Re: FOX News, Looking Out For America

On Feb 23, 11:25 pm, "risky biz" <risky-...@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Feb 23 2010 6:24 PM, joeturn wrote:





I give Uncle Rupert hell on google,....Uncle Rupert/joeturn
but he only acquired US citzenship because the US would not let him
purchase DTV and monopolize the sat tv industry!

Ruperts mo was to offer hackery on the internet, to make saleing of a
misfortunate biziness a good idea ,then he would jump in like the new
misiah and saver the day!
He designed the red box and the blue box for long distance phone
services for free till he acquired SBC(one of Ma Belles)

He purchased the Christain Relief Fund and contributed an emense
offering for them to lobby in laws for him as needed!

Another place I used to tend was Red Herring .com

Rupert is a high degree Sun Worshiper from the reptilian gray tribe
with a son of knighthood "Sir James" that causes the Parliment to sway
his way and the elder son is in control of AT&TAMP in Aussie land.

Thanks, Joe. I'm glad someone has time to keep up with all these goings on.

________________________________________________________________________ 
: the next generation of web-newsreaders :http://www.recgroups.com- Hide quoted text -

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Awww Shucks it twernt nothing!

Are satellite TV hackers a tool in a global conspiracy?


By Bob Sullivan
MSNBC


May 30 — It's just a thin slice of plastic that's stuck into your
satellite TV set-top box when you first bring it home. To viewers,
the
card is the key that unlocks pay-TV. To corporations, smart cards are
much more — 80 million of them currently unlock one of the world's
most influential and lucrative industries. But now, the plastic cards
are at the center of a global conspiracy theory — a cutthroat
corporate battle, some say, to control the world's living rooms
through deception, cheating, and intimidation.


THE STORY COMES COMPLETE with alleged corporate-sponsored hacking, a
$1 billion lawsuit, mysterious cash payoffs shipped in hollowed-out
VCRs, and even a suspicious death.
The cloak-and-dagger world of pay-TV piracy is a fountain of rumor
and
innuendo that befits a Michael Crichton book or a James Bond movie.
But it was all just that — a dramatic story line — until March, when
a
French firm filed a lawsuit that shined a harsh public light on this
secretive world. Public filings in the case have, for the first time,
pierced its veil of secrecy, linking real-world programmers,
executives and companies to the murky nicknames and alter egos of
piracy.


EYE ON MURDOCH SMART CARD MAKER
And at least at the moment, the controversy swirls around a small
British company owned by one of the world's most powerful media
magnates.


That company, NDS, makes smart cards which unlock 28 million of the
world's satellite set-top boxes. Owned by News Corp. and its
flamboyant owner Rupert Murdoch, NDS now finds itself on the
receiving
end of a $1.1 billion lawsuit filed in March by French rival Canal
Plus Technologies. Canal Plus comes with its own heavyweights
attached
— Vivendi Universal, and its now embattled CEO Jean-Marie Messier.
The Canal Plus lawsuit claims NDS paid hackers to break the code in
Canal Plus smart cards, then gave the information away on the
Internet, all to undermine Canal Plus business. It's probably the
largest computer hacking lawsuit ever, and one of the biggest
accusations of corporate espionage.
An NDS motion to dismiss the case was heard by a federal court in San
Francisco Thursday, although the judge did not immediately issue a
ruling — that could come in the coming days or weeks. Meanwhile,
depositions are set to begin next month. With Canal Plus lawyers
vowing to wage a very public court battle, the next few weeks will
likely raise the curtain on a 5-year drama, unraveling a complicated
world where the interests of small time TV-pirates and moguls bent on
dominating the world's media have at times overlapped rather neatly.


1997: MURDOCH AND ECHOSTAR
Back in 1997, Murdoch's News Corp. was in negotiations to acquire
EchoStar Communications Corp., operator of the DISH Network in the
U.S. EchoStar would be a perfect puzzle piece for Murdoch, whose
powerful portfolio of TV firms was missing a distribution channel in
the lucrative U.S. market. EchoStar was a distant second to DirecTV
in
the U.S. market, but a rising star that appeared to have staying
power.


The deal stalled, however, and a dispute over smart cards was part of
the problem, says one source familiar with the talks.
News Corp.'s NDS had only one real competitor in the global smart
card
market — a Swiss company named Kudelski Group which makes cards under
the "Nagra" name. Nagra cards protected EchoStar systems, but News
Corp. expected EchoStar to switch to NDS after any deal. NDS already
had DirecTV under contract, so a pact with EchoStar would give the
firm a stranglehold on smart cards across the U.S. But EchoStar
resisted, according to a source, insisting that it keep the option to
use Nagra cards after the deal.
Not long after, the deal was scrapped, in part because EchoStar CEO
Charles Ergen insisted on staying with whatever the best security
technology happened to be, the source said. EchoStar later sued for
breach of contract and settled out of court.


1998: HACKER FOUND DEAD
The following year, in 1998, NDS went looking for more smart card
expertise and contacted brilliant German hacker Boris Floricic. Known
as "Tron" in the computer underground, Floricic was the author of a
well-regarded research paper about reverse engineering smart card
technology.
A few weeks later, in October of 1998, Floricic was found dead,
hanging from a tree in a Berlin park. The death was ruled a suicide
by
authorities — a ruling many hackers reject.
There has never been any assertion that NDS was somehow involved in
the death. But the fact that Floricic's father found a letter from
NDS
in his son's belongings indicated the company's willingness to
consult
the computer underground for security expertise. The incident also
shocked the hacker community, which wondered if computer curiosity
could now have deadly consequences.


1999: DIRECTV DEAL SET TO EXPIRE


Nagra cards and security issues continued to nag NDS the next year,
as
the firm's most important contract — with DirecTV — came up for
renewal. NDS was planning an initial public offering to raise $150
million later in the year, so a renewal of its pact with DirecTV was
critical. The only real NDS competitor: the Swiss firm, and Nagra
cards.
It's at this critical moment that the story heads underground. At the
height of the DirecTV-NDS renegotiations, a now-infamous computer
file
named Secarom.zip appeared on a pirate Web site DR7.com on March 26,
1999.
Secarom.zip was the master key to European satellite provider Canal
Plus, a slice of code that allowed pirates to create fake smart cards
that foiled the security measures built into those systems. At the
time, Canal Plus was chief rival to BskyB, Murdoch's European
satellite broadcast system. In no time, a cottage industry for Canal
Plus pirate cards formed and at one point, nearly three million of
four millions users in Italy were pirates, according to Canal Plus.
In its lawsuit, Canal Plus alleged NDS was ultimately behind the
hacking of its system, and the cottage industry that formed later,
costing Canal Plus over $1 billion in lost business.
According to the lawsuit, an NDS lab in Israel cracked the Canal Plus
cards, which Canal Plus had developed in-house. Then, the company
made
sure the crack was published on the Internet in a place where pirates
were sure to find it. NDS denies Canal Plus' the claims.


MORE HACKING ALLEGATIONS?


But there were other accusations flying around in the hacker
community, too.
Around the same time the code to Canal Plus' smart cards appeared on
the DR7.com Web site, so did the a master key to pirating EchoStar
television and their Nagra smart cards, according to a former
administrator of the site. In fact, the code was published by the
same
cast of characters who released the Canal Plus code, suggesting a
link
between the two acts of piracy. If, as Canal Plus suggests, NDS was
behind the Canal Plus card piracy, it was behind the EchoStar piracy
too, the administrator says.
E-mails to the administrator of the current DR7.com Web site went
unreturned.
At any rate, with the secret codes to both NDS and Nagra smart now
public, the playing field in the smart card business was level. By
August of 1999, NDS had a new four-year contract with DirecTV.
However, the contract contained an important escape clause — that
DirecTV could develop its own in-house smart card technology and dump
NDS at any time.
NDS declined to comment on the accusation that it was somehow
connected to the EchoStar hack. NDS spokesperson Margot Field said
the
company "does not respond to rumors or supposition."
Nagra card maker Kudelski Group and EchoStar also declined comment.
But a spokesperson for Canal Plus said the company had talked with
EchoStar about the incident, and EchoStar had expressed interest in
joining its $1.1 billion lawsuit against NDS.
"We have been contacted by many entities that have been harmed by NDS
activities, seeking to either assist us or to join in the lawsuits,
and that would include EchoStar," said the spokesperson, who
requested
anonymity.


CASH STUFFED IN VCR
The months following March of 1999 were the glory days for TV
pirates,
with trade in pirate cards clipping along at a multi-million dollar
pace. A "fresh hack" could be worth up to $5 million, according to
one
estimate. Pirate dealers in Canada could sell the cards with relative
immunity, since a quirk of law made piracy legal north of the United
States. But money flowed back into the U.S., too, evidenced by a
series of high-ticket lawsuits NDS and DirecTV brought against
individual dealers. In one case alone, DirecTV won a $19 million
judgment against Quebec residents Reginald Scullion and his wife,
Frances Callan for selling pirate equipment to a set of 80 dealers
inside the U.S. during the late 1990s
Rumors about the thriving pirate smart card trade abound. The most
popular involves the discovery later that year of a VCR stuffed with
$50,000 cash that was stopped at the Canadian border by U.S. Customs
officials.
The payment is now legend — never proven publicly — in the TV pirate
community. The money was one installment of cash headed from Canada
to
the U.S., allegedly sent by the operator of DR7.com. It was headed
for
a hacker named "Von," payment for supplying the code to hack a major
pay-TV system.
But the VCR caught the attention of customs officials, who began
investigating. No arrests were made in connection with the incident,
and there are no public records indicating it ever happened. But soon
after, things got dicey in the pirate-TV world.


CANAL PLUS INVESTIGATION
At almost the same time, lawyers from Canal Plus Technologies began
their own investigation. Why were Canal Plus smart cards hacked so
fast? Who would have the technological know-how to crack the cards,
and the incentive to see their technology exposed? The answer,
according to Canal Plus lawyers: NDS. Giving away Canal Plus smart
card secrets was the same as giving away their pay-TV for free. It
would ruin the company, and clear the way for Rupert Murdoch's
competitive offering BSkyB.
In filings connected to its lawsuit, Canal Plus identifies Von as
Chris Tarnovsky, the NDS employee. Von, also known as "Big Gun" to
pirates, was a bit of a legend in the underground. He designed the
so-called "battery card" in the early 90s, the first technology used
to steal direct broadcast satellite signals. Tarnovsky, like
Floricic,
was a German hacker expert in smart card technology. But like many
hackers, he spent considerable time researching in the hacking
underground, and now many accusations say he spent a good deal of
time
on the wrong side. And apparently, Tarnovsky's murky background
didn't
scare off his future employer.


2001: MURDOCH WANTS DIRECTV
While Canal Plus lawyers researched the possible unholy alliance —
and
according to some sources, while EchoStar did its own fruitless
investigation into NDS — piracy against DirecTV ramped up. According
to one informed source, piracy rates nearly doubled as the year 2000
drew to a close.
Drastic measures were necessary: NDS and DirecTV planned a massive
electronic counter-measure designed to zap pirate cards sitting in
set-top boxes. The "code bomb" exploded on what pirates know as
"Black
Sunday," just before the 2001 Super Bowl. Some 300,000 pirates were
zapped. But within months, according to the source, most were back
stealing signals, and DirecTV's frustration with NDS grew. But at the
same time, NDS' parent was about to make a bid to buy DirecTV.
Only a few weeks before that Super Bowl Sunday, Murdoch indicated he
was ready to make another aggressive move to acquire a U.S. satellite
broadcaster. This time, Murdoch's News Corp. launched a $30 billion
bid to pluck DirecTV from Hughes Electronics in January. The deal
would have made Murdoch's SkyGlobal — already with assets in Europe,
Asia, and Latin America — the largest television platform in the
world.
As the technology stock market began its southern migration, the
purchase price for U.S. market leader DirecTV became more reasonable,
and negotiations heated up between the two firms. Once again, Murdoch
was on the brink of a deal, and once again, it was snatched away —
and
once again, smart cards could be blamed.
Nine months after word leaked out of Murdoch's bid, U.S. rival
EchoStar swooped in with a last-minute offer that trumped News Corp.
The pot had been sweetened by a $1 billion kick-in from Kudelski
Group, the Nagra card maker. The kick-in made sense; if Nagra could
wrestle DirecTV's business away from NDS, it would add some 40 cents
per share to the company's bottom line.
The deal was approved by the two companies in October 2001, but it
faces an uncertain regulatory future — because it would create one
firm that overwhelmingly controls the U.S. direct broadcast market,
the Federal Trade Commission is reviewing the deal.


2002: DIRECTV MOVES TO DROP NDS
But already, there is apparently fallout for NDS. In April, DirecTV
announced it would sever ties with Murdoch's smart cards, saying it
would exercise the "out" included in their 1999, four-year pact.
DirecTV will develop its own smart cards, the announcement indicated.
It would also immediately act to replace all current customer smart
cards, a swap-out that's expensive and time-consuming.
The news trounced NDS stock, coming hardly two weeks after Canal Plus
filed its lawsuit against NDS.
DirecTV spokesperson Bob Marsocci said the timing of the announcement
had nothing to do with the Canal Plus lawsuit; and NDS spokesperson
Margot Field, in an e-mail, said "NDS continues to have a good
relationship with DirecTV," and noted that NDS will continue to earn
revenue from its DirecTV relationship through August 2003.
However, a source familiar with the situation told MSNBC.com that
DirecTV has been frustrated with NDS for some time, and that NDS
employees were barred last year from working on any DirecTV
conditional access systems related to smart card production. Another
source confirmed that DirecTV's relationship with NDS had grown
increasingly rocky over recent years, as DirecTV became more
frustrated with NDS' apparently inability to keep hackers from
stealing signals.


FEARS FOR HIS LIFE
Back to the present, where pirates, TV companies, and journalists are
closely watching developments in the Canal Plus case. More answers,
and more entanglements are bound to emerge as discovery proceeds in
the Canal Plus lawsuit. But one thing seems clear — in this
high-stakes story, fear has kept many potential sources hidden behind
nicknames or away from the lawyers and journalists altogether.
Oliver Kommerling, another German smart card expert, has emerged as a
whistleblower and key witness so far. Kommerling, who runs a firm
half-owned by NDS, has filed papers in support of Canal Plus'
lawsuit,
directly accusing Tarnovsky of publishing the rogue code on DR7.com.
Kommerling and Floricic have a common friend, Marcus Kuhn — both have
written papers with Kuhn on reverse engineering smart cards. Floricic
is now dead, and Kommerling has told MSNBC.com he has felt
"pressure,"
since filing his assertions with the court.
And if Canal Plus security manager Gilles Kaehlin is to be believed,
Tarnovsky is scared, too. In a written statement to the court,
Kaehlin
says Tarnovsky admitted to him NDS was behind the smart card hack,
and
that he was prepared to tell the truth in court. But, the filing
says,
Tarnovsky refused to be the the whistleblower on NDS' illegal
activities, "because he feared too much for his life and that of his
family," Kaehlin said.


QUESTIONS REMAIN
There are still many questions surrounding the current allegations
against NDS. Why would such a successful security firm take such as
incredible risk, in fact risking its entire reputation, to interfere
with competitors?
In the computer underground, conspiracy theories are rampant. Unlike
most hobbyist computer hacking, pirated pay-TV cards are a lucrative
business, cards can sell for hundreds of dollars each. Complicating
matters further, the legality of sales in this "gray market" is
somewhat murky in Canada, and there's suspicion that satellite
dealerships, distributors, and even company insiders profited from
aiding Canadian "gray market" dealers. There's also a long-standing
notion that piracy is good for the business. In an odd twist, tacitly
allowing people to watch pirated TV is a way to gain market share,
since many pirates eventually give in and convert to paying
customers.
TV pirates generally can't make new smart cards — they have to use
real, corporate-issued smart cards, which are then altered via
software. Millions of extra smart cards seem to have somehow gotten
into pirates' hands over the years. Who made all those extra piece of
plastic — and how did they get out of the hands of manufacturers or
legitimate dealers?
In fact, some say, firms like DirecTV and Canal Plus have gotten what
they deserve — tacitly allowing piracy was a mistake that got out of
hand. Now, all these firms must have security departments that cozy
up
to hackers to keep up with the pirates, and employees who have
less-than-perfect backgrounds. NDS' troubles, they say, are just the
first to see the harsh light of a courtroom.

Just type in the address bar "Rupert Murdoch owns" and press enter.

Uncle Rupert now owns the US legistlature,the internet,yahoo, my
space, even google bi proxy...ect...

Soo whats the big deal of owning another saudi news paper does their
religon stop them from using the internet or cell phones??


.

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