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.

Comments

Something tells me it's got to be easier

[Thaidog]

I just don't think my privacy is that safe on the internet... anybody who falls into a false sence of security over using a smartcard should think twice.

Smart Card hacking

[fruey]

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?

Interesting!

[Anonymous Coward]

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Murdoch again

[Anonymous Coward]

Never underestimate mr Murdoch. Or to say the same thing in another way never overestimate Murdoch's honesty and integrity.

here we go anain with the paranoia

[marijne]

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

JUNIX

[Anonymous Coward]

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have made first release of
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good support for iPod system.
Also special file sytem to
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I very much like america
culture. JUNIX is built for
commodore but I include my
compiler so you can build for
your system when you have dug
up hardware from chicken hut. THANKS.
--JUNIS

Re:WoW! l33t!

[Lord Bitman]

You are a failure, failure.

ITV Digital (terestrial digital)

[pHaze]

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.

Stop the ovens

[Anonymous Coward]

Let's face it, most crackers may not want to admit it but they've been attacking and oppressing my people for more than 400 years now. I'm not talkin' about slavery, I'm not talkin' about disenfranchisment, I'm not even talkin' about attack dogs or firehoses. No, the issue I'd like to confront today is the rampant cannibalism that the white southern aristocracy has historically and continues to perpetrate against the black man.

For 400 years, the white man been eatin' the black man every time that the economy takes a crap or Mother Nature goes and fucks up the crops with a drought or a flood or some such shit. Fuck dieting, fuck tightening the belt, genteel and cultured men and women in Mississippi would just sit themselves down to a yummy, steaming platter of roasted black ass cheek. They sit down at the table with some poor brother's ass cheek deep-fried to crispy and drowning in catsup and they giggle like schoolgirls while they chomp and swallow with such abandon that they leaves drips of assfat running down the cheap paper towels tucked in to their shirt collars.

This has to stop, from this day forward whitey needs to know that we comin' for him. That we ain't gonna be stopped. That nothing can stand in our way. Here we come, with barbecue sauce motherfucker.

Re:Always overstated --- IQ FALLACY! Wrong

[Anonymous Coward]

I grew tired of putting up.

And My IQ is not that high, not as high as those I know that achived the cracks.

My IQ is pnly between 140 to 150. I suspect the guys I know that did this stuff are true genius level dudes in the 180s, but I do not know their IQs.

They provided proof to me and to corporate presidents, and doubting people can crack these things is like doubting the press releases of the IBM crpyto chip being cracked, or that the following paper is a hoax :

http://www.google.com/search?q=cache:wybhqqCka28 C: www.usenix.org/publications/library/proceedings/sm artcard99/full_papers/kommerling/kommerling_html/

well its not. People do crack these things with few resources other than very high IQs.

And you need to be born with a very high IQ.

Read the Bell Curve for more details.

Yeah but...

[Anonymous Coward]

Imaging a beowolf cluster of these!

OT: Re:Always overstated --- IQ FALLACY! Wrong

[Shade, The]

*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.

Re:Always overstated --- IQ FALLACY! Wrong

[shilly]

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.