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Comment by Scoundreller | Hacker News Reader

> Satellite TV providers definitely solved it by now after learning from their mistakes.

I don't know if they really "solved" it. I think the appetite for new hacks dwindled with broadband internet everywhere and streaming services.

Cat doesn't care for the mouse so much when there's kibble everywhere.

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Using this table for reference and the fact that proper smartcards like banking cards and SIM cards are secure I'm pretty confident calling modern CA systems secure too. If some providers don't have one of those, then it's probably because it's not worth it for them to switch or upgrade.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conditional_access#Digital_sys...

EDIT: More than that, some recent ones even solved so called 'card sharing' which is basically using a legitimate card to transmit control words over network to many users.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Card_sharing

I'm not saying the modern CAMs have been compromised, just saying the profit incentive has dwindled. For a while, entirely non-OEM receivers were being used with key distribution over the internet. But at that point, just get a black market IPTV subscription. Compromising the cards has a fraction of the value it used to, and there's more 'locked down' targets in other devices to focus one's skills at.

Handwave all you want, but the topic at hand is a possibility of securing devices against physical access attacks. And it's not only possible, it's pretty straightforward if you don't suffer from NIH syndrome.

And as an example satellite TV providers did it (or acquired a license for it). If you're saying that incentives to hack them aren't there anymore, then that's just wrong because the foundation on which such security is based on affects many things.

Declining popularity of SatTV as a whole in a particular country is neither here, nor there. If a hacker mentioned in the article could hack a CA system, he would've.

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