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NewsCorp/NDS Sets Up Operation To Expose Canadian Pirates; What Could Go Wrong?

Posted by timothy on from the boarding-eh dept.

Presto Vivace writes "Murdoch's Pirates is a business book that reads like a thriller. The chapter excerpted in the Sydney Morning Herald explains how Operation Duck, an effort to discover the identify Canadian pay TV pirates, went horribly wrong. 'By October 25 Oliver had been in Toronto four days and had programmed a swag of pirate cards, using a program he had ripped off another pirate hack. And he had been paid a lot of money. That evening, he met with two piracy dealers in a car and programmed a few cards for them with his portable programmer box, to demonstrate that it worked. The following night Oliver received a call from a friend in London, a partner in his old piracy ring, who was sleeping with a woman who worked for Federal Express. 'He told me, these guys [from the previous night] sent a parcel to Larry Rissler,' Oliver recalls. Rissler was a former FBI agent who headed the Office of Signal Integrity—the operational security division—of DirecTV, and he had been hunting Oliver for some time. One of the dealers Oliver had met was a Rissler informant and he had despatched a re-programmed smartcard by FedEx to his boss. The parcel would be with Rissler early the next morning—if it wasn't already there.' The story reads like some perverse blend of James Bond and the Pink Panther. It is just amazing."

3 of 95 comments (clear)

  1. Reading TFS by oodaloop · · Score: 5, Interesting

    The story reads like some perverse blend of James Bond and the Pink Panther.

    Well, TFS reads like a chinese instruction manual. What the hell? Piracy dealers? Discover the identify?

    --
    Tic-Tac-Toe, Global Thermonuclear War, and relationships all have the same winning move.
  2. They would know.... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    After all, NewsCorp seems to have funded the design, manufacture, and distribution of hacked cards to bring down British DTV competition. (And were successful. Poor ITV) http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-17494723

    Not to mention illegally listening to voicemail...

    Maybe they should cut their piracy out first.

  3. Murdoch NDS hacked OnDigital/Canal+ by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Interesting

    In 2002, Canal Plus accused NDS of extracting the UserROM code from the MediaGuard cards and leaking it onto the internet.[15] According to The Guardian, the NDS laboratory in Haifa, Israel had been working on breaking the SECA-produced MediaGuard smartcards used by Canal+, ITV Digital and other non-Murdoch-owned TV companies throughout Europe. Canal Plus brought a $3 billion lawsuit against NDS but later dropped the action. News Corporation agreed to buy Canal Plus's struggling Italian operation Telepiu.[16][17]

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NDS_Group

    "On 26 March 2012, the BBC programme Panorama broadcast that NDS employed computer hacking to undermine the business of ONDigital.[19] At the time, ONDigital was the primary TV rival in Britain of BSkyB, a News Corporation company. The accusations arise from emails obtained by the BBC, and an interview with Lee Gibling, the operator of a hacking website, who claims he was paid up to £60,000 per year by Ray Adams, NDS head of security.[20] UK broadcasting watchdog Ofcom is to investigate these claims.[21] These claims are vigorously denied by NDS and NewsCorp.[22]"