
News Corp "totally hacked" pay-TV rival, leaked company emails reveal - EdwardQ
http://www.computerworlduk.com/news/security/3347530/news-corp-14000-executive-emails-blown-open/
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suprgeek
At this point almost nothing about Rupert Murdoch and the behaviour of one his
many Slimeball corporations should surprise anyone.

If you are a UK resident, you would know the horrendous actions of his
tabloids - Hacking the voice mail of a Murdered Child's parents, etc. If in
the US think of Fox News (all that needs to be said).

This guy and his corporations are as close to a nonredeemable "Bond Villain"
as you can get in real life.

~~~
EdwardQ
You're right, we shouldn't be surprised but he's becoming such a caricature of
his own evil who knows where it will end?

He makes that crazy statement Rumsfeld came up with about "unknown unknowns -
things that we don't know that we don't know" seem like a proper sentence when
you think Met Police are trawling through a database of 300,000,000 separate
News International emails in East London as we speak, 11 million of which were
deleted and then recovered.

~~~
gadders
"Unknown unknowns" is a sensible statement. It quite often is the case in
project risk management. That is why you add contingency.

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gravitronic
I'm so confused.

I get that he did it for his own gain, but he funded the cracking of a
proprietary DRM encryption scheme.

Isn't the HN community anti-MPAA, anti-copyright-extension, pro-information
freedom? How is this against those ideas?

The only victims I can see here are a DRM enforcement company and content
producers. I thought we already agreed they were behemoths ready to be
destroyed? And here we have someone financing their destruction and we don't
like them?

Is it that all that rhetoric about destroying Hollywood was to destroy them
without breaking the very laws we're protesting?

(this is an honest question. Please respond before downvoting.)

~~~
omh
He did crack a proprietary DRM system, but only in order to further the
success of his own service which used just as much proprietary DRM.

Having said that, the ultimate result was that we got Freeview, one of the
better results for UK end users in a while. And perhaps not in the best long-
term interests of Sky!

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mikos
It's weird how it's taken over 10 years for this to come to light. Here's how
it was originally broken to Thoic members back in 2001:

<http://pastebin.com/TW2rdkrx>

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shabble
The issue has been covered at least a few times before:
<http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2009/07/satellite/> is one, and links to a
great article about the hacker Chris Tarnovsky supposedly responsible, who has
also been heavily involved securing and deploying countermeasures against
hacked decoders:
[http://www.wired.com/politics/security/news/2008/05/tarnovsk...](http://www.wired.com/politics/security/news/2008/05/tarnovsky)

~~~
NateLawson
Yes. Here's the actual story that references important parts of the emails:

[http://afr.com/p/business/marketing_media/the_news_story_tha...](http://afr.com/p/business/marketing_media/the_news_story_that_kept_changing_yp4lfeoKeGNYd7IaioVKVJ)

The emails themselves are here:

[https://www.documentcloud.org/public/search/group:%20austral...](https://www.documentcloud.org/public/search/group:%20australianfinancialreview)

Keywords and meanings:

    
    
      P2                  NDS card that was hacked & emulated
      P3                  Card that wasn't publicly broken at the time
      C+                  Canal Plus, NDS competitor
      Michael George      Chris Tarnovsky alias
      Stinger             Chris's programmable glitcher board
      Oliver Koemmerling  Smart card hacker
      Lee Gibling         Pirate board who turned over logs to NDS

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tptacek
This has been an open secret for a long time.

~~~
fidotron
Exactly. I think the cloud exists over who exactly the target was, and the
news in the UK only seems to be blowing up because they seem to think all the
new evidence is more credible . . .

Here we are:
[http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2002/mar/13/media.cityn...](http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2002/mar/13/media.citynews)

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rwmj
I guess we've lost the "hacked" vs "cracked" war.

~~~
dagw
"We" lost that war well over a decade ago.

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crusso
Rupert wants information to be Free!!

Sure, his competitors' information... but it's information. :)

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Netadmin
Murdoch and his pals up to their old tricks.

