There is an old Chinese curse that runs "may you live in interesting times". It seems that the European satellite business is so cursed.
Perhaps the ultimate victims of this curse are News Datacom and Sky. The level of piracy on a channel is a very good indicator of how popular that channel is. Sky has perhaps one of the highest levels of piracy in Europe. This is due in no small part to the counter-piracy policy adopted by Sky.Exactly two years ago this month, in March 1993, Sky destroyed its own security department. The documents that could have saved Sky from the ensuing two years of piracy were shredded. The idiot responsible for the destruction of the security department should be kicked out of Sky and never allowed to work in the satellite television business again.
But VideoCrypt was once a secure system. When Sky switched to the long cycle, it was compromised. By having a year or more between card issues, it was possible for the hackers to come up with a solution. However the market for pirate devices is so large that there is a lot of serious financial clout behind attacks on scrambling systems. With an estimated £ 500,000,000 per year being spent in Europe on satellite and cable piracy, the Blackbox industry is bigger than many channels.
The lemmings rush into digital television in Europe is going to be greeted with the usual cheery forecasts from the "media analysts". They seem to be utterly oblivious to the effects of piracy on a channel's revenues. Extrapolating Sky's estimate of their losses over the first three months of 1994 and adding in the cost of the 09 card issue gives a figure close to £ 40 Million. The real figure is probably much higher and may approach this without the cost of the 09 included.
It might sound a bit like harsh criticism of "media analysts" but there has been little evidence of sentient life on the planet they inhabit. Whatever planet it is it certainly is not this one. Perhaps I am getting too cynical after editing and writing Hack Watch News for four years.
Digital television has the capacity to revolutionise satellite television in Europe. It also has the capacity to destroy it. Most of the "media analysts" tend to believe what they are told by the security systems providers - and sure why wouldn't they? They are after all non-technical people. The scary part is that it is these JAFAs who are ultimately deciding things.
The fundamental flaw in most of the digital television systems proposed for use in Europe is that they tend to rely on smart cards. To date most of the smart card systems have been hacked in Europe. The only system that has remained intact is the Syster system. It remained intact because the channels using it maintained control over the decoders.
If the channel groups intending to go digital do not maintain security over their decoders / IRDs as well as over the smart cards then they are as good as hacked.
The present generation of smart cards are currently hacked. The companies that manufactured the cards did not expect such a well organised, well financed and well armed attack on the cards. Perhaps they had been too confused by work with banks. News Datacom were certainly afflicted with this mentality. They chose to deny that there was a piracy problem on their cards. The typical opponent envisaged by the card manufacturers seems to be the highstreet criminal. While smart cards are a good deterrent against the average criminal, the real opponent is the professional hacker / pirate. These people will have similar training to the card developers and perhaps access to the same level of equipment. In addition there will be thousands more of them.
The number of people trying to hack a system will outnumber the number of people who designed it. The people who designed the system are fighting a perpetually losing battle. It is only by changing the cards on a regular basis that they can hope to stem the flow of piracy. This simple lesson is often the one that the channels pay most to learn.