Sky Digital Encryption Cracking?

LegacyUser

Is there ANY way whatshover to crack skydigital encryption systems to gain free channels?Or any1 have links to sites which tell u how?I doubt this coiuld work but worth a shot.
P.S-My thread asking thew same question on Digital Spy was locked by the moderators.I hope that ICDG is a little more democratic

LegacyUser

Sky digital will NEVER be cracked and i am 100% confident in that.
(ps) everything (well most) that Sky Digi offers can be had on other satellites, but are you prepared to spend about a G or more to get it?

LegacyUser

Media UK just closed my post there on the same topic.Whats up with these ppl?Do they actually like the fact that u shell out £36 for all the channels?Dont they want to kno if its possible not to pay it?

LegacyUser

Originally posted by chernobyl:
Sky digital will NEVER be cracked and i am 100% confident in that.

Well Sky were 100 % confident then videocrypt would not be hacked and yet it was , having said that it seems to be the most secure system so far. I guess the resaons why other forums wont allow this discussion is the possibility of legal action

Regards Tony

LegacyUser

no matter which way you get your TV you will have to pay.
Even if you get yourself an advanced Satellite system (avoiding monthly payments), the cost of a decoder, decryption cards, BUD satellite dish, motorised system and the hours setting your dish up for 3/4 satellites, you pay each way.

LegacyUser

<font face="Verdana, Arial" size="2">Originally posted by Tony:
Well Sky were 100 % confident then videocrypt would not be hacked and yet it was , having said that it seems to be the most secure system so far.
Regards Tony[/B]</font>

Sky Digi has been around for years and no one has come close to breaking the encryption, and how fast was videocrypt cracked?....ok.

LegacyUser

<font face="Verdana, Arial" size="2">Originally posted by chernobyl:

Sky Digi has been around for years and no one has come close to breaking the encryption, and how fast was videocrypt cracked?....ok.
</font>

Still does not mean it will never be cracked just like seca,viacess etc

LegacyUser

<font face="Verdana, Arial" size="2">Originally posted by chernobyl:
Sky digital will NEVER be cracked and i am 100% confident in that.
</font>

SkyDigital has been hacked. I have seen it done, the only problem is the cost at the moment and the card needs to be updated every month or so.

LegacyUser

<font face="Verdana, Arial" size="2">Originally posted by mickyperry:
SkyDigital has been hacked. I have seen it done, the only problem is the cost at the moment and the card needs to be updated every month or so.</font>

wow, the cards have to be updated every month, thats no big deal, with SECA i was updating on a daily basis sometimes, you are full of ****

Blade

<font face="Verdana, Arial" size="2">SkyDigital has been hacked. I have seen it done, the only problem is the cost at the moment and the card needs to be updated every month or so.</font>

The cost? the cost of what? the card? Are you talking about the retail price (if so what are they charging?) or the cost of manufacturer?

LegacyUser

Not that I like Sky - but if it is hacked, the rest of us will suffer as we will have to pay more. So don't do it.

LegacyUser

<font face="Verdana, Arial" size="2">Originally posted by chernobyl:
wow, the cards have to be updated every month, thats no big deal, with SECA i was updating on a daily basis sometimes, you are full of ****

</font>

Chernobyl do you think we could have a discussion without insulting other contributors?

Cloud

Chernobyl your "karma" has been adjusted for being just plain abusive.

I have heard of chipped Digiboxes on the go in Limerick.

LegacyUser

Not sure about digiboxes but i have heard that apparently the Real IRA in Dublin were chipping ntl boxes for free channels.NTL claimed the chipping could start fires.YEAH RIGHT!!!NTL only dont want to lose customers.Theres probably no risk at all!

LegacyUser

<font face="Verdana, Arial" size="2">Originally posted by Cloud:
Chernobyl your "karma" has been adjusted for being just plain abusive.

I have heard of chipped Digiboxes on the go in Limerick.</font>

the guy was talking crap.Sky Digi has not been cracked, and my "karma" has been changed, hmm, whatever cloud.
(ps) i did not use any vulgarity at the guy that was sensored, i actually just hit star 4 times.

LegacyUser

What proof had you that he was talking crap? You could have asked him what proof HE had ? Rather than just coming out and attacking him, saying he was talking a load of crap.

LegacyUser

<font face="Verdana, Arial" size="2">Originally posted by BNC:
What proof had you that he was talking crap? You could have asked him what proof HE had ? Rather than just coming out and attacking him, saying he was talking a load of crap.</font>

Because i used to browse boards like thoic online (went bust) and other similar boards, and everyone sez it aint been done yet, this is the first guy i have seen saying it has been cracked, and assuming you irish and that you "seen" it done in ireland further proves your are lying as the magor crackers are russian and no one in ireland has ever done anything as big as cracking sky, and never will.

LegacyUser

And if you dont believe me ask blade, hes close to the scene.

[This message has been edited by chernobyl (edited 20-06-2001).]

LegacyUser

I have seen this done and I was quoted 120. I was told that something is done to the box like the chip for playstation and that a card was cloned. The problem is that the card is cloned only has the channels that the oringal card had. This is all I know.

LegacyUser

<font face="Verdana, Arial" size="2">Originally posted by mickyperry:
I have seen this done and I was quoted 120. I was told that something is done to the box like the chip for playstation and that a card was cloned. The problem is that the card is cloned only has the channels that the oringal card had. This is all I know.</font>

yeah and this really works..yeah.
So you wont believe me, then do some research on the net and see for yourselfs.

LegacyUser

<font face="Verdana, Arial" size="2">Originally posted by chernobyl:
Because i used to browse boards like thoic online (went bust) and other similar boards
</font>

So, that's what happened thoic! I was wondering what happened it!

As for hacking VideoGuard, I imagine it is possible. If nearly everything else can be hacked, then why not VideoGuard? I don't really know much about hacking but that's my guess.

---

WILL D

LegacyUser

<font face="Verdana, Arial" size="2">Originally posted by irishblimp:
So, that's what happened thoic!</font>

One of the Administrators was storing all the posts of the forums and sending it to NDS (I think) the company who own's Videogaurd.

LegacyUser

<font face="Verdana, Arial" size="2">Originally posted by mickyperry:
One of the Administrators was storing all the posts of the forums and sending it to NDS (I think) the company who own's Videogaurd.

</font>

yup there was shady back handers going on over there.

icdg

I'm very inclined to close and delete this thread...but given that none of you have actually discussed how it could be hacked, and most have dismissed the prospect, I'm going to let this go on for the moment. Rest assured that this thread will be carefully monitored and posts deleted if anything serious is discussed. I refer you to the Site Rules:

DON'T Discuss hacking systems

Blade

I swore I wouldn't get into this but in the end I couldn't resist...

mickyperry: I don't believe for one second that Sky digital has been hacked (if it had I woulda got a phone call) The Stream package in Italy using the same conditional access as Sky Digi (VideoGuard) has been compromised but not Sky Digital. The only hack on Sky Digital was a while back and that was just a trick to get an extra 15 pounds worth of credit on your PPV. If I wanted to I could bring you to my house and fool you into believing I hacked Sky Digital and I've seen many a conman through my years in this business doing things like this for a quick buck or a sting operation. What I think some of you are getting confused with is the hacks on resellers of the Sky channels, such as Chorus, NTL or OnDigital all of which are using systems that have been compromised. In the case of NTL for example, the system their using in Dublin had been hacked a long time before NTL ever took over cablelink, if I remember right it was CryptoVision, not 100% on that it's been a while. Their country boxes used an even lamer system I think from the US.

chernobyl: Whilst we agree on the main subject, I have just say that for about 3 years Ireland was the center of attention for Sky hacking, 2 of the top 4 European Sky hackers were Irish (well living in Ireland) and the 2 top money men operated from Ireland. It is very possible that Sky will be hacked again, however NDS have a much tighter control than they used to so it's never going to be a major headache for them.

icdg: Some people hack for security reasons, nearly all the top Sky hackers have moved into security because of the knowledge they gained in their years of piracy. It's good to let people discuss weaknesses in systems, thats how systems improve, if Sky hadn't been hacked years ago they'd be still using the same old technology, if I had a board I wouldn't let any authority scare me as regards it's contents on system weaknesses. Then again you own this board so it's up to you what your rules are.

LegacyUser

Hi Blade,

I'm glad you got involved. You sound like you've been around the block on this.

Thanks for explaining why you think Sky hasn't bee hacked. I am fairly new to satellite technology as I'm sure some of the other contributors are and its good to get an answer from someone "in the know", please get involved more!!

I was especially interested with the F1 post you replied to a while ago. I may be in the market for something like that in the future

J

LegacyUser

<font face="Verdana, Arial" size="2">Originally posted by Tony:

Originally posted by chernobyl:
Sky digital will NEVER be cracked and i am 100% confident in that.

Well Sky were 100 % confident then videocrypt would not be hacked and yet it was , having said that it seems to be the most secure system so far. I guess the resaons why other forums wont allow this discussion is the possibility of legal action
</font>

Sky VideoCrypt was hacked in about 5 seconds (10 including the time to write the hack down) due to a poorly implemented security model. As Tony rightly pointed out, the reasons that most forums in the UK and the EU do not allow that much discussion of hacking SKy is because of legal action. From a legal viewpoint, hacking Sky or indeed any other channel/service that originates from within the Eu is illegal under Eu law.

Sky/NDS have worked hard on keeping Sky Digital secure. I would disagree with the idea that it is unbreakable though. No system is unhackable. What many people do not seem to realise is that the resources that were used to hack Sky on a commercial basis were beyond the means of hobbyists. Reverse engineering the Sky analogue cards cost something in the region of quarter of a million pounds towards the end of the hacks.

It is unlikely that these so called "hacks" on Sky Digital are real. This kind of thing has been going on for as long as smartcard based systems have been around. A legitimate and properly subscribed card has its markings removed so that it just looks like a plain white smartcard. Then the card is shown to a punter who immediately thinks it is a hacked card. The reality is that it is a legit card and it may get turned off in the near future after it is reported missing/stolen/eaten by the dog [1].

Another source of confusion on this is where some of the Sky channels, Sky Sports/Premier/Movies etc, are available on a weaker (compromised) scrambling system such as those used by NTL/Cablelink or the Cork nets. While some of these chipped decoders may provide access to some Sky channels, they do not give the user Sky Digital.

Most of the major Sky hackers/pirates have, as Blade says, gone into other lines of work. A few Russian hackers existed but most of the work was done in Europe. There are a lot of people around who claim to have been at the core of hacking the channels in the good old days of piracy but it was always only a few and everyone knew each other. Given the recent prosecutions of pirates/hackers in the last few years, pirating channels, especially Sky is a very risky business within the Eu. Sky lost a major case in the Dublin High Court in 1994 against a pirate but the legislation has changed now in all the Eu countries.

Regards...jmcc
[1] Commonest excuse for missing Sky cards during the blocker periods.

LegacyUser

Quick reply to Blade:

Yes, NTL/Cablelink use Cryptovision. (I know cos I worked for them for five years looking after the decoders, tuning and testing them). Although there were many rumours about Cryptovision being hacked, I never heard anything concrete.

There were actually huge technical problems with the decoders since they were introduced. The mark-1 was a very good unit, but was let down by the flimsy design of the power-supply. The mark-2 was built by Pace, but the initial batches were plagued by problems of spikes in the RF section, which gave the effect of venetian-blind-type interference at every 16MHz.!

There were also several crashes of the whole system, and one where almost every decoder on the entire Dublin cable system switched itself off one morning!

LegacyUser

Very interesting Post JMCC, It strikes me that maybe no market exists for a "pirate" card at least in Ireland as to use one would require a full price (unsubsidised)box @ £399 as well as the risk of the card being turned off. When the cost of upgrading the old analogue pirate cards was taken into account it actaully worked out as being more expensive than a legitimate sunscription, I think people just liked the illusion of getting something for nothing.

Regards Tony

LegacyUser

<font face="Verdana, Arial" size="2">Originally posted by Baz999:
Quick reply to Blade:

Yes, NTL/Cablelink use Cryptovision. (I know cos I worked for them for five years looking after the decoders, tuning and testing them). </font>

The security of the original design was good. (I remember talking to the guy who designed it about the system for about an hour or two.) Pace made some design changes which I think weakened the system. It all boils down to the Embedded Secure Microcontroller vs the Detachable Secure Microcontroller argument. A hack on a system like Cryptovision is harder to control/counter because the company does not have total control over the decoders. With a system like Sky VideoCrypt, a hack could be countered by changing the cards. Initially the plan was to change the cards every six months so that the hackers/pirates had a moving target and could not turn a hack into a viable operation within that time. Financially, such a thing was too much for Sky at the time (it was only one step away from bankruptcy throughout the early nineties and every journo had Sky's obituary written but not dated.).

What saved Cablelink/NTL was the fact that the Sky/D2-MAC gear was cheaper and more available - well that and those colourful Zen movies [1] on the D2-MAC channels.

Regards...jmcc
[1]Zen Movie: From the koan "The sound of one hand clapping." - Think about it.

LegacyUser

<font face="Verdana, Arial" size="2">Originally posted by Tony:
Very interesting Post JMCC, It strikes me that maybe no market exists for a "pirate" card at least in Ireland as to use one would require a full price (unsubsidised)box @ £399 as well as the risk of the card being turned off. </font>

Ireland is too small a market.

The motivations for piracy are simple. Most piracy will happen in an area where the channel is not legitimately available. Where the channel/service is not hacked, people will go for the more expensive Grey Market solution where they subscribe to the channel in its own country via a dummy address. Where a hack exists, the cost of the equipment has to be low enough to make the cost of the pirate card attractive and correspondingly there has to be programming of sufficiently attractive value on the service. The buy-in for a potential pirate card user is now higher given that most of the channels have more control over the decoder distribution. Sky got this very wrong with VideoCrypt though it was locked in a battle to the death with British Satellite Broadcasting.

I don't think that Ireland, or the UK are viable areas for Sky piracy due to the fact that things are pretty dangerous from a legal position. Apparently UK police have raided a house in Essex over an OnDigital hack (Just saw the news on Ceefax). OnDigital is using a different security system from Sky (SECA I think).

As regards piracy on Sky, apart from it being bloody dangerous in .ie/uk, there is not a critical mass of Sky Digital decoders to make it a viable target. This is a very important factor in any case of piracy. In effect, the channel has to lose control over the distribution and allocation of decoders so that enough decoders exist outside the channel's home market. For Sky that market is the UK and Ireland and they will use whatever means are necessary to protect it.

Regards...jmcc

LegacyUser

Okay maybe i'm way off cos this happened ages ago.

But do ya remeber this American guy made a snazzy little device that decrpted all their channels and pay per views. He sold it for $20 or something. HE was taken to court by the tv companies but they lost as the judge ruled that they didn't have the right to copyright the air (ie the radiowaves etc).

But times have changed and alll the encrybtion techonolgy has too no doubt and there is no way that ANYYYYYYYYONE could ever crack it, or could they? hmmmmmmmm

LegacyUser

<font face="Verdana, Arial" size="2">Originally posted by Gideon2000:
Okay maybe i'm way off cos this happened ages ago.

But do ya remeber this American guy made a snazzy little device that decrpted all their channels and pay per views. He sold it for $20 or something. HE was taken to court by the tv companies but they lost as the judge ruled that they didn't have the right to copyright the air (ie the radiowaves etc).
</font>

The case was News Datacom/Sky Vs David Lyons. Sky was trying to get an interlocutary injunction banning Lyons from selling smartcards capable of decoding Sky's channels. He was English and the case was heard in the Dublin High Court. Lyons did not actually manufacture the cards nor did he develop the cards. NDC/Sky lost because they could not prove that the code in the pirate cards was a copy of their code and also because they refused to disclose their code to prove that it was an infringing copy. It was a pretty fundamental legal argument. (I was actually there. )

The legislation has changed drastically since then.

Regards...jmcc

Blade

Hi John, nice to see you about again!

Yah OnDigital is using SECA alright and SKY/NDS aren't very happy about their channels being viewed freely on the OnDigital system in the UK so their on the war path again. It's quite possible that we'll see NDS cracking down on Irish pirates (directly or indirectly) of the resellers weaker systems over here such as NTL etc. Though surprisingly all they've done up to now is kept an eye on them. I'd imagine after their last few f*ck ups over here that it'll be an indirect approach by putting pressure on NTL etc. to start raiding people over here.

SECA itself isn't a bad system, it's the cr@p smart cards these companies are using thats allowing everyone to wip keys out of them so easily thats the problem. I'm sure they'll learn soon enough!

BTW did you see they released a file to load Irdeto ,Seca and Viaccess all into an Irdeto CAM? The Irdeto is the one with the most memory, 512k AFAIK. We're going to see some pretty cool stuff on the line of CAM's in the future. Also NDS signed a deal to supply Irdeto their smart cards for their network security and payment systems. Wonder how long it will be before NDS convince everyone to use their cards