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Cracking the Smartcards

hanuman writes: "So you know you're a true hacker when: 'Breaking the encryption alone would cost up to $5m. The process demanded the use of ultra-expensive electron-scanning microscopes, with the team probing wafer-thin chips no bigger than a thumbnail. Each chip contained up to 50 layers, with each layer in turn carrying up to 1,000 transistors, every one of which had to be pulled apart and analysed.'." This is a follow-up to the Vivendi vs. News Corp. story with more details about what is alleged to have occurred. Update: 03/14 12:28 GMT by M : And yet another story, which alleges that the head of security at NDS funded the website that distributed the hack for their rival's smart cards.

6 of 215 comments (clear)

  1. Smart Card hacking by fruey · · Score: 0, Offtopic
    Did someone really do this? Did a hacker find out all by himself (and Canal+ can't take it) or did someone REALLY analyse 1000s of transistors?

    I thought there were two kinda standard chips and that ripping ROMs was, with a card reader, reasonably easy to do.

    Can someone find a link which explains the technical reason they had to bigtime reverse engineer everything?

    --
    Conversion Rate Optimisation French / English consultant
  2. here we go anain with the paranoia by marijne · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    this article is about the signal decryption codes for TV, it has nothing to do with internet security

  3. Re:WoW! l33t! by Lord+Bitman · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    You are a failure, failure.

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    -- 'The' Lord and Master Bitman On High, Master Of All
  4. ITV Digital (terestrial digital) by pHaze · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    I have ITV digital and it sucks. Badly! We have an external antennae, and a bunny antenae and the signal on both can't pick up all the channels we've subscribed to. Customer service insists it's corrosion or some such crap that is degrading our signal. The best signal is received when I hang the bunny antenae out of the window of our third floor apartment.

    So I'm not feeling too sympathetic for their plight.

  5. OT: Re:Always overstated --- IQ FALLACY! Wrong by Shade,+The · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    *Sigh* - I'm really going off-topic with this one, but whilst their may be "thousands" of citations, doubtless there are many conflicting studies. This is not a very accurate field of science.

    IQ is NOT an accurate measure of intelligence. How can it be, if we can't even define intelligence?! And how can a single number and a few tests give even a rough indication of the power of something as complex and different as a human brain?

    Secondly, may I say that CORRELATION != CAUSATION! Just because the black people studied had a lower average IQ, does not mean that because a person is black they are more likely to have a lower IQ. Have you considered social background at all? Thought not. Same with the information about females. Please don't jump to conclusions; that's the realm of the closed minded.

    I seems to me that anybody who claims to be intelligent must have opened their mind just a little. I've read the book, and the books which appear to contradict it, and I'm generally ambiguous on the whole subject myself. Though I do believe that The Bell Curve is obviously flawed; we simply do not know enough to measure intelligence accurately. However, it is an interested account of what we have measured, no matter how rough and ambiguous the findings are.

    However, I'm getting away from the point. You seem to take this book's word as gospel. It's science - i.e. it's wrong. Science only models the Universe - it is not the Universe itself. All models break eventually, some sooner than others. Why do you insist on closing your mind to the possibility that this book may be, frankly, a load of crap?

    Honestly, I think you're either a troll (in which case, you've got yourself some bait :) - or you're just an idiot who thinks he's clever.

  6. Re:Always overstated --- IQ FALLACY! Wrong by shilly · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    But not of shutting up, hm?

    Had you read my reply with due care, you will have picked up on the clear implication that I have read "The Bell Curve". You would also have picked up on the clear implication that I thought it was crap. And not very well argued crap, at that.

    FWIW, I know that cards can be cracked and that it doesn't take huge teams to do it. I just don't believe your claims to privileged insight.