The is a plastic card with a chip - much like a modern credit card. Some decoders have the smartcard built-in already, so there is no external slot. The subscriber plugs a smartcard into his/her decoder, which decrypts the signal so programs and films can be displayed on the screen. The pay-TV provider encrypts the digital signal sent to the subscriber with an encryption key. A Conditional Access Module (CAM) is a combination of encryption keys, smartcards and electronics and computer code inside a satellite or cable-TV receiver (or “decoder”). I’m not going to speculate on the reasons why a supplier of – the technology that allows paid-TV providers to restrict access to their broadcasts – would want to undermine the security of their own product but I am going to discuss how such systems work, and how secure they are. Over the last couple of days a small furore has erupted a News Corp subsidiary, has been hacking the pay-TV smartcards of News Corp’s competitors, and even News Corp’s own companies – allegations that NDS.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |