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:
“A doctor, like anyone else who has to deal with human beings, each of them unique, cannot be a scientist; he is either, like the surgeon, a craftsman, or, like the physician and the psychologist, an artist.... This means that in order to be a good doctor a man must also have a good character, that is to say, whatever weaknesses and foibles he may have, he must love his fellow human beings in the concrete and desire their good before his own.”
—W.H. (Wystan Hugh)
“You will find that reason, which always ought to direct mankind, seldom does; but that passions and weaknesses commonly usurp its seat, and rule in its stead.”
—Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl Chesterfield (1694–1773)
“What is called an acute knowledge of human nature is mostly nothing but the observer’s own weaknesses reflected back from others.”
—G.C. (Georg Christoph)