[mythtv-users] SiliconDust to Announce CableCard Product at CES [RUMOR]

Simon Hobson linux at thehobsons.co.uk
Thu Jan 7 17:02:55 UTC 2010


Devin Heitmueller wrote:

>  > But that's the same basic idea, even if there is another device in the
>>  chain. The question is how it gets decrypted. I'm assuming the
>>  decryption key is passed from the cable card to the PC only through an
>>  authenticated chain, but as I just explained, it wouldn't be difficult
>>  to extract the key and pretend to be the windows system (ie: rather
>>  than a man-in-the-middle attack, you are simply killing Alice and
>>  sending in your look-alike replacement.
>
>Yes, independent of the encryption from the headend to the OCUR
>platform (in this case the HDHR), there is separate encryption from
>the HDHR to the host.  They do exchange keying information (using a
>public key algorithm), and Microsoft's protected storage of their
>private keying information has gotten significantly better than it
>used to be.
>
>So you would have to successfully extract the private keying info from
>Windows 7 (not impossible but definitely not trivial), emulate the key
>exchange with the HDHR, and reverse engineer all of Microsoft's DRM to
>be able to properly decrypt the stream.

Hmm, no-one popped up yet to banish this discussion to /dev/null for 
discussing DRM and how it could **theoretically** be circumvented ?

Contrast with someone asking how to legally use his paid for viewing card ...

-- 
Simon Hobson

Visit http://www.magpiesnestpublishing.co.uk/ for books by acclaimed
author Gladys Hobson. Novels - poetry - short stories - ideal as
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