
DirecTV's Secret War On Hackers (2001) - jsnell
http://slashdot.org/story/01/01/25/1343218/directvs-secret-war-on-hackers/
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joezydeco
Years later, the person responsible for the "Black Sunday" kill came forward:

[http://archive.wired.com/politics/security/news/2008/05/tarn...](http://archive.wired.com/politics/security/news/2008/05/tarnovsky?currentPage=all)

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blueintegral
Tarnovsky has given several really great talks at Defcon:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kh238PUqz3I](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kh238PUqz3I)

He goes into a lot of technical detail which is great. I'm a big fan of his
work.

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apaprocki
I can neither confirm not deny being directly affected by his work at the time
:) Needless to say once the story came out it was amazing to read about it
from the "other" side. The scene got so complicated it could only be described
as an arms race. It quickly moved from having modified cards and custom
devices to live intercept rigs where a computer sat between the card and
receiver. What, you don't have an unlooper in your drawer?

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have_humility
Fun fact: DirecTV HD DVR's contain GPL code. (Maybe Linux, but I can't
remember, really.) It was amusing coming across the phrase "Ty Coon, President
of Vice" in my parent's printed owner's manual a couple years ago.

Not so fun fact: When I saw that, I checked online to see what sources DirecTV
is offering, and I came across claims that DirecTV is yet another corporation
shirking their responsibility wrt their use of GPL code.

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bkuhn
Please send a copy of the manual and specific details of what you tried to
receive source code from DirecTV to <compliance@sfconservancy.org>.

Note that GPL doesn't require "putting the source online" necessarily, but
they are required to make a valid offer for source code to you and fulfill
that offer when exercised. We'll need to investigate whether or not they've
properly done that before anyone should claim that DirecTV has violated GPL.

(BTW, I'm Bradley M. Kuhn, who, through my role at Conservancy, started the
GPL Compliance Project for Linux Developers: [https://sfconservancy.org/linux-
compliance/](https://sfconservancy.org/linux-compliance/)

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nickysielicki
I'd just like to point out that vulnerabilities in satellite TV are surfacing
once more, but this time, on a much more irreparable scale.

[1]:
[http://colibri.bplaced.net/powervu.htm](http://colibri.bplaced.net/powervu.htm)

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kw71
PowerVu is pretty old, and (at least in the USA) it's not really used for home
viewing, so I think this isn't very interesting unless you have a giant C / Ku
band antenna.

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nickysielicki
Right. But if you do have a big ugly dish (or are willing to find one on the
free section on craigslist and put it in your backyard) you can theoretically
view nearly everything.

PowerVu isn't used by DirectTV or Dish for their home viewing. But it is still
used by the major networks. Nearly everything from sports to entertainment is
on PowerVu at some point, and then received and retransmitted by individual
carriers.

Check out lyngsat.com.

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kw71
My experience working in cable headends are that most programs that we watch
on cable are delivered using DigiCipher (motorola's) CAS. There are always one
or two PowerVu receivers tho: Viacom (MTV, A&E) is one notable feed. Also
there are usually a small number of tandberg-style receivers with Irdeto or
something.

Nevertheless I was glad to see that someone is figuring out PowerVu :) I would
like to see the same for DigiCipher, as the 4DTV scheme uses it.

Both PowerVu and DigiCipher have similarities to the CAS schemes from their
respective manufacturers for cable settops, too.

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mikestew
I remember it well, last time it came up:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6387545](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6387545).
Ingenious, with a little dig at the hackers.

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JacobAldridge
Not loading for me - did we just Slashdot Slashdot?

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djmollusk
DirectH was my fav app. I remember when DirecTV took control of hackhu.com.
Forgot about this scene.

