Cable modem hacking author indicted on federal conspiracy, wire fraud

If you just read this ORA post, you get the impression he was indicted for writing a book. But that's not what happened at all. TCNISO sold cable modem programming devices, and then (it was alleged) provided technical support to users of those devices specifically to steal cable Internet service. They apparently made more than $1MM doing it.

Harris was himself alleged to have solicited information from cable Internet users around the country specifically to bypass cable Internet restrictions --- and while researching circumvention techniques isn't and shouldn't be illegal, actually using those techniques to get unauthorized access clearly is illegal.

One more thing: this question about whether "hacking cable hardware 'you own' is evil" is crazy talk. We aren't talking about people running their own software on a locked-down platform (clearly should not be illegal). We're talking about people stealing network bandwidth. When you steal music, at least everyone else who wants that music doesn't have to pay more for it, or get crappier music.

The US Cable ISPs make no attempt whatsoever to stop cable modem hacking. They could:

  * Fingerprint / forcibly upgrade your firmware
  * Restrict routing to unauthenticated modem MAC addresses
    * All they do is give you a walledgarden config
    * The subscriber MAC address database is global and lock-free
      * The only real authentication is locally in Layer 2
        * so you can sniff-and-trade
  * Change the locations/names of their config files regularly
  * Stop shipping Motorola-based modems to customers

Many European ISPs do a lot of this stuff, but piracy is still totally possible there, just more of a pain.