receiver and

504-411: A means of disabling communication of billing information for pay-per-view programming but this device is effectively worthless as a cable operator remains free to unsubscribe a digital set-top box if two-way communication has been lost. As a device intended to pass signals in one direction only, the line filters offer nothing that couldn't be done (with the same results) by an inexpensive signal booster -

576-498: A significant amount; a number of other providers are also in the middle of swapping out all of their subscribers' smartcards due to compromised encryption methods or technology. A number of vulnerabilities exist even with digital encryption: On May 15, 2008, a jury in the Echostar vs NDS civil lawsuit (8:2003cv00950) awarded Echostar just over US$ 1,500 in damages; Echostar originally sought $ 1 billion in damages from NDS. However,

648-411: A simple one-way RF amplifier widely available cheaply and readily for other purposes. Also, many such boxes will disallow access to pay-per-view content after a set number of programs are watched before the box can transmit this data to the headend, further reducing the usefulness of such a filter. Some of the terminology used to describe various devices, programs and techniques dealing with Pay-TV piracy

720-501: A situation where pirate decryption is perceived as being one of the few ways to obtain certain programming. If there is no domestic provider for a channel, a grey market (subscribed using another address) or black market (pirate) system is prerequisite to receive many specific ethnic, sport or premium movie services. Pirate or grey-market reception also provides viewers a means to bypass local blackout restrictions on sporting events and to access hard-core pornography where some content

792-609: A stolen cable company decoder but useless against hardware designed by signal pirates. The first encryption methods used for big-dish satellite systems used a hybrid approach; analogue video and digital encrypted audio. This approach was somewhat more secure, but not completely free of problems due to piracy of video signals. Digital TV services, by nature can more easily implement encryption technologies. When first introduced, digital DBS broadcasts were touted as being secure enough to put an end to piracy once and for all. Often these claims would be made in press releases. The enthusiasm

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864-520: A subscriber must purchase a block of anywhere from several to more than a hundred other channels at substantial cost. Many European companies such as British Sky Broadcasting prohibit subscriptions outside the UK and Ireland. But other satellite providers such as Sky Deutschland do sell yearly subscription cards legally to customers in other European countries without the need for an address or other personal information. The latter also applies to virtually all

936-403: A subscription television network with only one valid subscription card. This is achieved by electronically sharing a part of the legitimate conditional access smart card's output data, enabling all recipients to gain simultaneous access to scrambled DVB streams, held on the encrypted television network. Typically, a legitimate smart card is attached to a host digital television receiver, which

1008-449: A subscription; post boxes and commercial mail receiving agencies are often used by grey-market subscribers to foreign providers to circumvent this restriction. The situation in the US itself differs as it is complicated by the legal question of subscriber access to distant local TV stations. Satellite providers are severely limited in their ability to offer subscriptions to distant locals due to

1080-454: A third party, who will then release their own smart card, such as the K3 card. This third party, for legal reasons, will then use a fourth party to release encrypted files, which then allow the card to decode encrypted content. Along with modifying original cards, it is possible to use the information provided by the smart card to create an encryption emulator. This, in turn, can be programmed into

1152-549: Is a particular concern to conditional access providers, and their respective pay-TV companies, as well as the DVB consortium. Card sharing utilises the integral scrambling system of the DVB standard, DVB-CSA , meaning that every provider of scrambled DVB content has potential to be affected by it. In response, several counter measures have been implemented by various parties, with the aim of permanently preventing it. One technical method, implemented by providers such as Irdeto and NDS ,

1224-513: Is also a risk that as the number of card clients on the card sharing network grows, it will attract the attention of the satellite TV service provider and law enforcement agencies and the monitoring of IP addresses associated with this card sharing network may identify individual users and server operators who then become targets for legal action by the satellite TV service provider or by legal authorities. Key sharing schemes are typically used where replacement of compromised smart card systems (such as

1296-511: Is also used on the Dreambox . The DBox2 does not have a hard disk or other internal storage. Modules have however become available for attaching IDE hard drives and SATA hard drives and MMC and SD flash memory cards . Support for these is included in some software distributions. Card Sharing Card sharing , also known as control word sharing , is a method of allowing multiple clients or digital television receivers to access

1368-479: Is called card sharing , which works by making available the smart card decoding information in real time to other users, via a computer network. Police monitoring of unsecured card sharing networks has led to prosecutions. Virtually every common encryption system is publicly known to have been compromised. These include Viaccess , Nagravision , SECA Mediaguard and Conax . The MediaCipher system, owned by Motorola, along with Scientific Atlanta's PowerKEY system, are

1440-476: Is equipped with software to share the decrypted 64-bit "control word" key over a computer network, such as the Internet . Once a client receives this key, they can decrypt the encrypted content as though they were using their own subscription card. The theory of card sharing as a potential attack vector on pay TV encryption was provided in the book European Scrambling Systems by John McCormac in 1996; leading to

1512-501: Is named for the particular hacks. The "Season" interface for example is named after the Season7 hack on Sky TV which allowed a PC to emulate a legitimate Sky-TV smartcard. The Season7 referred to the seventh and final season of Star Trek: The Next Generation which was then showing on Sky One. The "Phoenix" hack was named after the mythical bird which can reanimate itself. The hack itself reactivated smartcards that had been switched off by

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1584-472: Is not otherwise available. The grey market for US satellite receivers in Canada at one point was estimated to serve as many as several hundred thousand English-speaking Canadian households. Canadian authorities, acting under pressure from cable companies and domestic broadcasters, have made many attempts to prevent Canadians from subscribing to US direct-broadcast services such as AT&T's DirecTV and Echostar's Dish Network. While litigation has gone as far as

1656-519: Is on the US system and most French-language programming is on the Canadian system. A larger selection of sports and ethnic programming is also available to grey-market subscribers. It could be said that the 1000-channel universe is a "reality" in North America, but only for the signal pirates as many legal and geographic restrictions are placed on the ability to subscribe to many if not most of

1728-399: Is simply to release the encryption algorithm and key. Another common release method is by releasing a computer program which can be used by the smart card user to reprogram their card. Once complete, the now illegally modified smart card is known as a "MOSC". (Modified Original Smart Card). A third such method, more common in recent times, is to sell the information gained on the encryption to

1800-452: Is superior in many respects relative to the original software. For the DBox2, an effort was created to port the Linux operating system. This is now the most popular choice. Installation involves first putting the box into its debug-mode , a mode intended for internal development. It is then possible to take a backup copy of the original operating system (including vital micro-code images for

1872-442: Is to simply increase the frequency of control word changes. With changes occurring as frequently as once every few seconds, extra stress is put onto the smart card sharing system, meaning that clients may be frustrated by short, frequent, missed viewing periods. Another method gaining traction is "Card pairing". Effectively linking the card with the connected device (e.g the set-top box, CAM module or TV's decoding chipset) and locking

1944-488: Is to update the software of digital receivers provided by the subscription television service. This software implements a further decryption layer, held within the receiver. Rather than sending a plain text control word from the smart card to the receiver's microprocessor, which can be intercepted, the decrypted ECM will in fact be an encrypted control word, which can only be decrypted by a legitimate, non card sharing capable, receiver. A simpler method, used by several providers,

2016-557: The Dominican Republic ), the black market in satellite TV piracy is closely tied to the gray market activity of using direct broadcast satellite signals to watch broadcasts intended for one country in some other, adjacent country. Many smaller countries have no domestic DBS operations and therefore few or no legal restrictions on the use of decoders which capture foreign signals. The refusal of most providers to knowingly issue subscriptions outside their home country leads to

2088-509: The MPEG decoder chipset ) and flash an image based on Linux to the device. In addition to the Linux kernel and drivers, a significant amount of code is needed to allow the DBox2 to function as a digital receiver. This code is all maintained under a single open-source project - TuxBox. There is, however, a choice of user-interfaces that can be used, the most popular being Neutrino and Enigma. Enigma

2160-660: The SD resolution (e.g., PAL and NTSC ), thus it is not possible to receive today's programs in HD with any of the D-Boxes or to modify them accordingly. Since 1997 an alternative operating system has been available for the predecessor of the Dbox2, the Dbox. This was DVB98 (later DVB2000), developed by a single programmer. Despite programming the hardware directly using machine code, DVB2000

2232-577: The Supreme Court of Canada , no judicial ruling has yet been made on whether such restrictions violate the safeguards of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms which are intended to protect freedom of expression and prevent linguistic or ethnic discrimination . Domestic satellite and cable providers have adopted a strategy of judicial delay in which their legal counsel will file an endless series of otherwise-useless motions before

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2304-540: The USA , where satellite dealers have been taken to court resulting in large fines or jail time. An Internet key sharing scheme consists of one smart card with a valid, paid subscription which is located on an Internet server. It generates a stream of real-time decryption keys which are broadcast over the Internet to remotely located satellite receivers. Limiting factors in the number of remotely located satellite receivers are

2376-498: The bankruptcy of Kirch Media , production of the D-box ceased. However, many devices continue to be traded second-hand (often using online auction sites) and fairly high prices are paid because of the ability to gain services without payment. For this reason, there are also a significant number of, mostly German language, web sites and forums devoted to the devices. When the device was in production, both free and pay TV were limited to

2448-464: The "H" card, which contained an ASIC to handle decryption. However, due to similarities between the "H" and other existing cards, it became apparent that while the signal could not be received without the card and its ASIC, the card itself was vulnerable to tampering by reprogramming it to add channel tiers or additional programming, which allowed them to be viewed without paying. Two more card swaps would be necessary before DirecTV could reduce piracy by

2520-615: The Adult channel cards sold in Europe. The Middle East emerged in the picture with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia . In July 2019, global football authorities of various competitions collectively condemned a pirate broadcasting channel of Saudi Arabia, BeoutQ . The right holders running Premier League , FIFA World Cup and UEFA Champions League called on the authorities of the Arab nation to halt

2592-669: The USA still remains, but many of the channels still in the clear are ethnic channels, local over-the-air TV stations, international broadcasters, religious programming, backfeeds of network programming destined to local TV stations or signals uplinked from mobile satellite trucks to provide live news and sports coverage. Specialty channels and premium movie channels are most often encrypted; in most countries , broadcasts containing explicit pornography must be encrypted to prevent accidental viewing. Initial attempts to encrypt broadcast signals were based on analogue techniques of questionable security,

2664-557: The basis that it breached the guarantee of Freedom of Expression enshrined in section 2 (c) of the Canadian Charter of Rights. The evidence compiled by Mr. McKenzie from his broadcasting clients in opposition to this challenge was so overwhelming that it was abandoned and the Court ordered that substantial costs be paid by the applicants. In most cases, broadcast distributors will require a domestic billing address before issuing

2736-497: The battle between the system designers and pirates to another level and it bought BSkyB at least six months of almost piracy-free broadcasting before the pirate Sky 10 cards appeared on the market in 1996. Initial pirate Sky 10 cards had an implementation of this ASIC but once supplies ran out, pirates resorted to extracting the ASICs from deactivated Sky cards and reusing them. The first US DirecTV "F" card did not contain an ASIC and it

2808-422: The card to be used only on that device. One significant problem for internet card sharing is that the activity can be traced, through tracing of the originating IP address - though this does not identify an individual it can lead to a specific ISP and/or TV service subscription. Cases of criminal charges have been brought against card sharing hosts. In August 2009, a Liverpool man was prosecuted for re-selling

2880-536: The case of satellite viewing. Laws in many countries do not clearly specify whether the decryption of foreign media services is illegal or not. This has caused much confusion in places such as Europe, where the proximity of many countries, coupled with the large land mass covered by satellite beams, allows signal access to many different providers. These providers are reluctant to pursue criminal charges against many viewers as they live in different countries. There have, however, been several high-profile prosecution cases in

2952-625: The courts to ensure that the proponents of the grey-market systems run out of money before the "Charter Challenge" issue is decided. According to K. William McKenzie, the Orillia Ontario lawyer who won the case in the Supreme Court of Canada, a consortium headed by David Fuss and supported by Dawn Branton and others later launched a constitutional challenge to defeat section 9(1)(c) of the Radiocommunication Act on

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3024-519: The deprecation of Nagra 1/2 in favour of Nagra 3) has made other pirate decryption methods non-functional. In February 2014, an episode of BBC 's "Inside Out" disclosed that the complete Sky TV package could be obtained from black-market sources for as little as £10 per month through Internet key sharing, Swansea and Cardiff were highlighted with significant activity in pubs using cracked boxes to show Premier League football. In some countries such as Canada and many Caribbean nations (except for

3096-471: The development of standard free-to-air commercial broadcasting. Scrambled signals were limited to large communities which already had a certain minimum number of unencrypted broadcast stations, relegated to certain frequencies. Restrictions were placed on access of pay TV broadcasters to content such as recent feature films in order to give free TV broadcasters a chance to air these programs before they were siphoned away by pay channels. Under these conditions,

3168-447: The flaws with the original DVB-CSA system, including introducing an AES based 128-bit key system. The system will reportedly be "hardware friendly and software unfriendly", indicating that reverse engineering of the system, required for the creation of card sharing applications, will be very difficult. Pirate decryption Pirate decryption is the decryption , or decoding, of pay TV or pay radio signals without permission from

3240-544: The large and expensive satellite receiving apparatus. As satellite dishes became smaller and more affordable, most satellite signal providers adopted various forms of encryption in order to limit reception to certain groups (such as hotels, cable companies, or paid subscribers) or to specific political regions. Early encryption attempts such as Videocipher II were common targets for pirate decryption as dismayed viewers saw large amounts of formerly-unencrypted programming vanishing. Nowadays some free-to-air satellite content in

3312-414: The length of the complete control word is so small (64 bits ), delivery of the control words to many different clients is easily possible on a home internet connection. This has sparked the creation of sharing network groups, in which users can access the group by sharing their subscription cards with the group, and in turn, being capable of receiving the channels which all users' cards can decrypt, as though

3384-406: The most common being one or a combination of techniques such as: These systems were designed to provide decoders to cable operators at low cost; a serious tradeoff was made in security. Some analogue decoders were addressable so that cable companies could turn channels on or off remotely, but this only gave the cable companies control of their own descramblers — valuable if needed to deactivate

3456-550: The network latency and the period between the updated keys and the ability of the card client's receiver to use the decrypted key stream. Each receiver is configured in an identical manner, a clone receiving the same television signal from a satellite and, from the internet server, the same decryption keys to unlock that signal. As the server must have individually subscribed smart cards for each channel to be viewed, its continued operation tends to be costly and may require multiple subscriptions under different names and addresses. There

3528-413: The new key can easily be accessed in the hacked card, and implemented. There are often other more complicated procedures which update a part of the smart card in order to make it inaccessible. These procedures can also, however, be hacked, once again allowing access. This leads to a game of " cat and mouse " between the smart card provider, and the hackers. This, after several stages of progression, can leave

3600-403: The only digital TV encryption systems which have not publicly been compromised. This is largely thanks to there being no PC card conditional-access modules (CAMs) available for either encryption system. Despite the unauthorised decryption of media being illegal in many countries, smart card piracy is a crime which is very rarely punished, due to it being virtually undetectable, particularly in

3672-474: The original broadcaster. The term "pirate" is used in the sense of copyright infringement . The MPAA and other groups which lobby in favour of intellectual property (specifically copyright and trademark) regulations have labelled such decryption as "signal theft" and object to it, arguing that losing out on a potential chance to profit from a consumer 's subscription fees counts as a loss of actual profit. The concept of pay TV or pay television involves

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3744-453: The pay TV concept was very slow to become commercially viable; most television and radio broadcasts remained in-the-clear and were funded by commercial advertising , individual and corporate donations to educational broadcasters , direct funding by governments or license fees charged to the owners of receiving apparatus (the BBC in the UK, for example). Pay TV only began to become common after

3816-561: The physically available channels. Other countries such as Nicaragua during Sandinista rule, Cuba , Iran (Islamic Republic of Iran) and Afghanistan during Taliban rule and Iraq during the Saddam Hussein regime, have attempted to prohibit their citizens from receiving any satellite broadcasts from foreign sources. The situation in Europe differs somewhat, due to the much greater linguistic diversity in that region and due to

3888-577: The providers. Some of the terminology used on Internet discussion sites to describe the various devices, programs and techniques used in dealing with video piracy is strange, non-standard, or specific to one system. The terms are often no different from the brand names used by legitimate products and serve the same function. Smart card piracy involves the unauthorised use of conditional-access smart cards , in order to gain, and potentially provide to others, unauthorised access to pay-TV or even private media broadcasts. Smart card piracy generally occurs after

3960-463: The public. Upon gaining the knowledge that their system has been compromised, the smart card providers often have several counter measure systems against unauthorised viewing, which can be put in place over the air, in most cases causing virtually no disruption to legitimate viewers. One such measure is CI revocation . The simplest form of counter measure is a key change. This simply halts viewing for those viewing without authorisation temporarily, since

4032-411: The risk of further lawsuits by local affiliates of the same network in the subscribers home designated market area . California stations have sued satellite providers who distributed New York signals nationally, as the distant stations would have an unfair advantage by broadcasting the same programming three hours earlier. There is also a small "reverse gray market" for Canadian signals, transmitted with

4104-477: The risks of any encryption system being compromised, but many systems once thought secure have been proven vulnerable to sufficiently sophisticated and malicious attackers. Two-way communication has also been used by designers of proprietary digital cable TV equipment in order to make tampering more difficult or easier to detect. A system involving the use of a high-pass filter on the line to prevent two-way communication has been widely promoted by some businesses as

4176-471: The same encryption system. In some cases, the channels do not even have to be from the same television provider, since many providers use similar encryption systems, or use cards which have the capacity to store information for decoding those channels also. The information on how to hack the card is normally held within small, underground groups, to which public access is not possible. Instead, the hacking groups may release their hack in several forms. One such way

4248-525: The same program, is rendered more complex by the existence of a reverse grey market. Signal substitution had already been the cause of strong diplomatic protests by the United States, which considers the practice to constitute theft of advertising revenue. The lack of domestic competition for premium movie channels in Canada is one factor encouraging grey-market reception; language is another key issue as most Spanish-language programming in North America

4320-477: The same programming changes appear on all of the others. Various techniques have also been used to provide write protection for memory on the smartcards or receivers to make deactivation or sabotage of tampered cards by signal providers more difficult. Systems based on removable smartcards do facilitate the implementation of renewable security , where compromised systems can be repaired by sending new and redesigned cards to legitimate subscribers, but they also make

4392-515: The services of a card sharing network to paying customers. It was the first such case of its type in the UK. Two further raids occurred in the UK during early 2011, instigated by UK Cable Operator Virgin Media. In 2007, the DVB Project approved and began licensing a new scrambling system, CSA3, for protecting DVB content. This new system, upon implementation, will attempt to eradicate many of

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4464-550: The smart card and its security features are bypassed; software intercepts the decrypted control word and allows the user to share it across a computer network. Card sharing has established itself as popular method of pirate decryption . Much of the development of card sharing hardware and software has taken place in Europe , where national boundaries mean that home users are able to receive satellite television signals from many countries but are unable to legally subscribe to them due to licensing restrictions on broadcasters. Because

4536-471: The smart card provider in a situation where they no longer have any further counter measures to implement. This leaves them in a situation where they must perform a card and encryption change with all legitimate viewers, in order to eliminate the viewing of the service without permission, at least for the foreseeable future. Such has been the success of implementing new smart card systems, that another form of smart card piracy has grown in popularity. This method

4608-516: The subscriber is authorised by the subscription television network to decrypt their signal, using one smart card. Content providers usually provide means for viewing channels on a second smart card, provided at extra cost. An example of this is Sky Multiroom, used in the United Kingdom . However, in some cases the contract between the subscriber and the content provider implicitly or explicitly prohibits this kind of card sharing. Card sharing

4680-414: The task of replacing smartcards with tampered cards or inserting devices between card and receiver easier for pirates. In some European systems, the conditional-access module (CAM) which serves as a standardized interface between smartcard and DVB receiver has also been targeted for tampering or replaced by third-party hardware. Improvements in hardware and system design can be used to significantly reduce

4752-474: The term "McCormac Hack" to be used to describe early card-sharing systems. The security of conditional access smart card technology is limited by the security of the DVB standard in which it operates. The standard practice of a legitimate smart card is to decrypt an ECM (Entitlement Control Message), which then provides the control word, which allows the viewing of scrambled material. With card sharing, however,

4824-579: The time (1995). The countermeasure employed by NDS Group , the designers of the VideoCrypt system was to issue a new smartcard (known as the Sky 10 card) that included an ASIC in addition to the card's microcontroller . This innovation made it harder for pirates to manufacture pirate VideoCrypt cards. Previously, the program in the Sky card's microcontroller could be rewritten for other microcontrollers without too much difficulty. The addition of an ASIC took

4896-504: The use of standardized DVB receivers capable of receiving multiple providers and free-to-air signals. North American providers normally lock their subscribers into "package receivers" unable to tune outside their one package; often the receivers are sold at artificially low prices and the subscription cost for programming is increased in order to favour new subscribers over existing ones. Providers are also notorious for using sales tactics such as bundling , in which to obtain one desired channel

4968-406: The user owned every single subscription card connected to the network. Other networks have also been created, whereby one server has multiple legitimate subscription cards connected to it. Access to this server is then restricted to those who pay the server's owner their own subscription fee. An arguably legitimate use for card sharing is the sharing of the control word within a home network, where

5040-553: The widespread installation of cable television systems in the 1970s and 1980s; early premium channels were most often movie broadcasters such as the US-based Home Box Office and Cinemax , both currently owned by Warner Bros. Discovery . Signals were obtained for distribution by cable companies using C-band satellite dish antennae of up to ten feet in diameter; the first satellite signals were originally unencrypted as extremely few individual end-users could afford

5112-406: Was quickly compromised. Pirate DirecTV cards based on microcontrollers that were often ironically more secure than that used in the official card became a major problem for DirecTV. Similar errors had been made by the developers of the UK's terrestrial digital Xtraview Encryption System , which provided no encryption and relied on hiding channels from listings. The DirecTV "F" card was replaced with

5184-472: Was short-lived. In theory the system was an ideal solution, but some corners had been cut in the initial implementations in the rush to launch the service. The first US DirecTV smart cards were based on the BSkyB VideoCrypt card known as the Sky 09 card. The Sky 09 card had been introduced in 1994 as a replacement for the compromised Sky 07 card. The former had been totally compromised in Europe at

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