Gemini nobbles the Dreambox Clones

cormacl

Interesting developments over the last number of days.

The Gemini release 4.3.1 for the Dreambox 500-S was issued with a time-bomb feature to detect clones and nobble the box's boot loader making it unusable. The recovery involves jtagging the motherboard.

This release was issued shortly after another that refused to work on clone boxes by means of MAC address checking. The idea was that the 4.3.1 image removed that restriction but seems to have bundled a much worse easter egg!

Here's a thread I found today that has a screenshot of the message it prints on screen:
http://www.sat-universe.com/showthread.php?t=65017

..and this has caused quite a bit of uproar in the community. Personally I have no sympathy for anyone who knowingly purchases or sells a clone.. but I'm not so sure that deliberately nobbling the box was warranted.

And either today or yesterday, the gemini team have even taken their forum off line with the statement:

http://www.i-have-a-dreambox.com/wbb2/index.php
The Forum is currently closed.
We decided to close the forum till an official statement from DMM has arrived.
It is simply unaccaptable that we (the IHaD Team) are made responsible for actions taken by DMM.
It now is DMM's turn to make statement about the current situation.

The Gemini Team

.. which seems to suggest that DMM may have been involved or put them up to it. similarly, CCCam, one of the popular soft-cams used on the dream boxes to read all kinds of card has also been modified to only work in legit Dreamboxes.. so a private little war is definitely being waged at present against the clones.

Update: The claim now is that DMM issued a new driver with this behaviour built-in and Gemini were the first to bundle it in their image.

Robxxx7

Yes a very interesting couple of days ...

I can definately see DMM's point of view on all this, there business must have been devastated by the influx of clone boxes, and by altering the drivers they have managed to take out alot of boxes (including some official DM500's by all accounts)

watty

Potentially a Cable operator or Sat operator might be able to exploit this new feature to disable non-legitimate User's boxes too

timmol

go and have a good **** 4 urself watty ya prick

jhegarty

A bit rough on anyone who though they were buying a legit one...

from what I remember when buying mine the size of the remote was the only way to tell a legit one from a clone...

Puggy

Ya cant call the administrator a pricl<! He has to operate with in the legal framework in Ireland. If everyone paid for their tv service then we would all get a better service. Thats why we have crap infrastructure here, because of pricl<'s like you!;)

Nothing personal, just saw the opportunity to use bad language twice! Ireland is such a pc place at the moment, you cant talk about "a box" or bloomin curse.:eek:

watty

The UberMods don't like it. All posts nasty. The "powers that be" have handed out a siteban.

craichoe

watty wrote: »

Potentially a Cable operator or Sat operator might be able to exploit this new feature to disable non-legitimate User's boxes too

Fraid not, only equipment installed by the cable operator can be updated by the cable operator.

jhegarty

Update : http://www.i-have-a-dreambox.com/wbb2/thread.php?threadid=88610&threadview=0&hilight=&hilightuser=0&page=1

bushy...

craichoe wrote: »

Fraid not, only equipment installed by the cable operator can be updated by the cable operator.

Surely there would be nothing to stop them getting firmware for popular non-legit boxes , modifying it and pushing it out ? There would be no good reason you'd have a non legit box connected to their network

watty

Absolutely, Bushy. Anyone that thinks a cable operator won't use any method possible to knock out thieves is naive. I'm not commenting on the issue of Morality or Legality of it, just the likelyhood.

Satellite operators have been known to pay to get hacks release for competitors cards and release trojaned Firmware for people watching without valid viewing card into the wild. A certain company sued before is in court again.

bushy...

You'd have to physically connect a non-legit box to the cable network for it to get killed by the operator, there's no room for argument really .
It's much the same as say stealing fuel from an underground tank at a petrol station late at night then whinging because the owner filled the tank with water and you wrecked your car.

jhegarty

bushy... wrote: »

Surely there would be nothing to stop them getting firmware for popular non-legit boxes , modifying it and pushing it out ? There would be no good reason you'd have a non legit box connected to their network

they can't push an update over the cable connection (like for a sky box)... they need to use the Ethernet port, which they would not have access to....

watty

Some cable boxes will accept a suitably crafted update over cable. It's only a software change, a firmware via serial or ethernet any time could add / remove such a feature. No extra HW needed.

arcticmoon

I noticied this thread it came to my attention that dreamboxclones are now supplying patched images which you can use to overcome the time bombs

See; Dreambox Clones