Still More on News Corp. Hacking Charges

Spike and others wrote in about this ongoing saga: subsidiary of Vivendi claims that a subsidiary of News Corporation cracked their satellite TV smart cards and posted for public download. (See our previous stories.) Two new stories from the Associated Press and Yahoo note that although the two companies are apparently dropping the original lawsuit (since News Corp. is making a large investment in Vivendi), Echostar is now claiming they were hacked too and the U.S. Justice Department is investigating possible criminal charges.

Comments

I got hacked too, honest

[iainl]

Can I have some of Rupert's cash now? I've no evidence, or anything, but that doesn't seem a problem.

Re:I got hacked too, honest

[AftanGustur]

I've no evidence, or anything, but that doesn't seem a problem.

Your name isn's Goerge W. by any change ?

Re:I got hacked too, honest

[Melantha_Bacchae]

Ann Coulter writes:

> It's people like you who are destroying this
> country. You people feel entitled to everything
> that you can never achieve with your godforsaken
> attitudes. There were places in the world where
> people like you poisoned with your way of
> thinking. Your post isn't even funny. Joking about
> the confescation of property is an assult on the
> principles of this nation.

Oh, for crying out loud, it was a joke! iainl was parodying what they thought Echostar was doing. iainl has a perfect right to do so, under the United States' First Amendment to the Constitution.

> Major corporations made this country Great.
> Civilians should not have the same rights as
> corporations because they do not contribute as
> much to our nation.

So sorry, but we are a nation "of the people, by the people, for the people" according to Abraham Lincoln. The Declaration of Independence states that it is men that are created equal and given rights that can not be taken away, and lists among those "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." No mention of nations for the corporation, or any rights given to the corporations (a very recent concept).

> The only ones who should be allowed to sue (and
> reap irreperible damage to a corporation) are
> corporations who have as much at stake.

Thankfully, that isn't the case. Sometimes lawsuits are the only way to reign in greedy sharks that are negligent enough to make defective products that kill people. Of course, if corporations were always responsible and fair, there would be no reason to sue them.

> Our Nation is founded upon the concept of a
> Constitutional Republic(tm).

Didn't know that was a trademark of some corporation. ;)

A constitutional republic simply means that the citizens elect representatives to represent them in Congress. The representatives make the laws (following, in theory, the wishes of those who elected them and not the corporations that bribe them), and the whole process is governed by the Constitution.

> We have class separations that must be enforced.

Only if you are a snooty patuty rich person.

> An average Joe Sixpack, or a mass of them,
> should never wield the kind of power deprive
> companies of millions.

Yeah, well, a mass of corporations (and their greedy CEOs) should never wield the kind of power to deprive Joe Sixpacks of 7 trillion dollars of retirement money. But they did.

> On the other hand, News Corp. has every Right to
> hack their competition because they dominate the
> market. People recieve more rights as they
> ascend the ladder, and it should be that way or
> otherwise we would have a ruling mob.

Please quote the section of the Constitution that says this.

> Those of you who believe in a parity between
> Corporate rights and civilian rights are
> socialists.

There is no parity. Corporations still do not have all the rights of a citizen, and they never should. I am a citizen of the United States of America. News Corp. is not.

> The fact of the matter is that America is an
> aristocracy and that is what makes this nation
> Great.

No, what makes this nation great, despite all its warts and mistakes, is the great ideals on which it was founded, and the courage and compassion of its people. Justice makes us great. Liberty makes us great. Life and Happiness make us great.

Greedy sharks, their willful actions and their bribes, are the problem, not the solution.

"The path of peace is yours to discover for eternity."
Japanese version of "Mothra" (1961)

So they claim...

[viper21]

But I can't see any reference to a shred of proof in these articles.

So why did I read them?

-S

Re:So they claim...

[cioxx]

So why did I read them?

Something about the concept of middle-aged, corporate type businessmen hacking each other what makes it a compelling story.

Re:So they claim...

[Angry White Guy]

The evidence that they are citing is the $40,000 stuffed in electrical equipment.
Although this is pure speculation, having your technology leaked to the hackers, forcing an industry-wide upgrade to new technology which is leaked to the hackers, forcing... makes an interesting business model.

Isn't this breaking the DMCA?

[suman28]

I am sure there are copyright issues here. So how come a large corporation is able to get away but Dmitri Skylarov is still in jail? It always seems to be one rule for corporations and another rule for everyone else and yet another rule for the government.

"Security"

[phil reed]

It's interesting to note that DirecTV is in the process of sending out new smart cards for all of their satellite receivers nationwide. The letter announcing that fact cites "security", but it doesn't say whose security they are worried about. Unsophisticated DirecTV users will, of course, assume it's the user's security that's at stake.

Re:"Security"

[Angry White Guy]

Actually, it is for the users security. Not that someone is going to get their personal information or be able to track what they watch, but security of their investment. If anyone remembers the old pay-tv programs ON and IT, they remember that they went out of business because everyone was pirating their signal. Canada was a haven for home-brew on boxes. They filtered accross the border, everyone had them, and nobody was paying for them. Because it was a complete hardware solution, the company had to strike a balance between acceptable levels of piracy, cash flow, and cost to change the boxes of their subscribers.

This is exactly what is going to happen to DirectTV, but they only have to send out new cards, not entire receivers. When piracy gets too high, they ship another card. It's much easier to ship a card, to have the user install it, and coordinate the effort. But once the piracy becomes rampant, then the legitimate subscribers will have lost their initial hardware investment.

Re:"Security"

[elvum]

They're still twisting the English language to their own ends. They need to explain why users have to install their new cards, but "security" sounds so much friendlier than "to protect our revenue stream", despite the two being far from synonymous...

Re:"Security"

[Angry White Guy]

Actually, no. I do not work for DirectTV. Actually, I have pirated their signals in the past, and helped others do so. But when I did do this, I did not delude myself by saying that I wasn't stealing, or helping others steal. I had two reasons for doing what I did: Canadian Television sucked, and money.

I guess that I'm just honest about my dishonesty.

People who illegally recieve SatTV are not Pirates

[Anonymous Coward]

Pirates are gruff men on ships who say ARRR and steal your boat. People who illegally decode a signal being broadcast through their private air space are just people who illegally decode a publicly broadcast signal. The news corps is doing a disservice to the public by using slang terms and being unclear in their communication of a story.

Corporate hacking

[killmenow]

Frankly, I don't care if companies hack each other...so long as I benefit.

Interesting timing .

[AftanGustur]

It was only yesterday (*not kidding*) that one of the bigger Vivendi owned satellite TV (Canalsat) upgraded it's encryption system to "Seca2".

But I'm afraid the Seca2 system is DOA as it has already been cracked by Italian Crackers.

Continuous update

[Zeinfeld]

An interesting feature of the satelite smartcard scene is that the protection schemes are designed with the knowledge they can be craked.

Ultimately no security scheme based on commodity hardware is secure against a determined attack. Even the clipper chip was broken. If the adversary has a scanning electron microscope available they are going to be able to reverse engineer the chip. Ross Andersson did a paper on this a while back.

The strategy the satellite companies use today is economic rather than purely technical. What they do is to design smart cards which are subject to progressive security flaws. They then send out different variations on the smart card to different customers.

The trick is that the pirate does not know which of the flaws matter and which do not. So if the pirate clones a particular card perfectly the satellite company can respond cheaply and effectively by just replacing the small number of cards that have been compromised.

If the pirate makes a more general attack the satelite co looks for any small difference between the cloned card and the genuine cards and programs a deactivation code to take advantage.

Most cloned cards are not perfect since the pirates are in competition with each other. It is better to get a cloned card out in 3 weeks than to wait a n extra couple of months and allow a competitor to steal the market.

The satelite cos generally wait until the pirates have sold a significant number of cards before sending out the deactivation codes. This discredits the pirates with more customers. If the customers learn that using a pirate card ends up costing them more than being honest in addition to being inconvenient they are more likely to turn honest. Another trick is to disable the cards right before big events.

dismay, delight, dismay

[gosand]

dismay: The title of the article says "hacking" when it means "cracking".

delight: The text of the article gets the term right, saying that their smart cards were "cracked".

dismay: The text then misuses the term again, saying Echostar was hacked.

Come on folks, if a site that supposedly is "news for nerds" can't get the term right, how is anyone else expected to?
(and don't give me the BS that hacking and cracking are the same thing)

Re:dismay, delight, dismay

[trb]

The set of hackers and the set of crackers intersect. A person who breaks into a system is a cracker, but the act of breaking in, especially if it involves figuring out how to break in, is a hack as well as a crack. Hackers have been figuring out how to subvert security mechanisms for a long time, it's an interesting pursuit.

I think of it this way - solving a crossword puzzle is like hacking. Copying someone else's solution to a crossword puzzle is like cracking.

ahh simpsons

[Jonny Ringo]

Homer:Well I just bought some shares of News Corp.
Lisa: Dad that's fox!
Homer: Sell! Sell!