Weaknesses
Were CSA to be broken, encrypted DVB transmissions would be decipherable, regardless of any proprietary conditional access (CA) system used. This could seriously compromise paid digital television services, as DVB has been standardised on for digital terrestrial television in Europe and elsewhere, and is used by many satellite television providers.
Most attacks on the pay-TV system have not targeted CSA itself, but instead the various key exchange systems responsible for generating the CSA keys (Conax, Irdeto, VideoGuard, etc.); either by reverse-engineering and breaking the algorithms altogether, or by intercepting the keys in real-time as they are generated on a legitimate decoder, and then distributing them to others (so-called card sharing).
Read more about this topic: Common Scrambling Algorithm
Famous quotes containing the word weaknesses:
“Never yield to that temptation, which, to most young men, is very strong, of exposing other people’s weaknesses and infirmities, for the sake either of diverting the company, or of showing your own superiority. You may get the laugh on your side by it for the present; but you will make enemies by it for ever; and even those who laugh with you then, will, upon reflection, fear, and consequently hate you.”
—Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl Chesterfield (1694–1773)
“Once we know our weaknesses they cease to do us any harm.”
—G.C. (Georg Christoph)
“One of the weaknesses in the cooperative is that it has never been sufficiently leavened by the imagination. This is a quick-silver faculty, and likely to be a cause of worry to any collective settlement.”
—Edward Dahlberg (1900–1977)