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Hacking DirecTV over TCP/IP using Linux
siliconshock writes: "It seems that you can now connect your Directv receiver to a Linux box and then using TCP/IP to connect accoss the Internet and emulate a valid DirecTV account enabling all channels.... Oh yea, and of course it open source :)
Full story. To dtv hackers this means that you dont have to have an access card at your physical location! It can be located accoss the country, or better yet in another country all together." This seems one more step toward the fabled digital convergence, too.
First DeCSS, Napster, and now this. This will do nothing to further enhance the public image of Linux users as lawless criminals and rebels of society.
Yes it is hacking. And it'd a damn fine one too.
Please allow me to explain.
You see, regardless of your beliefs on DirecTV, DSS and the DMCA, we're NOT TALKING ABOUT THE USA. We're talking about Canada.
Canada doesn't have the DMCA on the books. And the DSS signal is probably being illegally broadcast in Canada, which, in case you didn't know, in outside the juris diction of the FCC. So in that respect the signal is fair game to those in Canada.
That simple fact and a couple of Canadian court rulings in favor of the DSS hackers buys a get-out-of-jail card north of the border.
So DirecTV is stealing usable frequency space in Canada, and the Canadians are happily stealing the broadcast feeds off those unlicensed signals.
That seems pretty darn fair.
Moreover, since the DMCA doesn't apply to Canadians. The Canadians *do* have more rights than Americans here. They can distribute any and all devices that circumvent any encryption scheme. Especially those illegal ones that happen to be broadcast over the boarder.
There's also a question of what actually constitutes "stealing". The Canadian hackers did not "deprive" the use of the DSS signal from the DirecTV satellite service. So "stealing" doesn't quite work here. A more accurate statement might be "It's Unauthorized Decryption". Yes it is. And it's also not illegal, at least in canada. But use of the term "theft" here makes one think of a far larger insidious deed than was perpetrated, While free TV is a legal possible outcome, under law, it is not "theft".
And the last thing you were wrong about is the hack itself. Yes, indeed, it's a damn fine hack. This wasn't some two-bit script kiddie reading some t-phile on how the interface worked, no this was a serious piece of reverse engineering. I'll refresh your memory here. A script kiddie, can't by definition write c code. Otherwise he'd be known as a c-kiddie or maybe a "1337" hacker.
So, in the future. Don't play loosey-goosey with the language. 'k?
I don't care if it's legal in Canada or not, it's still stealing! This is just one more example of something the media will 'attribute' to OSS and Linux.
Suppose you lived in an apartment overlooking a baseball park and you could watch the games for free out your window while most people had to pay-per-view. Are you stealing? "The media" would say so since they have a vested interest in pay-per-view.
How about if you took videos of the game from your window and put them on your website. I'll bet "the media" have already bought laws making that illegal.
Are you old enough to remember when people would say "It's a free country" and they weren't being sarcastic?
Of course, the next round will be DirectTV's response, which if history is of any indicator, we'll have a lot of smolten Linux boxen (maybe this will help RedHat's bottom line even more?)
No one EVER learns, do they? Or maybe it's just all in fun. More power to both sides, it's been interesting from the sidelines from the get-go.
Returned Peace Corps IT Volunteer
This hack was always going to happen. In fact almost any system that uses a conditional access system where the data stream can be accessed and rebroadcast is vulnerable. News Datacom, the company that created the crypto architecture for DSS/DirecTV knew about this vulnerability and it patented what they considered a solution to it. (US Patent:5,590,200 if you want to check it on www.uspto.gov). It is not due to the crypto system being compromised. It is basically a failure in the model. I formulated the original hack for this over ten years ago so it is not as if the designers of the TV encryption systems did not know about it. Regards...jmcc (John McCormac)
how's this for the ultimate catch-22?
there's semi-draconian media laws in Canada set up to prevent Canadian media from being overrun by the U.S media conglomerates. problematic implimentation in places, but i certainly understand the sentiment.
one of the laws is that foreign sattelite broadcasters cannot sell their services in Canada. a judge ruled that since DirecTV's service was unable to be sold in Canada, it therefore had no fair market value. and since something that is valueless cannot be stolen, it's OK to watch DirecTV in Canada for free.
DirecTV can bring up charges against Canadian individuals for violating laws in the United States, but they're not likely to prosecute them unless they come over the border.
This information I learned from speaking to one of the techie higherups at DirecTV.
Just raise the taxes on crack.
Never before on Slashdot, when read under the rules of the Slashdot Drinking Game, has there ever been a single story that could get someone as staggerring drunk as this story can.
DRINKING WORDS: Hacking, DirecTV, TCP/IP, Linux, emulate, Internet, open source, digital convergence, access card, and if you count compound words, Siliconshock, the submitter.
Gives "buzzwords" a whole new meaning.
Umm, what makes you think that someone making illegal software for stealing is going to obey the GPL?
1. It's not stealing in Canada as DirecTV cannot be sold in Canada by law, and therefore has no "Fair Market Value". Something which has no value cannot be stolen and is therefore legal to circumvent.
2. The author is Canadian.
-- iCEBaLM
Information, especially in digital form, has a zero cost to copy, and does not deprive the "owner" of their copy. Companies decide to spend alot of money setting up systems to throw these bits at us. No one forces them to go into the business of copy bits around, they do it of their own volition. This is like selling salt water by the ocean. Except that it's stupider.
The problem here is that publishers (far more than people who actually generate the information in the first place.) Are trying hard to prop business models which rely on copying being difficult and expensive.
Having has some sucess in lobbying for laws which artificially treat trivial to copy data as identical to a physical object which is hard to duplicate.
Even where a physical media is involved the cost is small. e.g. photocopying a book generally costs more than buying a copy, but copying a CD is a lot less than the retail price.
There are two ways things could go. Either we get more and more draconian legislation passed. Though at some point lobbying needs to be extended to police and courts or the result is laws which just won't be enforced. Or different business models need to be found. This is frightening for the current megacorps and some of them might not survive any change. Especially since both the producers and consumers don't much care about the publishers/middlemen.
Uhhmmm... the guy who wrote this lives in Montreal, as in Canada. The DMCA is a US law. I'm sure that the guy will get sued for something, but I doubt it will be using the provisions of the DMCA.
The fact that this is in Canada makes it very interesting, IMHO. I remember that there was some guy who used to rebroadcast NFL games on the Internet. He was allowed to do this in Canada, but not allowed to do it in the US. If I remember correctly, he was successfully shut down. But then he convinced the courts that if he put in protections for the streams so that they wouldn't reach US customers, he could continue to operate, because the NFL rules applied only in the US, not in Canada.
The NFL, of course objected saying that the protections wouldn't work (they were right). But I remember thinking that he was allowed to turn his stuff back on.
I wish I could remember the name of the service, then I could get the details a little bit more accurate. But I wonder how that case as a precedent is going to effect the current situation.
--
Key to financial independence: Spend less than you earn. Save and invest the difference. Do it for a long time.
This is, like unlawful isn't it?
Does Open Source need this kind of promotion?
10,000,000 channels, and nothing is on.
I believe that eventually companies will resort to calling Free/Open software a serious threat, as opposed to making or adopting better technology. Most likely the attorneys in the likely-to-follow lawsuits will argue that Linux and code sharing are the causes of events like this.
I believe the entertainment industry has already recognized that it cannot trust users of "their" content. Anything that we hold cannot be restricted from us. The natural progression will be to adopt subscription-based models. Why the lawsuits now? I will bet it is more profitable to preserve the current distribution model for as long as possible before switching over.
Imagine paying $30 a month to listen to any song or watch any movie you wanted...
morally wrong act
And what act is that? Are these guys killing people or sodomizing small children? No. They're getting access to a cable channel which you cannot pay for even if you want to in the country that they are from. Maybe in your mind this is a morally wrong act but I hardly see it as such. If it were possible to buy DirecTV in Canada, then I would call it a not-very-nice thing (though, again, hardly 'morally wrong' - I reserve that for a crime that actually hurts someone in a non-negligeble way).
"Well, it's not illegal so it must be ok!"
It's not only 'not illegal', it seems that Canadian courts have examined this issue and said that it is OK.
If someone tapped in to your cordless or cell phone's signal and replayed embarrasing conversations to your family, boss and friends would you be as forgiving?
What?!?!?! TV channels and private conversations are hardly the same thing. TV is meant to be seen/heard by as many people as possible. Private conversations are not. You are confusing copyright law with something else entirely (well, at least in my case - I hardly ever copyright my phone conversations).
Congratz.
it's in my head
If /. can't even tell the difference, we're screwed.
Everyone is out there buying Tivo and other set top boxes only to wait for HDTV to come in with its protection schemes that will remove time-shifting and render their hardware useless. So now we use other hardware to make a workaround. This cycle of events ensures that only the wealthy can compete for control over how/when they view media. As history has shown it's the little guys who are the majority. Unless we start challenging the laws, more accurately the abuse of vague laws, that make it possible to make the hardware/software that create the "need" for these circumventing devices we will all end up getting shafted in the end. Corporations will always be one step ahead in the coming years.
I don't want to have to worry about updating my foo-emulater every time a new device comes out that threatens part of what is supposed to be a free media. I want to know that I, and the rest of the little people, will have the same unencumbered access to media that we have always had.
Ascii artist &
I think it's a difference between active and inactive piracy.
I modify a box to not pay -> I've circumvented their system for gain -> bad
They are giving me stuff I didn't pay for -> That's their own bloody fault -> ok
Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former. (Einstein)
I was also thinking about those stories that used to circulate about how, under the right circumstances, people could pick up radio signals with the fillings in their teeth. What if the radio signal you happened to pick up was somebody's cordless-phone conversation? Are you breaking the law? Is your dentist part of the conspiracy for building the "receiver" that you used?
"Biped! Good cranial development. Evidently considerable human ancestry."
At any rate, it looks like satellite networks have one more thing to worry about now.
I just got DirecTV a month or so ago, and it beats the hell out of cable. It would be nice to unlock all those titles with big 'M's next to them, but it seems too risky.
I agree with you in that it can be used for good OR bad, well ANY software can.
However, I -do- think that the majority of society are idiots and would see this and think that all hackers are out to steal cable or whatever.
A kinda off-topic example:
At my last job I got a reputation as a hacker when I figured out how to make a program run past its expiration date...All I did was open up its INI file and about 3 lines down it said:
Expires=3/1/2000
I changed that line to: Expires=12/31/9999 and wala it worked....All the employees were dumbfounded that I had actually "cracked" a program.
Fabled Digital Convergence? Nah, they bit the big one over a week ago.
This is not a Fugazi
Just a couple of thoughts on this.
First, anyone who thinks any signal that they can reach is free for them to use should go to radio shack and try to buy a scanner with cellular frequencies. They're illegal -- and it's illegal to build something to listen to them. It's been a long, long time since frequencies were free.
Interesting technology, but as someone else noted, it's one I'd be very careful using; unlike older satellite hack technologies (where you'd call up a BBS for access codes), you're easily tracked here. I sure wouldn't do this.
Arbitrary beginning of the piracy flamewars: people have to remember that there's no free lunch. If you steal content from DirectTV, those of us who DO pay for the service are subsidizing you. Someone has to pay for this stuff; if everyone tried to steal if, it'd disappear. (we now stand back to watch all of the pirates attempt to rationalize away their theft by calling it other things...)
But most importantly, and the reason I delurked in the first place, this is yet another example of a company that uses stupid, weak, badly designed encryption techniques and tries to enforce them with obscurity and bluster. Companies like DirectTV need to learn that if they want to protect their content, they can't cheap out on the technology. DeCSS is a classic example of this -- you lock your front door with a piece of twine, and tell everyone that if they dare open the door, they'll call the police.
Anyone with half a brain knows to get a deadbolt and keep them out in the first place. Sooner or later, enough of these cracks will occur to convince even the stupid companies to get their act together. Until then, even if the pirates are wrong -- it's hard to sympathize with companies that make it easy...
Chuq Von Rospach, Internet Gnome = When his IQ reaches 50, he should sell