1.0 What Is A Scrambling System?
A scrambling system is applied to a television signal to ensure
that it is only receivable by the audience for which it is intended.
The more cynical amongst us may rephrase that to those who have
paid to receive it
. Therefore a good scrambling system is one
that can effectively make the picture unusable to all except those
who have paid.
There are two basic types of scrambling system: dumb and addressable.
The dumb system does not have any over-the-air (OTA) addressing. As
a result the channel cannot turn a subscriber's descrambler off.
This type of system is cheap and offers minimal security. As a
result it is not used for high value channels.
An addressable scrambling system is more complex in that it allows
the channel to individually turn on and off descramblers. Most
systems in operation today are addressable.
The basis of a scrambling system is the method by which it renders
the picture unwatchable. The early scrambling systems were analogue.
These systems interfered with the synch pulses or inverted the video
either on a frame, field or line basis. Some actually delayed each
line by one of three delays on a pseudo-random basis.
All of the analogue scrambling systems were vulnerable and offered
little protection to the channel using them. It was trivial to build
a descrambler that worked in an identical manner to the official
descrambler.
As the years and technology advanced, more complex systems came into
operation. These systems were digital based systems. They digitised
the picture or sound information and manipulated it. In order to
descramble or decode the picture, the picture had to be digitised
and then decoded.
VideoCrypt, D2-MAC EuroCrypt M & S and Nagra Syster are all
digital systems. They all digitise the video in order to decode it.
VideoCrypt and D2-MAC use line cut and rotate to scramble the
picture. Nagra Syster uses Line Shuffle to scramble the picture. It
takes a block of lines and changes the order.
All of the above systems are smart card based. They rely on the fact
that the smart card can be economically replaced in the event of a
hack. The concept behind this is that of The Secure Detachable
Microcontroller
. The older systems designs were based on the
Secure Embedded Microcontroller
concept. This concept was
fundamentally flawed in that if there was a hack on the secure
microcontroller (the chip that held the system's secrets), then all
of the decoders would have to be replaced or upgraded.
1.1 Overview of scrambling in Europe
There are about six or seven different systems in use in various
parts of Europe. The three most common ones are VideoCrypt,
EuroCrypt and Nagravision. Of course there are variants of each of
these systems. VideoCrypt 1 and VideoCrypt 2 are good examples of
this variants concept. VideoCrypt comes in two versions, VideoCrypt I
and VideoCrypt II. They are parallel, and the idea is that VC I is
to be used inside the UK and Ireland, and VC II in the rest of
Europe.
Since Europe is still a multi-copyrights area, there is often the
need to sell the programming on one channel to two markets. Rather
than create two separate channels, it is often easier to use the
same channel, with the same scrambling system but two distinct
datastreams.
The scrambling system is the same - line cut and rotate, but the
information to descramble it is encrypted in the VideoCrypt 1 and
VideoCrypt 2 datastreams. The datastreams are sent out on the one
channel. Therefore the channel is available both in the UK and the
continent using what on the surface appears to be two different
systems. Of course this underlines an important flaw in using two or
more datastreams on one scrambling system - if only one of these
datastreams is hacked, then there is effectively no more protection
for the channel.
Almost all efforts at cracking VideoCrypt has concentrated on
VideoCrypt 1 variant. VideoCrypt 2 has not been much of a target as
there is not enough premium programming available to warrant a hack.
There are VideoCrypt 1 <> VideoCrypt 2 adaptors. These are plug-in
boards with the switchable 68705 / 8752s that allow a VideoCrypt 1
decoder to be converted to use as a VideoCrypt 2 decoder and vice
versa.
JSTV is the only broadcaster that broadcasts Europe wide using
VideoCrypt I. This channel differs from the standard in that it is
a very high fee channel but it is also very much a minority interest
channel since it broadcasts programmes for the Ex-pat Japanese
market.
Multiplexed Analogue Component (MAC) is a transmission standard. The
scrambling system overlay is EuroCrypt. EuroCrypt comes in a number
of variants (M, S, S2) but according to European law, EuroCrypt-M is
the European standard. Nobody takes much notice of that anyway.
France Telecom developed EuroCrypt. Since the system is open as
regards the scrambling algorithms, France Telecom chose a modified
form of the US Data Encryption Standard algorithm. They removed the
initial and end permutations to make it run faster in the smart card.
They also believed that this algorithm would be top secret and
unhackable.
Eurocrypt-M is the commonest. Only four channels (Sweden 1 and 2,
Norway 2 and TV Erotica) use Eurocrypt S, the two first in the less
used D-MAC variant.
An older MAC variant, B-MAC, is used by the American Forces Radio and
Television Service, The Satellite Information Services Racing Channel
and several business TV applications. Gradually this system is
fading out of use.
The B-MAC system applies relatively simple line delay scrambling to
the MAC video and hard encrypts the digital audio and teletext
services. The hacks on this system involve cloning a valid subscriber
identity number and then arranging for a continual supply of weekly
keys. These keys are programmed into an EEPROM chip in the decoder.
There are two flavours of B-MAC in operation in Europe: B-MAC 525
and B-MAC 625. The numbers refer to the line numbers. The 525 variant
is used for the US AFRTS service and the 625 version is used for the
Racing Channel. Pirate decoders for these services are expensive,
typically costing in excess of five hundred pounds. The problem of
course is arranging the continual flow of keys.
Nagravision is also known as Syster and as Nagra, and is used in
France, Spain, Turkey and Germany. Unlike VideoCrypt and Eurocrypt,
Nagravision decoder boxes are not for sale. They are only rented out
to subscribers, but still operate with a smart card. Nagravision has
not been cracked, and there are no known pirate cards. Nagravision is
now replacing the older and less secure Discret system in France.
Apart from these three big systems, others include Luxcrypt, used
by the Dutch RTL networks (a box, no card - decoders easily
available) and Smartcrypt (box & card, used by the French RTL
channel; boxes now available for sale in France). Even the old SATPAC
system as used by FilmNet before they switched to D2-MAC has been
used lately.
2.1 Is it legal?
The cynical answer would be that it is only illegal if you get
caught. The legal position on hacking varies from country to country.
Basically a good rule is that a channel being uplinked from a
particular country is probably going to be protected by that
country's laws. For example hacking Sky in the United Kingdom is
illegal under that country's laws. However hacking FilmNet in the UK
may not be directly protected under the UK's law. TV1000 on the other
hand is partially uplinked from the UK and is therefore protected
under UK law even though the pornography transmitted on the channel
would not be permitted to be uplinked from the UK. A rather sly
sidestep gets around this issue - the hardcore pornography is not
uplinked from the UK.
In fact, TV1000 has threatened UK dealers with legal action many
times but with few results. The problem of piracy on TV1000 in the UK
has got to such a state that taking legal action against one or two
dealers would not have any greater effect.
Europe is still a multi-copyright area. It is therefore possible for
Sky and FilmNet to purchase the rights to show the same film.
Perhaps in the future, the copyright issue will be worked out and we
will have a single copyright area for Europe, but for now we have to
cope with the current mess.
To date most of the prosecutions for piracy in the UK have been
against people who have been too visible. It is not economically
viable for a channel to prosecute every user of a pirate smart card.
Instead they will generally concentrate on dealers and distributors.
Of course they may also decide to make an example of an individual
pirate card user. The logic of the legal departments of channels is
not as predictable as that of their engineering departments.
If you get caught you are unlikely to be able to plead any clever
excuse that you may come up with. More importantly, could you afford
the expensive legal mouthpiece to argue your case?
2.2 VideoCrypt Smart Cards
On 31/10/95 Sky switched over to the new 10 card. The fundamental
result of this is that ALL season programs and pirate smart cards do
not work anymore.
Pirate smart cards are cards that have been manufactured to hack a
channel. They are, in most cases totally different from official
smart cards. The majority of these cards are based on the PIC16Cxx
series of microcontrollers. Other variations have been seen but the
PIC16Cxx cards are the commonest.
Over the past few months, the more expensive end of the market has
tended towards the Battery Cards. These cards use the Dallas
Semiconductors FP5002 secured microcontroller and are updatable by
the card user. It is simply a question of dialing a phone number and
getting the set of numbers to punch into the Battery Card.
There is also a trade in what are referred to as Grey Market smart
cards. These are official cards, that are exported to another
country. Generally it is a one for one trade with the broker taking
a commission. For example, a Sky subscription would be taken out in
the UK and a FilmNet subscription would be taken out in Sweden. The
cards would then be swapped via a broker. The subscriptions would be
kept up to date by both parties. The legal position on this activity
is not clear as the channels benefit from the transaction in that
they both get subscriptions. It does rely on mutual trust.
Purchasing a pirate card involves risk. There is a probability that
the pirate card will be killed in the future. The channels will
implement electronic countermeasures to try and kill the pirate
cards. Technically speaking, no pirate card can ever be 100% safe.
This point has been proven too frequently over the last few months.
The system used by FilmNet Plus and TV1000 (among others) is
EuroCrypt-M. This system has been continually hacked since 1992. In
terms of value for money, users of EuroCrypt-M pirate smart cards
have fared better. This is because the channels have not frequently
implemented countermeasures. Of course the recent countermeasure by
TV1000 has had a devastating effect. Most of the pirate smart cards
have been knocked out.
The VideoCrypt system, as used by Sky and the Adult Channel, has been
updated more regularly. The present Sky card is issue 10 or in
technical terms, the 0A card. It is commonly referred to as issue 10
but the reason for the 0A reference is purely technical. In
hexadecimal, the number 10 is represented as 0A.
In addition to issuing a new smart card every year or so, Sky and
News Datacom also implement countermeasures to knock out pirate
smart cards. Over the last few months, the time between these
countermeasures has only been a few weeks. For about a month
preceding the switch to 10, Sky was in a transition from issue 09 to
10. Therefore they did not execute that many ECMs during that period.
This is because the 10 card only had a simplified version of the 09
algorithm in order to cope during this transition stage.
As a direct result ECMs such as key changes, many of the pirate cards
have had to be sent back to the dealer for upgrade. Some innovative
pirates have designed their cards (The Battery Cards) so that they
can be upgrade by the customer. The solutions for the countermeasures
are recorded as a set of numbers on an answering machine. The
customer rings the phone number with the answering machine and gets
the update numbers. He then enters them into the pirate card via a
key pad. Other solutions such as a modem on the pirate card have
also been seen.
In real terms, anyone purchasing a pirate card is taking a risk. The
pirate card will eventually be hit by a countermeasure. If it is not,
then the channel may issue a new smart card with the consequence that
all of the old pirate smart cards will be knocked out.
The cost of the new pirate 10 cards, when they hit the market, will
be in the region of two hundred pounds or so. At present a price of
498 DM is being quoted by one pirate card vendor.
2.3 What is Season or Omigod software?
At the time of writing, NONE of the Season programs are working on
channels encrypted with the 10 codes. There have been at least two
spoof attempts over the last few weeks. One of this is named
SEASON10.ZIP and is very definitely a fake.
The Season software began life as an attempt by Markus Kuhn and
others to watch the final season of Star Trek: TNG. The final season
was season 7. As a result, the first working PC program that decoded
Sky was named SEASON7. The first version of this program appeared
in March of 1994. At the time, the current issue of the Sky card was
Issue 7. Therefore some confusion arose.
The term Omigod (Oh My God!) was also used to describe the programs.
Well the preceding hack using the PIC cards was known as the Ho Lee
Fook hack! Over the months from March to May 1994, versions for
different computers appeared. Many of these were posted on the
alt.satellite.tv.europe newsgroup.
On May 18th 1994 Sky changed from issue 07 cards to their new issue
09 card. In hacker terms, May 18th is referred to as Dark Wednesday.
The 09 card proved harder to hack but a temporary solution appeared
in June of that year. It only lasted a few week before Sky changed
codes again. Though some attempts at an issue 09 SEASON hack were
made, the change of code by Sky stopped it cold. Well at least until
just before Christmas.
Last Christmas, no less than three versions of the SEASON hack
appeared. Two of them worked on the PC and the other one worked on
the Apple MAC. Of course Sky was paying attention and on January 4th
1995, they implemented a countermeasure that knocked out pirate cards
and all of the SEASON hacks. The war between Sky and the pirates had
recommenced. Updated versions of the SEASON hacks became available.
This spiral of countermeasure and update has continued until the
present. The issue of the new Sky card, has changed the situation
somewhat. The VideoCrypt SEASON hack is now living on borrowed time.
The algorithm in the 09 card issue is far more complex than the one
used in the 07 card. While the 07 algorithm was not really designed
to be extremely upgradable, the 09 algorithm is an extremely flexible
algorithm. No doubt the 10 card algorithm will build heavily on the
lessons of the 09.
At present only The Adult Channel (UK soft porn) and Eurotica (UK
Hard Core Porn) are decoded by VideoCrypt SEASON programs. None of
the official Sky channels will be decoded by any of the SEASON
programs available.
2.4 Where can I get the software from?
Currently there are working versions of the SEASON hacks for the
Adult Channel and Eurotica available on almost every European BBS.
There are many ftp and webpages (WWW) where the programs are freely
available. There are no known versions that cover VideoCrypt 2.
(A hack on JSTV was claimed a few months ago).
There are many version of SEASON: Voyager, SEASON, Freeview etc. All
of these have stopped working on the Sky channels since Sky switched
to their 10 cards. However in the meantime, these programs are
available at all good sites, a few of which are listed below.
Note the capital letters and the forward slashes (/). They do make a
difference as most of the ftp sites are run on UNIX systems where
the case of the characters makes a difference.
2.7 What are blockers and what is Phoenix?
In the middle of the summer of 1994, there was little success in
hacking Sky. A program was written in the TV-CRYPT for testing a
theory. The theory dealt with the over the air addressing system on
VideoCrypt. The question was: could the presently available
knowledge be used to switch on or off a Sky card?
. At that time,
the available knowledge consisted of the fragment of the 09 code that
was killed in June and a working knowledge of how Sky encoded card
numbers in their over the air addressing system. The available
knowledge was sufficient.
The computer program written to test the theory was called Phoenix.
Since most of the cards experimented upon were Quickstarts that Sky
had killed, Phoenix, the mythical bird that rises from its own ashes
seemed a good name.
Of course the program fell into the hands of commercial pirates. The
Phoenix program on its own was useful to switch on the 09 Quickstarts
that Sky had killed. It was also being used to switch on all channels
on a Sky card with only the Multichannels subscription. It was a
Musketeer hack - all for one and one for all. But that hack name had
already been used.
Unfortunately these reactivated cards were only lasting a few days
before being killed again by Sky. Then when Sky increased their kill
cycle the cards only lasted a few hours. Some solution had to be
found.
The solution lay in a hack of 1992 - the KENtucky Fried Chip. This
was a modified version of the smart card - decoder microcontroller
in the VideoCrypt decoder. It stopped Sky from turning off a card by
examining each over the air packet for the identity number of the
card in the card socket and stopping such a packet from reaching the
smart card. Sky could not kill the card because the card never
received the kill instruction.
Of course the chip used in the decoder was too expensive and there
was a rather large number of redundant PIC16C84 chips available. The
first blockers to hit the market had the blocking program in a
PIC16C84. They consisted of a card socket, a PIC16C84 and a PCB. The
official card, having being activated by the Phoenix program would
then only be used in the blocker. Luckily it was not named the
Condom hack.
Of course the popularity of these devices soon meant that
individually activating the Quickstart cards with the Phoenix
program was taking too much time. The solution was to incorporate the
Phoenix routines in the PIC16C84. These new blockers were more
successful. Over the months from August to November, they were given
a bewildering array of names; Genesis, SunBlocker, Sh*tblocker,
Exodus.
Naturally Sky were a little upset with this resurrection of their
dead cards. Their response, at first was purely technical. Later in
1994, they took legal action in the Uk against some people supplying
blockers.
There was more to the VideoCrypt 09 smart card than people realised.
The most important aspect was that Sky could actually write to the
card. The instructions for doing this were carried in the same
packets that carried the activation and deactivation instructions.
The blockers only looked for the specific identity number of the card
in the card socket. As long as that identity number did not appear in
the packet, it was let straight through to the card. Sky had managed
to knock out a number of cards while they were in the blockers.
Some of these countermeasures were reversible in that the card itself
was not completely dead. One of Sky's countermeasures did actually
hit the card in a manner that effectively locked it. At that point,
the blockers were becoming irrelevant - there were working pirate
smart cards for VideoCrypt.
The Phoenix program, in various guises, still works. Of course some
of the newer smart cards from Sky have been found to be resistant to
being activated with Phoenix.
At present there is some PIC source code that has been labeled
10BLOCK.ZIP. It is believed that this is not actually the code for
a 10 Blocker but merely 09 Blocker code that does not work on 10.
Using this code in the hope that it would stop a 10 card being killed
is dangerous to say the least.
2.8 Is there a D2-MAC EuroCrypt-M Version of The Season Hack?
The simple answer is yes. The main program is MACcess. Though the
original author of the MACcess program did not update it due to the
sheer abuse of the program. The comments from a few ungrateful idiots
wanting the new version and at the same time insulting the original
author for not supporting the program irritated not only the author
but many hackers as well.
Someone has patched the new FilmNet and TV1000 keys into an early
version of the program. The patched program is available on BBSes and
ftp sites as MAXS-15A.ZIP
The EuroCrypt-M system is DES based. In an ironic way the system's
greatest strength was its greatest weakness. Again the progression
from pirate smart card to computer program was apparent.
2.10 PIC Source code for hacks
Since late April, there has been no security on the PIC16C84
microcontrollers. This is ironic because this microcontroller formed the
backbone of the European piracy business. In late April, the
information on popping (extracting the protected contents of the
chip's memory) the PIC16C84 was published in a USENET newsgroup. An
article on this can be found on the following webpages:
As a result of this information being published on the USENET,
result everybody found out how to pop the PIC. All the code for the
D2-MAC hacks and the Sky hacks were laid bare.
The source code for the PIC based D2-MAC cards is widely available on
the net. The following WWW pages have D2-MAC code:
4.0 Netiquette On A.S.T.E & A.S.T.C & R.V.S.E
The first rule is that there are no hard and fast rules. There are,
however some protocols designed to reduce the risk of incineration.
The newsgroups alt.satellite.tv.europe and alt.satellite.tv.crypt are
the groups where overt discussion of scrambling systems and attacks
on scrambling systems are considered worthy topics.
A few months ago, there was a schism in the newsgroups. The standard
European satellite television newsgroup, alt.satellite.tv.europe
split into two. The first rec.video.satellite.europe, became part of
the REC hierarchy. This is the proper group for discussion of general
European satellite television topics. Please do not post messages
asking for the latest hack on the R.V.S.E group. The second group
became alt.satellite.tv.crypt.
The alt.satellite.tv.crypt newsgroup is where the discussion of
scrambling systems and hacking is meant to be conducted. It started
out as a European group but there are many non-European readers. The
alt.satellite.tv.europe group was supposed to be phased out but this
does not seem to have happened yet.
Please bear in mind that some people have to pay to download the
newsgroups. In the past few months there have been a few flame wars
about posting UUENCODED binaries into the alt.satellite.tv.crypt and
alt.satellite.tv.europe groups. The argument on this is that the
procedure is now to upload any file to a popular ftp site and
announce that it is available there rather than posting it as a
UUENCODED message.
Advertising of devices on the newsgroups is another subject that
draws strong reactions. It is unfortunately now a fact of life. If
you have to advertise, then observe the standard Usenet protocol of
including the word AD or ADVERT in the subject line. Only post to the
groups where relevant. If you are posting an advert for a device with
European usage do not post in the US satellite newsgroups.
In many European countries there are complex legal rules regarding
'goods to be used for criminal purpose'. If we keep the discussion at
an 'educational' level, for personal use the group should attract
much less attention. There is also a grey area of the law that is
presently untested. This surrounds the possible prosecution of
Internet service providers because of material they carry. If the
newsgroup becomes a source of software for hacking pay TV you may
find your site removes it, just as some providers strip the
alt.binaries.pictures.erotica groups.
5.0 CREDITS
Major contributors :
Contributors:
Maintained By:
********************************************
John McCormac * Hack Watch News
jmcc@hackwatch.com * 22 Viewmount,
Voice&Fax: +353-51-73640 * Waterford,
BBS: +353-51-50143 * Ireland
********************************************
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