(p4 Cards) 4 Sale
26-Apr-2004, 12:40 PM
#23
Registered User
Join Date: Jun 2002
Location: Markham
Posts: 66
I'm no expert and I haven't seen/read of a verified P4 hack but here's a good read from dssrookie.
1. The P4 hack was supposed to surface as soon as the HU went down (if it existed). Well, the HU is dead...how many channels are left with HU VA packets? Less than 30? All those promises that it was out there but "not needed at this time" were bull****. "It would only be released when somebody could make some money off of it." Uh, from reading the forums I see quite a few desperate people out there who can't watch TV right now. The "market" seems pretty damn ripe to me.
2. Not one SHRED of evidence has surfaced that anybody has gotten into a P4. I see a lot of posts that say it's "too unstable" for public release. Since when do hackers care whether something is stable enough for the public...getting all ethical now? Again, I call BULL****. Or maybe they're talking about it being too unstable to SELL. You don't have to prove it's been compromised by posting a working fix. A simple P4/D1 range CAMID and matching ZKT that can be verified is all that is needed to prove it has been compromised. Posted via proxy or whatever other means to protect the poster from the authorities. How about an EEPROM dump? Partial disassembly (reverse engineer) of that dump? We haven't seen it because it's not there. The card has been out for two years and not one single byte of verifiable data has appeared to substantiate that a hacker has seen it's secrets. What do you think? Just by pure chance we should have already seen something...in two years?
3. Wah, wah, wah...One man can make it, another man can break it. I'm sick of seeing that one. While it's true that nothing can be 100% secure...all D*V has to do is keep you out long enough to make it financially feasible to keep issuing new cards. As long as it takes a few years (3-5) to break into the current card, they're ahead of the game and already issuing new cards. At that point it's OVER. Where's the financial gain in that (for the hackers)? The only people left trying to get in are the few *true* hackers who are doing it because they can't resist a challenge. Then, once all the forums and DSS sites whither up and die, the number of people actively probing the inner workings of the cards goes down drastically.
Something else goes down with the number of people and it's the most important of all: KNOWLEDGE. Fewer people with less knowledge means the "attack front" is reduced and with it the threat and probability of compromises of current and future cards. Think about it, if it takes another year for a P4 hack to surface, 90% of all the D*T specific DSS sites will be long gone. Their goal of crushing the piracy market will have succeeded.
4. Anybody who's looked at those leaked specifications will see that the P4/D1 is a kick *** card. Now assuming that those documents are not faked (they looked pretty damn offical to me) some things that stand out are:
A. The inability to change CAMID's (they're hard coded - not in EEPROM). That one right there kills a LOT of ability. It's surprising they didn't inlcude that ability (or lack thereof) in earlier cards. Sure as hell makes it harder to hack when you can't clone cards. Of course the no ZKT mod would help here, but I would imagine that they will come up with a way of requiring your private key or group keys to be valid for the given CAMID in order to take essential updates. Meaning if you spoof a CAMID using some no ZKT method, there still exists the possibility of still requiring the ID to match other important corresponding data on the card in order for it to function properly.
B. A shut down mechanism. The card processor is reportedly to be based on a European smart money card that is loaded with cash and as you buy things, it deducts from the balance on the card. Once the card reaches zero, it's designed to self destruct so that as they are thrown into the trash they aren't scooped up by hackers trying to reload money on them. They are destroyed via code in ROM at the end of their lives. If D*V chose to implement that into the P4/D1 - you're f*cked! Instead of getting looped - your card gets irreversibly KILLED. Quite nasty and quite effective. If I were designing a card I would surely include such a function.
C. The specs call for the ability of the card to handle a tier expiration date rollover that occurs some 10+ years from now. Seems they are quite confident that the card will remain unhacked for that amount of time. Why make that specification?
5. Be aware that the people who are designing these cards are not stupid. Yes, they may have overlooked many weaknesses in their designs in the past, but they are learning from them. We look back at Henry Ford's first cars and laugh at 6 horsepower and 9 MPH top speed - but look at where we are now? All the newer cards are implementing more and more encryption capabilities. In case you don't know, public key cryptosystems cannot be broken. Not with a million computers working for LONGER THAN THE CURRENT AGE OF THE UNIVERSE. Unless someone comes up with a way of efficiently factoring large primes (the basis for PKE), it will remain unbroken. With the utilization of more and more of this technology into smart cards, hacking them starts becoming insurmountable. This new card has TONS of cryptographic functions. And these are ones that go waaaaaay beyond a simple XOR key! Think about the ZKT. It has never been possible to generate your own CAMID/ZKT pair on any of the cards. This just proves it's effectiveness (it's using properties of PKE digital signing). Now imagine using that CAMID/ZKT idea for zeroing out PPV purchases. Instead of using a simple 0, to indicate the obvious zero balance, think if they used the ZKT idea (or digitally signed the PPV's). If the PPV zero balance was digitally signed, it then becomes a special, non-recreateable, non-zero number. How would you get around that? What about tiers? What if the tiers were digitally signed for each card? The possibilites numb the mind! The important part? If implemented, there are no workarounds for them until PKE is broken! Read up on PKE (public key encryption) and digital signing when you have some spare time. You'll be enlightened.
6. D*V spent 2 years and $25 million to develop this card. Think about that for a minute. That's $25 M-I-L-L-I-O-N spent specifically to keep your *** out. Think about the equivalent in the physical world...spend $25,000,000 around your house to keep people out. Now imagine all that on that little chip underneath those gold contacts on the card. They are serious. I saw a post a while back saying something to the effect that D*V just wanted to give the appearance that they were keeping people out (for their shareholders) but they really wanted people to hack their system so it would remain popular. What a load of f*cking bull****! People don't spend the amount of money that they have on developing new cards and distributing them (F, H, HU, P4/D1) if they secretly really want their system hacked. They are ...really because it makes them appear foolish when there are so many websites out there dedicated to hacking their system and *making money* off of hacking their system. Are you kidding me??
7. Hack attempt and power cycle counters. To all of you who are screwing around with your P4/D1 cards and then subscribe using that card: Be aware that during a PPV reporting call, the hack attempts counter gets transmitted back along with the IPPV data.
Ok, call me negative...I have no faith. Whatever. It's called being realistic... I could be grossly mistaken and the fix for the P4/D1 may appear next week. Or maybe not. I'm not saying I'm right, I'm just posting my observations on the subject. Flame away...
Again, I state: I am not saying this current card is unhackable. But you can bet your *** that it's just a matter of time before they produce one that is - or at least keeps you out long enough for them to develop the next generation card. The folks making claims that "man can make it, man can break it" obviously have no clue how this stuff truly works. Being able to load a 3m or activation on a card doesn't make you a card cracking expert. What you took for granted everytime you glitched into an HU took an absolute ****load of time, money and EXPERT knowledge to learn and pass on to the public. It's easy to sit there and say "they" will get in when you have no idea what is really happening. Cards these days are NOT cracked by sending random packets to it. They can only be cracked by experts using state-of-the-art machines at microchip facilities.
PS: Think of all the D*V moles who are laughing their asses off reading all the forums and seeing you fight and **** on each other right now. They know they've at least won this battle...and who knows, maybe the war. Chill out - Optimism won't magically crack the card. Flame me if you want...
Otherwise - Thanks for reading
PacketStorm
1. The P4 hack was supposed to surface as soon as the HU went down (if it existed). Well, the HU is dead...how many channels are left with HU VA packets? Less than 30? All those promises that it was out there but "not needed at this time" were bull****. "It would only be released when somebody could make some money off of it." Uh, from reading the forums I see quite a few desperate people out there who can't watch TV right now. The "market" seems pretty damn ripe to me.
2. Not one SHRED of evidence has surfaced that anybody has gotten into a P4. I see a lot of posts that say it's "too unstable" for public release. Since when do hackers care whether something is stable enough for the public...getting all ethical now? Again, I call BULL****. Or maybe they're talking about it being too unstable to SELL. You don't have to prove it's been compromised by posting a working fix. A simple P4/D1 range CAMID and matching ZKT that can be verified is all that is needed to prove it has been compromised. Posted via proxy or whatever other means to protect the poster from the authorities. How about an EEPROM dump? Partial disassembly (reverse engineer) of that dump? We haven't seen it because it's not there. The card has been out for two years and not one single byte of verifiable data has appeared to substantiate that a hacker has seen it's secrets. What do you think? Just by pure chance we should have already seen something...in two years?
3. Wah, wah, wah...One man can make it, another man can break it. I'm sick of seeing that one. While it's true that nothing can be 100% secure...all D*V has to do is keep you out long enough to make it financially feasible to keep issuing new cards. As long as it takes a few years (3-5) to break into the current card, they're ahead of the game and already issuing new cards. At that point it's OVER. Where's the financial gain in that (for the hackers)? The only people left trying to get in are the few *true* hackers who are doing it because they can't resist a challenge. Then, once all the forums and DSS sites whither up and die, the number of people actively probing the inner workings of the cards goes down drastically.
Something else goes down with the number of people and it's the most important of all: KNOWLEDGE. Fewer people with less knowledge means the "attack front" is reduced and with it the threat and probability of compromises of current and future cards. Think about it, if it takes another year for a P4 hack to surface, 90% of all the D*T specific DSS sites will be long gone. Their goal of crushing the piracy market will have succeeded.
4. Anybody who's looked at those leaked specifications will see that the P4/D1 is a kick *** card. Now assuming that those documents are not faked (they looked pretty damn offical to me) some things that stand out are:
A. The inability to change CAMID's (they're hard coded - not in EEPROM). That one right there kills a LOT of ability. It's surprising they didn't inlcude that ability (or lack thereof) in earlier cards. Sure as hell makes it harder to hack when you can't clone cards. Of course the no ZKT mod would help here, but I would imagine that they will come up with a way of requiring your private key or group keys to be valid for the given CAMID in order to take essential updates. Meaning if you spoof a CAMID using some no ZKT method, there still exists the possibility of still requiring the ID to match other important corresponding data on the card in order for it to function properly.
B. A shut down mechanism. The card processor is reportedly to be based on a European smart money card that is loaded with cash and as you buy things, it deducts from the balance on the card. Once the card reaches zero, it's designed to self destruct so that as they are thrown into the trash they aren't scooped up by hackers trying to reload money on them. They are destroyed via code in ROM at the end of their lives. If D*V chose to implement that into the P4/D1 - you're f*cked! Instead of getting looped - your card gets irreversibly KILLED. Quite nasty and quite effective. If I were designing a card I would surely include such a function.
C. The specs call for the ability of the card to handle a tier expiration date rollover that occurs some 10+ years from now. Seems they are quite confident that the card will remain unhacked for that amount of time. Why make that specification?
5. Be aware that the people who are designing these cards are not stupid. Yes, they may have overlooked many weaknesses in their designs in the past, but they are learning from them. We look back at Henry Ford's first cars and laugh at 6 horsepower and 9 MPH top speed - but look at where we are now? All the newer cards are implementing more and more encryption capabilities. In case you don't know, public key cryptosystems cannot be broken. Not with a million computers working for LONGER THAN THE CURRENT AGE OF THE UNIVERSE. Unless someone comes up with a way of efficiently factoring large primes (the basis for PKE), it will remain unbroken. With the utilization of more and more of this technology into smart cards, hacking them starts becoming insurmountable. This new card has TONS of cryptographic functions. And these are ones that go waaaaaay beyond a simple XOR key! Think about the ZKT. It has never been possible to generate your own CAMID/ZKT pair on any of the cards. This just proves it's effectiveness (it's using properties of PKE digital signing). Now imagine using that CAMID/ZKT idea for zeroing out PPV purchases. Instead of using a simple 0, to indicate the obvious zero balance, think if they used the ZKT idea (or digitally signed the PPV's). If the PPV zero balance was digitally signed, it then becomes a special, non-recreateable, non-zero number. How would you get around that? What about tiers? What if the tiers were digitally signed for each card? The possibilites numb the mind! The important part? If implemented, there are no workarounds for them until PKE is broken! Read up on PKE (public key encryption) and digital signing when you have some spare time. You'll be enlightened.
6. D*V spent 2 years and $25 million to develop this card. Think about that for a minute. That's $25 M-I-L-L-I-O-N spent specifically to keep your *** out. Think about the equivalent in the physical world...spend $25,000,000 around your house to keep people out. Now imagine all that on that little chip underneath those gold contacts on the card. They are serious. I saw a post a while back saying something to the effect that D*V just wanted to give the appearance that they were keeping people out (for their shareholders) but they really wanted people to hack their system so it would remain popular. What a load of f*cking bull****! People don't spend the amount of money that they have on developing new cards and distributing them (F, H, HU, P4/D1) if they secretly really want their system hacked. They are ...really because it makes them appear foolish when there are so many websites out there dedicated to hacking their system and *making money* off of hacking their system. Are you kidding me??
7. Hack attempt and power cycle counters. To all of you who are screwing around with your P4/D1 cards and then subscribe using that card: Be aware that during a PPV reporting call, the hack attempts counter gets transmitted back along with the IPPV data.
Ok, call me negative...I have no faith. Whatever. It's called being realistic... I could be grossly mistaken and the fix for the P4/D1 may appear next week. Or maybe not. I'm not saying I'm right, I'm just posting my observations on the subject. Flame away...
Again, I state: I am not saying this current card is unhackable. But you can bet your *** that it's just a matter of time before they produce one that is - or at least keeps you out long enough for them to develop the next generation card. The folks making claims that "man can make it, man can break it" obviously have no clue how this stuff truly works. Being able to load a 3m or activation on a card doesn't make you a card cracking expert. What you took for granted everytime you glitched into an HU took an absolute ****load of time, money and EXPERT knowledge to learn and pass on to the public. It's easy to sit there and say "they" will get in when you have no idea what is really happening. Cards these days are NOT cracked by sending random packets to it. They can only be cracked by experts using state-of-the-art machines at microchip facilities.
PS: Think of all the D*V moles who are laughing their asses off reading all the forums and seeing you fight and **** on each other right now. They know they've at least won this battle...and who knows, maybe the war. Chill out - Optimism won't magically crack the card. Flame me if you want...
Otherwise - Thanks for reading
PacketStorm
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