On 1 May 2002 at 18:19, Peter Wayner wrote: > At 3:12 PM -0700 5/1/02, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > >Seems to me that oneof the keys to permanently unlocking sat TV is > >to do away with the vendor's receiver. From my novice perspective, > >it seems many or most of the attacks against pirate devices are > >based on the assumption that the pirate must still have a set-top > >box which is still, indirectly, under control of the service > >provider (that is its unmodified). What if an affordable software > >based radio replaced the set-top box and the smart card > >functionality? It would seem to me that 3M (Three Musketeer) > >attacks, wherein one or more legal purchasers of the service > >broadcast in real-time the required stream decryption codes over > >ICQ/IRQ to all the other SDR boxes. This must have been thought of > >or already tried. What am I missing Peter? > > Nothing. I think that's correct. The only problem is broadcasting the > keys is not simple. The latest systems change keys frequently-- as > often as every 20 or 30 seconds I seem to remember. If you change the > channel, you need a new key. It's not like the old days when the key > changed daily or monthly.
I don't know anything about anything,. but it seems to me that 1) unless you want to have a period of static/blackness every time you change channels, the system must be storing the keys to all channels, even if each channel is encrypted with a separate key. Similarly, the system would have to broadcast what new keys will be in advance of the actual key changes. I'm just raving like a lunatic here, but it seems to me that if you buffer the encrypted incoming signals, you don't have to get the keys in anything like realtime in order to watch the programming. > > If you have such a service broadcasting the keys, it's not too hard > to track you down. So I think it's not a practical solution. > I'm pretty confident that it's possible in principle to broadcast anonymously using a dc (dining cryptographer) network. Maybe there's an easier way. George > -Peter > >
