Dodgy Sky boxes

MrFrisp · 25-06-2013 05:23PM

gazzer wrote: »

Does this whole "Cardsharing is going end" not come up every few months though? Its been going on for years so I imagine if Sky could stop it they would have a long time ago.

Well, yes,,for years they said it was coming to an end.

It has already done so in Australia.

Safe to presume it won't be long before it happens here.
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mad turnip · 25-06-2013 05:26PM

MrFrisp wrote: »

Well, yes,,for years they said it was coming to an end.

It has already done so in Australia.

Safe to presume it won't be long before it happens here.
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The people that develop the software are based around Europe with there focus on sky UK, Italy and Germany. They will try alot harder to get these back working again rather than bother with Australia.

machiavellianme · 25-06-2013 06:30PM

mad turnip wrote: »

The people that develop the software are based around Europe with there focus on sky UK, Italy and Germany. They will try alot harder to get these back working again rather than bother with Australia.

What are you talking about? There are very competent engineers and computer scientists outside of Europe. Australia is hardly some pithy little market. If they could crack it, they would!
Europe will be the same once the next gen of hardware is released. Maybe they'll crack it in time, maybe they wont, but at some point change is coming and anyone receiving less than dubious services will be cut off.

icdg · 25-06-2013 07:48PM

A reminder what this thread is about, it will be allowed stay open as long as it sticks to the fact of card sharing and its reprucussions for BSkyB. Any attempts to discuss the how of cardsharing may result in bannings and/or this thread being locked.

TAFKAlawhec · 25-06-2013 08:07PM

It certainly isn't illegal to own a receiver that is capable of unauthorised access of encrypted channels on the Sky platform. I have one that is popularly used for it and I didn't get it for the mentioned purpose, rather that I was just after a cheap DVB-S2 receiver.

My understanding of the problem is this without trying to get into too risky of detail... the weakness in the system that allows this hacking of the encryption to happen is due to a leaked flaw in the original DVB Common Scrambling Algorithm (DVB-CSA). The end result is that all encryption systems based around the CSA - not just Videoguard used by Sky - can be hit with the cardsharing method mentioned already by several posters.

The latest versions of the popular encryption systems like Videoguard, Nagravision, Conax etc. are all actually very secure these days. It's for this reason that in the last few years the main underground businesses that traditionally been involved in selling pirated viewing cards for Pay TV services turned their attention to cardsharing and exploit the weakness in the CSA.

To combat this, an updated version of the DVB-CSA has been available for the last few years but only really been rolled out by pay tv providers in the last couple of years because the prevalence of cardsharing has forced their hand. Supposedly even if the algorithm is leaked its claimed that it would be hard to hack it (at least harder than the one before it). This upgrade is probably what has happened with Foxtel in Australia and what Sky are planning to do in Ireland and the UK which might explain the free upgrade of SD and 1st gen HD receivers. Perhaps the latest HD receivers can handle the new CSA and the older ones can't. If that's the case, once the new shiny padlock is used by Sky (assuming a staged rollout, HD channels first, then premium SD and finally Family Pack channels) then it'll be goodnight Irene to the cardsharers.

Apart from possibly the One Time Pad (as long as it's used correctly) no encryption system is completely unhackable - but you can make it difficult enough that the time and effort to do so isn't feasible. But it is a catchup game, the new CSA won't mean an end to the battle forever.

Manc-Red · 25-06-2013 08:08PM

Certain receivers have had their new software update on Sky & cards paired in the new format for a few months now & nothing is coming from the illegal end to breach it.

It was bound to happen - but nothing is watertight & some serious money will be pumped into opening that door again as Sky UK is the biggest draw in the CS market across Europe.

I do imagine when this door is closed, Sky are banking on a massive increase in new or old subscribers giving their hard earned to them.

JDxtra · 25-06-2013 08:13PM

It's Sky. Not Sly or $ky.

Manc-Red · 25-06-2013 08:14PM

JDxtra wrote: »

It's Sky. Not Sly or $ky.

You work for them or something?

Have a Beer & relax.

zg3409 · 25-06-2013 09:46PM

Its a cost benefit calculation. If the cost of fixing the system is more than the benefit to Sky, then they won't bother. Some acccountant does the sums and decides if it is worth it.

On the plus side existing customers may get free/cheap HD boxes, when Sky would have left them with older boxes.

icdg · 25-06-2013 10:16PM

Manc-Red wrote: »

You work for them or something?

Have a Beer & relax.

No personal attacks please

jmcc · 26-06-2013 12:40AM

wil wrote: »

In the mid 90s a very sizeable proportion of Sky subs moved to these chipped cards, when they were openly sold in car boot sales etc.
My hazy young anecdotal recollection was that after this high profile businessman unexpectedly receiving a custodial sentence, the sale of these cards just stopped with people genuinely afraid of prosecution.

It was more complex than that. Sky had introduced a two chip solution with their series 10 (the 0A) card which had a microcontroller and an ASIC (Application Specific Integrated Circuit). Up to that point it had used single microcontroller cards. The Microcontroller was the easy part but the ASIC had to be reverse engineered and replicated. This added to the complexity of the pirate smartcard. Once Chris's company was out of the equation, the supply of these ASICs dried up and it became necessary to use deactivated official smartcards for their ASIC. This hardware specific and hardware dependent solution is what what seems to be the latest solution being tried with CAMs.

And again hazily, the prehistory of these cards was AFAIR a decryption algorithm or method devised by a Waterford IT lecturer? as an academic response to Skys supposedly uncrackable encryption.

Well not quite a Waterford IT lecturer but that method is now known as 'card sharing'.

At the time allegedly Sky thought their encryption was so good, it disbanded it's development team, having to play catchup a few years later.

News Datacom developed the software and the smartcards. Sky had its own counter piracy operation in the UK and it was quite efficient. It was when this was closed down and outsourced that the proverbial hit the fan.

Regards...jmcc

STB · 26-06-2013 12:47AM

TAFKAlawhec wrote: »

To combat this, an updated version of the DVB-CSA has been available for the last few years but only really been rolled out by pay tv providers in the last couple of years because the prevalence of cardsharing has forced their hand. Supposedly even if the algorithm is leaked its claimed that it would be hard to hack it (at least harder than the one before it). This upgrade is probably what has happened with Foxtel in Australia and what Sky are planning to do in Ireland and the UK which might explain the free upgrade of SD and 1st gen HD receivers. Perhaps the latest HD receivers can handle the new CSA and the older ones can't. If that's the case, once the new shiny padlock is used by Sky (assuming a staged rollout, HD channels first, then premium SD and finally Family Pack channels) then it'll be goodnight Irene to the cardsharers.

The first generation HD boxes are not secure (via jtag and apparently contain an already hacked ST chip). What will happen is that these boxes eventually will stop working unless swapped out. This is a cost that Sky have no doubt built into their security countermeasures rollout.

STB · 26-06-2013 01:00AM

jmcc wrote: »

It was more complex than that. Sky had introduced a two chip solution with their series 10 (the 0A) card which had a microcontroller and an ASIC (Application Specific Integrated Circuit). Up to that point it had used single microcontroller cards. The Microcontroller was the easy part but the ASIC had to be reverse engineered and replicated. This added to the complexity of the pirate smartcard. Once Chris's company was out of the equation, the supply of these ASICs dried up and it became necessary to use deactivated official smartcards for their ASIC. This hardware specific and hardware dependent solution is what what seems to be the latest solution being tried with CAMs.

If I remember correctly Sky actually paid a private investigation firm to track Chris down when he did a runner.

Long arms and large wallets.

wil · 26-06-2013 02:27AM

jmcc wrote: »

It was more complex than that. Sky had introduced a two chip solution with their series 10 (the 0A) card which had a microcontroller and an ASIC (Application Specific Integrated Circuit). Up to that point it had used single microcontroller cards. The Microcontroller was the easy part but the ASIC had to be reverse engineered and replicated. This added to the complexity of the pirate smartcard. Once Chris's company was out of the equation, the supply of these ASICs dried up and it became necessary to use deactivated official smartcards for their ASIC. This hardware specific and hardware dependent solution is what what seems to be the latest solution being tried with CAMs.

Well not quite a Waterford IT lecturer but that method is now known as 'card sharing'.

News Datacom developed the software and the smartcards. Sky had its own counter piracy operation in the UK and it was quite efficient. It was when this was closed down and outsourced that the proverbial hit the fan.

Regards...jmcc

You make it all sound so simple, /tugsforelock:),
the McC(with a k) hack must have been the E = mc2 to the encryption world.

Speaking of NDS, with the MAD shenanigans over a decade ago, it's rich of Sky to moan about getting bitten in the smarts.

excollier · 26-06-2013 10:16AM

wil wrote: »

Speaking of NDS, with the MAD shenanigans over a decade ago, it's rich of Sky to moan about getting bitten in the smarts.

Hear, hear!

_Kaiser_ · 28-06-2013 10:25AM

I must be missing something really obvious

As far as I can see, any of those sites that are streaming sky channels would presumably be doing so with a legit card and box.. just hooking them up to an AV stream rather than a TV?

So as the subscription itself is legit and the card/hardware is too, how are Sky supposed to tell where the stream is coming from? I saw some mention of numbers being displayed on screen but what's to stop that just being masked with a logo or something? The card sharing thing (as I understand the term anyway) seems like a level above that?

In any case, it seems to me to be an awful lot of effort by Sky for something that seems pretty straightforward.

If this in violation of the thread rules feel free to delete mods.. this is a very grey area thread but I'm just curious myself

Trick of the Tail · 28-06-2013 11:06AM

As far as I know, the CS servers are not using a Sky receiver, they're using a card-reader, a CAM if you will.

They're somehow extracting the decryption information and making that available to users via the internet - the receivers have the software to retrieve and utilise this info to decrypt the channels.

The subscription may be legit but the owner os breaking the terms of their contract by using it in this manner. If Sky were to buy a box, and subscribe to a CS 'service', they could track the IP number of the CS server, and thence take action against both the card owner and those talking part in the scheme, such as whoever is providing the server.

So as you see it's far from straightforward.

I would imagine that Sky have a team doing the above actions, plus working on electronic countermeasures such as ensuring that cards have to be locked to a unique receiver number - which the card-reader obviously doesn't have.

theblueirish · 29-06-2013 09:48AM

Trick of the Tail wrote: »

I would imagine that Sky have a team doing the above actions, plus working on electronic countermeasures such as ensuring that cards have to be locked to a unique receiver number - which the card-reader obviously doesn't have.

I have only ever heard of one person being "done" for cardsharing Sky. He had a market stall and was selling it from there and invited a sky investigator back to his house sell him a box.
this was back in 2009 before every Tom Dick and Harry started selling it.

Henry Ford III · 29-06-2013 08:13PM

Simple maths.

Does anyone know how many subscribers Sly have in the UK & I? A couple/few million at a guess. Actually its 10,000,000+

How much would a new box per customer cost? Say €40.

The cost of reequipping every user would be monstrous, so I can't see them doing it. They'll look for a cheaper fix. Cost could easily be €400,000,000, which would be 33% of the groups annual profit. All this to deny an unknown number of people accessing a few premium channels. The same people who'd be watching streams of the same channels within minutes.

It's a cat and mouse game, and the mouse is very clever and adapts to change in a hurry.

STB · 29-06-2013 09:28PM

Henry Ford III wrote: »

Simple maths.

Does anyone know how many subscribers Sly have in the UK & I? A couple/few million at a guess. Actually its 10,000,000+

How much would a new box per customer cost? Say €40.

The cost of reequipping every user would be monstrous, so I can't see them doing it. They'll look for a cheaper fix. Cost could easily be €400,000,000, which would be 33% of the groups annual profit. All this to deny an unknown number of people accessing a few premium channels. The same people who'd be watching streams of the same channels within minutes.

It's a cat and mouse game, and the mouse is very clever and adapts to change in a hurry.

They dont have to replace every box.

Read the thread.

Henry Ford III · 29-06-2013 10:41PM

STB wrote: »

They dont have to replace every box.

Read the thread.

No need for smartness.

I've already read the thread.

Care to make an informed guess on the numbers/costs?

STB · 29-06-2013 10:47PM

Henry Ford III wrote: »

No need for smartness.

I've already read the thread.

Care to make an informed guess on the numbers/costs?

I wasn't being smart.

Again. Had you read the thread you would have realised that they do not need to replace every box, neither is that their immediate intention.

They are marrying the cards to HD boxes. Those boxes wont require immediate replacement. The software update that they will send via transport streams will prevent the card being used to access and share premium/HD content outside the proprietary box.

That is phase one. Phase 2 will be replacing the old Thomson HD boxes with new ones to catch those not captured in phase 1 (as these boxes are not suitable for implementing their countermeasures).

Phase 3 down the road will eventually involve moving people from SD to HD boxes.

The retail cost to SKy replacing a box is nothing towards the monthly subscription money they are losing to cardsharing operations in any event. Systems integrity is key to wipe out wholesale illegal distribution. Cardsharing is now more widespread than €urovox/Starview days of cable piracy in Ireland & the UK that existed way back. What was an underground practice by legit cards users on third party boxes with third party software. IE operating outside the proprietary box to avoid multiroom costs and associated limitations, has now become a piracy monster.

Henry Ford III · 29-06-2013 10:56PM

All well and good, but a way will be found to circumvert these initiatives. It may take a bit of time but it'll happen without doubt.

TAFKAlawhec · 03-07-2013 10:16PM

A side effect for Sky if they move their customer base to all of them receiving the service via non-Thomson HD boxes and making the SD boxes redundant would be that they could then make all their subscription channels, both SD and HD, broadcast in MPEG4 instead of MPEG2 as is the case for SD channel at the moment. The bitrate savings MPEG4 has over MPEG2 not to mention using DVB-S2 as well would allow Sky to either consolidate transponder space (save money), allow for a picture quality improvement on SD channels if using the same bitrate as MPEG2 stream (e.g. less pixelation and full D1 resolutions rather than 544x576 e.g. RTÉ1) and possibly even consider the thought of ending SD & HD simulcasts of certain channels and just supply the HD version without the additional £10/€15 per month fee (in the short term, hell would have to freeze over for that to happen :pac:).

The likes of the BBC, ITV, Channel 4, Channel 5 and most broadcasters on the Freesat platform would likely have to stay MPEG2 in the meantime for SD channels to remain backwards compatible with non-HD Freesat receivers but a wholesale switch by Sky to MPEG4 would likely encourage Freesat to look at fixing a date for MPEG2 closedown in the future. FTA channels at 28 East who aren't on Freesat would have to weigh up their options as to where most of the customer base is from - MPEG4 would be in most of their interests in terms of capacity costing money.

Long time adopters of the Freesat From Sky service however who still have SD only receivers might lose out though.

watty · 04-07-2013 06:11PM

They will ditch MPEG2 on SD and NOT increase quality. Many non-HD Skyboxes are close to EOL and Sky only care about subscription customers. The so called "Freesat from Sky" only exists as marketing to get subscriptions.

I expect Sky pay TV to go 100% MPEG4 DVB-S2 once the transponder cost savings over a couple of years (max) are less than cost of replacing all non-HD subscription boxes.

It will mean more bandwidth available to rent for non-Sky customers though. Don't forget Sky was prepared to go SD MPEG4 on DTT, but Ofcom rightly said only on DVB-T2, not DVB-T, hence loads of "dumped" Picnic boxes. Sky can basically do what they like on Satellite. Their original Analogue service was unlicenced and they & SES-Astra pinched the Eutelsat Central European slot (28.2E when between 12E to 14W makes more sense for UK) when they started the Digital service.

Yes, Sky will be 100% MPEG4 on SD maybe 10 years before Freesat is 100% MPEG4. Freesat & Freeview will have to maintain MPEG2 for a LOOOOONG time. c.f. 405 Line TV after BBC1 & ITV joined BBC2 on 625.

Liameter · 05-07-2013 09:16AM

Play To Kill wrote: »

It would surely be at least considered to be fraud as it is in the UK

Four men have been jailed in Derby for stealing Virgin premium channels and providing them to consumers under the name Starview.

I'm surprised this post hasn't been moderated because it's an obvious breach of copyright from http://www.techwatch.co.uk/2012/02/24/starview-team-jailed-over-card-sharing/