

Revisiting the Black Sunday Hack - bdfh42
http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/001125.html

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tptacek
To those who laugh off DRM as something that can't work, please note: even
with a large, motivated, well-equipped community of attackers lined up against
it, the current DTV cards have remained unbroken for years and years.

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mynameishere
_for the first time, they could see a cunning mind at work on the other side._

I wonder if "hackers" actually think such things. The DirecTV network itself
is, of course, a million times more magnificent and "cunning" than any of the
pissy little exploits against it.

~~~
tptacek
They absolutely did think those things. They even had a name for "the cunning
mind": "Dave".

And, not to argue whether DirecTV is more magnificent than whatever, but the
attacks on it were neither "pissy" nor "little". They were more advanced than
most of what we see on general purpose architectures.

~~~
mynameishere
_They were more advanced than most of..._

Point missed. Were they more advanced than a global satellite network? There
is simply comparison whatsoever. Exploiting a system is never as significant
as creating a system.

~~~
tptacek
That may well be true in DTV's case --- a point I acknowledged already --- but
it's not true in security at large. Breaking an existing well-regarded block
cipher, for instance, is far more significant than simply creating a new one.

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wave
Interesting article. Basically, they hired one of the hacker in order to win
the electronic warfare (e-war) or cause major damage against the pirated
DirecTV cards. After DirecTV destroyed 100,000 smart cards in one evening,
"for the first time, they could see a cunning mind at work on the other side."

