Gardai raid in Cork investigating illegal set top boxes

bappelbe

https://www.irishexaminer.com/breakingnews/ireland/gardai-in-cork-smash-pirate-tv-operation-which-cost-have-cost-providers-20m-931947.html
Looks like 20,000 are arriving home to no TV service
A good market for fta boxes!

Henry Ford III

Sounds like a card sharing thing.

lgs 4

bappelbe wrote: »

https://www.irishexaminer.com/breakingnews/ireland/gardai-in-cork-smash-pirate-tv-operation-which-cost-have-cost-providers-20m-931947.html
Looks like 20,000 are arriving home to no TV service
A good market for fta boxes!

They most have had very decrypting software ,to decrypt NDS VideoGuard .It,s a tough system to crack.

banie01

lgs 4 wrote: »

They most have had very decrypting software ,to decrypt NDS VideoGuard .It,s a tough system to crack.

Most providers have moved away from cardsharing and ECM to IPTV.
There have been rumours for a couple of years that the Newest NDS has been defeated but I've seen nothing that would indicate that's true in a system that could be "commercial".

The vast majority of TV piracy at the moment is via IPTV.
That the person running this operation based an operation of this size in Ireland speaks volumes about their lack of any actual cop on.

Tigerandahalf

20,000 subscribers is fairly significant. If you add iptv I presume you could double it.

Interesting that they say people were subscribing but not getting the full service - paying for a basic package but not sports or movies etc?

simongurnick

so, this isn't android boxes? something different?

Johnboy1951

It is understood this operation involved a certain amount of legitimate subscriptions to the service providers, whose signals were then transmitted to clone or reconfigured TV cards.

Not sure what is meant by this.

Maybe they bought legitimate subscriptions and cloned the cards for use in the same premises, and then stream the channels, one from each card?

Would that work I wonder?

tippguy2

Johnboy1951 wrote: »

Not sure what is meant by this.

Maybe they bought legitimate subscriptions and cloned the cards for use in the same premises, and then stream the channels, one from each card?

Would that work I wonder?

It was iptvvv know a few ppl who are gone dark today

kmurph

And I'm guessing they're all over Facebook complaining about lack of service and demanding refunds? LOL

tippguy2

kmurph wrote: »

And I'm guessing they're all over Facebook complaining about lack of service and demanding refunds? LOL

Agreed

mikeym

I presume it was illegal IPTV servers they were after since that cardsharing is finished?

theoneeyedman

bappelbe wrote: »

https://www.irishexaminer.com/breakingnews/ireland/gardai-in-cork-smash-pirate-tv-operation-which-cost-have-cost-providers-20m-931947.html
Looks like 20,000 are arriving home to no TV service
A good market for fta boxes!

Where is the 20 million euro figure coming from? Even if you believe 20000 subs, that's 1000 per sub??? WTF??

Johnboy1951

theoneeyedman wrote: »

Where is the 20 million euro figure coming from? Even if you believe 20000 subs, that's 1000 per sub??? WTF??

From the TV companies of course ...... they have always exaggerated their "losses" to this kind of activity.

theoneeyedman

Johnboy1951 wrote: »

From the TV companies of course ...... they have always exaggerated their "losses" to this kind of activity.

...... and considering they are likely to make a cut of the money back anyway through broadband subs.

I thought it might be the same fella who values the street value of the drugs seizures that came up with that figure.

BorneTobyWilde

Have Guards nothing better to be doing.

brightspark

theoneeyedman wrote: »

Where is the 20 million euro figure coming from? Even if you believe 20000 subs, that's 1000 per sub??? WTF??

€1000 per sub per year is probably based on someone taking all packages (including sports + movies)

Without offers

Basic €32
Cinema €29
Sports €40
Kids €8
HD €8

Total €117 per month = €1,404 per year!

That doesn't include multiroom (€17.50 per month), and "ultimate on demand" (€16 per month).

There are probably deals available for having all "packs" but I couldn't find specific combined packages.


edit:

Virgin will give a basic package for €20/month, Add Sky cinema and sky sports for a combined €49 total €69/month
€828 per year

Wanderer78

mikeym wrote:

I presume it was illegal IPTV servers they were after since that cardsharing is finished?

Cable is probably still going, but on small scale.

Can't see them stopping IPTV for the moment, tis very lucrative

icdg

BorneTobyWilde wrote: »

Have Guards nothing better to be doing.

No comments like this please, take a warning.

Everyone else: the usual rules apply for a thread of this type. The second it turns into a “how to” or there is any advocacy of piracy, the thread gets it

Johnboy1951

BorneTobyWilde wrote: »

Have Guards nothing better to be doing.

IMO indeed they have ..... but the personnel involved in this type of investigation would likely not have the required training/experience to have shoot-outs with gangs etc.

Certainly, from a personal point of view, my life is more affected by the presence of illegal drugs and gang shootings than any unlawful IPTV service.

Those services do not impinge on my daily life but the other activities do.

It is obvious I would much prefer the Gardaí to put almost all available resources into eliminating from society the scourge of illegal gangs.
It is likely that these IPTV services are also run by those same gangs, so would also be closed down or easily finished off as a result of a successful campaign.

Targeting individual drug dealers or their equivalent unlawful IPTV providers might look good, but it does not benefit society in the mid to long term.

I expect our police force to work to the benefit of society, concentrating on the most serious threats in order to eliminate them.

icdg

Johnnyboy1951 take a warning.

To make myself clear - there is to be NO further commentary on the use of Garda Siochana resources on this thread. Take it to the appropriate Emergency Services forum.

STB.

I read the article yesterday and laughed at how badly it was written.

@ icdg. This is just a technical response, nothing more and it might answer some of the questions asked. This is in the satellite forum, but it has nothing to do with satellite. It is not a how to, but rather why this piracy continues. I am not advocating piracy or telling you how to do it or where to source it.

Sky's encryption and card marrying to the box has been successful. As far as I am aware it has not been defeated. But that is on satellite.

There is only one source for pirating left in Ireland and the UK. Virgin Media's DVB-C system. It uses Nagra 3. For those in cable areas (there aren't that many in Ireland outside the main population centres). The old card sharing technique used on to defeat encryption on satellite is (and has been for some time) being used on cable using softcams exchanging codes from someone who is providing rolling codes over an internet connection to defeat the dvb-c stream for money.

This dvb-c weakness is also the source for UK/Irish IPTV who are putting these dvb-c streams through a massive server and outputting a multitude of streams to "subscribers" over IPTV. I was in Portugal not so long ago and was watching a soccer game in a bar that had Irish targeted adverts!

I am surprised that Sky (for their content alone) hasn't withdrawn their channels from VM until they lock down their dvb-c boxes.

I gather this story that hit the newspapers is the operator, the encryption company and the Gardai's computer crime unit targeting the sharing source. They will really need to address the main issue, which is the weakness in VM's hardware and encryption, in Ireland and the UK, just like Sky did.

Wanderer78

STB. wrote:

I gather this story that hit the newspapers is the operator, the encryption company and the Gardai's computer crime unit targeting the sharing source. They will really need to address the main issue, which is the weakness in VM's hardware and encryption, in Ireland and the UK, just like Sky did.

Completely agree here, and Id imagine pressure is slowly building from major providers such as sky, I suspect it ll be very difficult if not impossible to get direct UK premium channels soon, as all platforms will be locked down soon

jmcc

STB. wrote: »

I read the article yesterday and laughed at how badly it was written.

Most of the coverage looked like a recycled press release. It did mention that Nagra was involved in the case. Rebroadcasting the TV signal via IP is always going to be an issue but that would have to be dealt with at an ISP level. (It would be a completely different usage pattern to an ordinary ISP subscriber.) The shared key data would also have a profile that would be different from a rebroadcast but it is, in terms of data, sparse but periodic. But that would get into packet analysis and it could be highly problematic for ISPs.

Regards...jmcc

STB.

Wanderer78 wrote: »

Completely agree here, and Id imagine pressure is slowly building from major providers such as sky, I suspect it ll be very difficult if not impossible to get direct UK premium channels soon, as all platforms will be locked down soon

Well I don't know what the nature of the agreement between Sky and VM is as regards money changing hands for providing the channels to them and how much goes back to Sky for that content, but it must be enough that Sky have been ignoring that the only encryption weakness that feeds DVB-C card sharing and illegal IPTV operations is one outside their control that uses one that can be defeated. Especially when Sky and NDS spent so much time locking it down on satellite.

Obviously Sky would be delighted if an competitive operator went bust tomorrow, but not using their content!

@jmcc - yes ISP's will be the way, but if you tackle the weakness, there would be no content if the dvb-c source wasn't there to start the chain. As one server farm gets shut down, another pops up. A lot of them in Spain.

Aren't you the guy who did a lot of academic work on encryption systems as a proof of concept ?

ED E

Its not up to the end users ISP to enforce this. I very much doubt we'd see a high court order a la torrenting as there's no way to passively eavesdrop as a 3rd party to perform reporting.


They could play a cat and mouse domain blocking game but then they'll just organise a distributed phone home system like botnets do.



Only way to really enforce this is locate and bust the stream sources. When thats russia you're SOL.

jmcc

STB. wrote: »

@jmcc - yes ISP's will be the way, but if you tackle the weakness, there would be no content if the dvb-c source wasn't there to start the chain. As one server farm gets shut down, another pops up. A lot of them in Spain.

Aren't you the guy who did a lot of academic work on encryption systems as a proof of concept ?

A lifetime ago. It is a bit more than a proof of concept now.

The European market is relatively tame compared to what goes on in the Chinese market with streaming services of various descriptions. There are millions of such websites in that market. They are mostly one year wonder domain names that are registered as part of free or discounted promotions and then used for these kinds of sites.

Regards...jmcc

jmcc

ED E wrote: »

They could play a cat and mouse domain blocking game but then they'll just organise a distributed phone home system like botnets do.

Domain name blocking would be completely futile because of the availability of free or discounted domain name registration. A court order against a domain name or the registrant of a domain name would only hit that domain name. With some TLDs, it is not unusual to see tens of thousands of discounted domain names registered in a day. Hitting the command and control system (as with botnets) would be effective but not as effective as targeting the monetisation. Cryptocurrencies changed that somewhat but again it gets back to ease of use. The more complicated the piracy device and payment method, the less it will be used by the end user. That never changes.

Only way to really enforce this is locate and bust the stream sources. When thats russia you're SOL.

Unless the provider has a direct broadcast to brain interface, there is no way that there will be 0% piracy on any system. In light of this, the broadcaster/designer has to make it more complex to pirate the system and limit the effectiveness of any such compromise. Simply blaming Russia is wrong. The country associated with an IP address is not necessarily the country that is using it. Some of the African (particularly the Seychelles ranges) ranges have been reassigned to other countries while Africa, as a continent, has fewer active gTLD websites than Germany or, at times, Ireland. But that's a completely different topic.

Regards...jmcc

STB.

jmcc wrote: »

A lifetime ago. It is a bit more than a proof of concept now.

It certainly is John.

Colibri and his cryptoanalysis of a certain enc system is probably the most fascinating piece I have read in this area in recent times. 5 years later, they still haven't figured out what they are going to do. It doesn't affect the European DVB market that much, but its a headache in the far east.

lgs 4

Aren't we over doing the raid guys .Sky are just going to add another layer encryption .

STB.

lgs 4 wrote: »

Aren't we over doing the raid guys .Sky are just going to add another layer encryption .

Its not Sky's encryption that is the problem.


Its is the encryption on Virgin Media boxes both here and in the UK that are allowing pirate companies to defeat it via card sharing. That in turn is also the source content used in illegal IPTV servers.

icdg

lgs 4 wrote: »

Aren't we over doing the raid guys .

Banned for 48 hours for ignoring two warnings on this subject. This forum is for the discussion of Satellite Television and the use of Garda resources is not on topic

STB.

STB. wrote: »

This dvb-c weakness is also the source for UK/Irish IPTV who are putting these dvb-c streams through a massive server and outputting a multitude of streams to "subscribers" over IPTV. I was in Portugal not so long ago and was watching a soccer game in a bar that had Irish targeted adverts!
.

Not sure this is the case, I’m sure some use the dvb-c weakness but I know the iptv service I use uses nowtv for skysports etc as I’ve seen it on a very rare occasion glitch back to the nowtv channel list. I’d personally think nowtv and skygo are a far bigger source than virgin so withdrawing their channels from vm wouldn’t do them much good.

Blueshoe

Mine is still working anyway. Happy days

icdg

Okay look, I thought it might be possible to have this discussion, but it’s just too problematic. When I have to step in and give a third warning on the same thread there really isn’t any hope for the thread.