Re: NDS Card
Anonyma
"Anonymous" <nob...@invalid.org> wrote in message news:3630fe1378b0f622...@anon.mixmaster.mixmin.net...
> "Larry Butler" <lbut...@bigpond.com> wrote in message news:Ej63g.14862$vy1....@news-server.bigpond.net.au...
>> Yes I will Reactivate card...LOL Thanks for the help and I don't know if I
>> should ring that 131-999 number..LOL Thanks again...LB
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> Be carefull and watch for the Rupert's Mafia revenge!
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> Interesting readings: Google (web, news and groups)> Murdoch NDS Boris Floricic
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> like:
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> www.auspaytv.com/news/april02/1501.htm
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> dBforums - OT: German Hacker Tron's Death: Did Murdoch Do it? Murdoch, NDS now finds itself on the receiving end of a $1.1 billion lawsuit ... contacted brilliant German Hacker Boris Floricic. Known as "Tron" in the ... www.dbforums.com/t394307.html
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> Among Floricic's papers, his father found an NDS invoice dated July 12, 1998, which read: "Hello Boris, here are the analog devices, good luck. ...
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> http://news.zdnet.co.uk/internet/0,39020369,2082173,00.htm
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> In November of 1998, Tron -- Boris Floricic -- was found dead in a Berlin park. Police ruled it a suicide, but family, friends, and the CCC say foul play was involved.
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Murdoch take-over: Centrelink.
When world-traveler Rolf Deubel visited Australia in mid 2000, he left behind a legacy of modified original smart cards (MOSC) which lingers to this day. Rolf claims he was responsible in 1998 for hiring a Swiss firm to dice and slice Irdeto smart cards, taking them apart a layer at a time to diagnose how Irdeto 1 worked and therefore how it could be "undone." And when Rolf was detained in Bangkok later in 2000, Rupert Murdoch's head of security Ray Adams flew from London to Thailand to confront the German borne super-hacker with a message: "You made a bloody mess in Australia and Rupert Murdoch wants your ass."
Now comes an announcement which succinctly explains many of the mysteries that have surrounded the continued deployment of Irdeto 1 in Australia since Rolf's whirlwind visit to the sixth continent. In 2004, NDS will become the conditional access provider of choice for Foxtel in Australia. Austar, at this point, will remain with Irdeto.
NDS Videoguard has been "hacked" but not in a way which leads to wholesale scamming of the security system in the marketplace. What made Irdeto 1 vulnerable was a failure on the part of the system designers to separate the three required "keys" into independent "safety vaults." What makes Videoguard far less vulnerable to hacking is the segmented approach to protecting the keys from discovery. Rolf's MOSC was successful because a hacker could identify the three keys, and reprogram a smart card with substitute keys borrowed from another legitimate smart card. This MOSC technique produces no hacker-joy with NDS.
NDS is 80% owned by News Corp and News Corp is inturn 16% owned by privately held Murdoch-family corporations. Foxtel is 25% owned by News Limited which gives Murdoch a direct voice on the Foxtel Board and an opportunity to push his own business agenda. Part of his agenda is for pay-TV providers such as Foxtel to be customers of NDS for Videoguard. NDS collects money from users of Videoguard in three ways. First, when a pay-TV provider such as Foxtel adopts Videoguard, there is encryption equipment and technical assistance purchased from NDS. Second, there are the smart cards created for Videoguard by NDS which are in theory much like the roll of film you buy for your camera. Lastly, there is a monthly/annual fee for each smart card paid to NDS - forever. This "maintenance fee" is more like a "royalty" - a charge made for ongoing use of a patent protected, proprietary (encryption) system.
The camera-film analogy is a close one to Videoguard. First you purchase the camera (NDS's encryption equipment), then you buy film (Videoguard smart cards) and then you have the film developed (payments to NDS for month-to-month use of the card/system). And when your film is all shot (the card is no longer usable for whatever reason), you replace the film with a new roll (new smart card).
Now the ingenious part. When News Corp owns a portion of a pay-TV operation, and has used that ownership position to "encourage" use of their Videoguard CA system, the stock-owning partners who agree to this are setting themselves up for a lifetime of payments to NDS (News Corp). These payments come off "the top," out of gross receipts and are no different than building and transponder rent, wages to employees, programming procurement. And the rate of payment to NDS can be "adjusted" as the pay-TV service grows. If Sky NZ, for example, starts off paying NDS $3 a month per smart card in use, and at some point actually looks like it might make a "profit" (as unlikely as that may seem), NDS simply ups the smart card monthly payments and now Sky NZ is back to losing money. This "sliding scale" of NDS payments can adjust indefinitely, forever, which at News' whim can keep a pay-TV service from ever paying dividends to stockholders. Which makes the stockholders vulnerable to internal financial manipulations over which there is no stockholder control or access.
In Foxtel's case it grows increasingly clever.
The Foxtel release said, "NDS's Videoguard conditional access system will be introduced across Foxtel to prevent pay-TV piracy." And it also noted, "Pay-TV group Austar will take Foxtel's programs via satellite even though it uses a different encryption system (because) Foxtel will 'simulcrypt' the (satellite) feed."
This leaves Austar, dirt poor and struggling from month to month, facing three choices:
1/ Stay with Irdeto 1 and suffer the ravages of piracy.
2/ Upgrade to Irdeto 2, issue new Irdeto smart cards to a universe of more than 400,000 subscribers, and hope for the best (Irdeto 2 being at the moment "cracked" but not in a way that allows wholesale distribution of MOSC).
3/ Join Foxtel and changeover to NDS.
Option 1 leaves Austar as a piracy target. Option 2 will cost them something in excess of A$12,000,000 to implement -money they can ill afford to spend but when push comes to shove, perhaps their only option. Number 3 involves replacing every single STB in their universe and signing up for lifetime monthly payments "off the top" to NDS. At what cost? Something greater than A$120,000,000 just to adopt NDS STBs. For a company barely managing to meet weekly payrolls, option 3 is a no go.
Which places Austar in what position? Between a rock (NDS) and a hard place (Irdeto 1 MOSC).
News/Foxtel wants Austar. They wish to own it, to control 100% of the Australian pay-TV market and they covet it "cheap." By adopting NDS, and leaving Austar on a street corner stark naked with the old fashioned Irdeto 1, they are driving a nail through the hand of Austar as it hangs on a cross dying. Austar sooner or later will fold into Foxtel and the adoption of NDS by Foxtel hastens that day of reckoning.
It has been a subject of wonderment that Foxtel has done so little to deal with MOSC piracy in Australia. Now we can work out why; they let it become really serious - serious enough to make switching to a new, less hackable (NDS) CA system "logical." And now they sit back and wait and watch as Austar takes a few more gasps of air and wilts, then coming to Foxtel offering to sell out for a depressed price.
NDS wins-wins-wins. Hundreds of millions of dollars will flow to NDS (Corp) with the CA conversion. And over the years, hundreds of millions more in monthly "user payments." And for dessert, Austar is forced into a corner from which there is no financial escape short of selling out to Foxtel, passing through News Corp on the way.