10 ms·

The Brazen Bootlegging of a Multibillion-Dollar Sports Network

71 points by mark212 8y ago

deadlyllama 8y ago
The decoder box has to decrypt the satellite signal, run it through a video codec, apply the fancy watermarking, and then output the signal. I'm guessing they've worked out a way of hacking the STB to extract the signal between the decryption and watermarking stages.
- sbarre 8y ago
  FTA it sounds like the pirates may actually control the satellite? Arabsat appears to be the source of the signal, so could the issue be a "leaky" legit distributor for BeIN?
r32a_ 8y ago
I remember back in early 2000s getting premium satellite tv for free was as easy as just installing a firmware on your STB. Eventually, the encryption got too hard and expensive to crack, so regular hackers stopped working on firmwares.
- ac29 8y ago
  The story behind DirectTV's "bloody sunday" is pretty interesting: https://www.wired.com/2008/05/tarnovsky/?currentPage=all https://www.wired.com/2008/05/tarnovsky/?currentPage=all
ams6110 8y ago
Pirating happens when consumers are faced with unreasonable inconvenience and cost to get what they want. Like being forced to purchase a bundle of channels or a season of games when you only want to watch one team or a specific sport. If these media companies would make it convenient, ala carte, and priced reasonably, piracy would plummet. All you need to do is look at iTunes, Spotify, etc.
- dasil003 8y ago
  RTFA, it has absolutely nothing to do with your reflexive talking points.
  - Chriky 8y ago
    There's nothing stopping women going into STEM they simply choose not to
rahimnathwani 8y ago
This isn't the only company selling access to near-real-time re-broadcasts of live content. I'm surprised the NYT article doesn't mention others. This part is interesting: "The beIN antipiracy team believes it knows how beoutQ is stealing the signal. Essentially, the website is re-airing content delivered to an individual subscriber. Since each subscriber has a unique identification number that is usually visible, known as a fingerprint, beIN engineers thought they would be able to easily identify the offending customer. However, the pirates have figured out how to hide their fingerprints." I'm sure there are challenges in doing this in real-time, and without introducing additional compression artefacts, but isn't this as simple as diffing feeds from 2 or more original subscribers feeds, to find where in the picture the subscriber info is encoded?
- rorso 8y ago
  Surely they could do an overlay like what channels already put in with their logo, with a couple-pixel discrepancy (an 8x8 pixel shape with only 10% opacity or something) that translates to a user ID. Forums have been doing similar for close to a decade to figure out which user leaks info (we do it on some EVE Online forums).
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - 6nf 8y ago
    The pirate could take the median pixels of many different feeds to clean out the fingerprint.
- mark212 8y ago
  This is the only state-sponsored pirate TV I’ve ever heard of. Makes it really tough when the entity doing the stealing is a sovereignty.
  - pjc50 8y ago
    It's yet another strange manifestation of "cyberwarfare". Since there's no international agreements restricting it we're only going to see more. Controlling what another country's citizens watch (and how much they pay for it!) is a lot of power. (See also Facebook's sudden decision to ban foreign political ads in the Irish referendum)
denlekke 8y ago
they should just start airing anti-Saudi ads during the biggest matches
- gonesilent 8y ago
  The other broadcaster inserts it's own ad's so it would just filter them out.
  - Anarch157a 8y ago
    Superimpose it on a random area of the screen, making it look like it's something painted on the field, if the image goes to the satellite with the message already there, 10 seconds wont be enough to block it without disrupting the transmission.
dmurray 8y ago
This article made me wonder if the criticism of the Qatar World Cup - the working conditions of the labourers, the weather, the lack of football tradition, the pay-for-play - if that is all planted by Saudi Arabia and her Western allies trying to discredit and isolate Qatar. I've read the stories about migrant labour and construction deaths. They sound terrible but people died in South Africa too. The climate will be significantly cooler than in Orlando. Japan wasn't a footballing power before it hosted the tournament. And literally everyone who wants to host it has to make it financially worthwhile for FIFA. So why the Qatar backlash?
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- jonknee 8y ago
  It probably has something to do with the part about Qatar being a very tiny place (a native population of 300,000!) with very wealthy people and never having qualified for the World Cup before. That seems ripe for a bribe, especially because everyone knows FIFA is and was corrupt.
dalu 8y ago
All the football live streams on Facebook alone and no one is doing anything (at least it feels like it) to remove them. And they're all with arab text scrolling on the bottom. When a game is on, our visitor numbers drop by a large % (almost completely). When a game is on I can be sure our ad revenue is down by at least 70%, because those games are so widely accessible via Facebook.
deskamess 8y ago
Is beOUTq a play on beIN? If it is, that's pretty ballsy and in your face!

71 points by mark212 8y ago

The decoder box has to decrypt the satellite signal, run it through a video codec, apply the fancy watermarking, and then output the signal. I'm guessing they've worked out a way of hacking the STB to extract the signal between the decryption and watermarking stages.

sbarre 8y ago
FTA it sounds like the pirates may actually control the satellite? Arabsat appears to be the source of the signal, so could the issue be a "leaky" legit distributor for BeIN?

r32a_ 8y ago

I remember back in early 2000s getting premium satellite tv for free was as easy as just installing a firmware on your STB. Eventually, the encryption got too hard and expensive to crack, so regular hackers stopped working on firmwares.

ac29 8y ago
The story behind DirectTV's "bloody sunday" is pretty interesting: https://www.wired.com/2008/05/tarnovsky/?currentPage=all https://www.wired.com/2008/05/tarnovsky/?currentPage=all

ams6110 8y ago

Pirating happens when consumers are faced with unreasonable inconvenience and cost to get what they want. Like being forced to purchase a bundle of channels or a season of games when you only want to watch one team or a specific sport. If these media companies would make it convenient, ala carte, and priced reasonably, piracy would plummet. All you need to do is look at iTunes, Spotify, etc.

dasil003 8y ago
RTFA, it has absolutely nothing to do with your reflexive talking points.
- Chriky 8y ago
  There's nothing stopping women going into STEM they simply choose not to

rahimnathwani 8y ago

This isn't the only company selling access to near-real-time re-broadcasts of live content. I'm surprised the NYT article doesn't mention others. This part is interesting: "The beIN antipiracy team believes it knows how beoutQ is stealing the signal. Essentially, the website is re-airing content delivered to an individual subscriber. Since each subscriber has a unique identification number that is usually visible, known as a fingerprint, beIN engineers thought they would be able to easily identify the offending customer. However, the pirates have figured out how to hide their fingerprints." I'm sure there are challenges in doing this in real-time, and without introducing additional compression artefacts, but isn't this as simple as diffing feeds from 2 or more original subscribers feeds, to find where in the picture the subscriber info is encoded?

rorso 8y ago
Surely they could do an overlay like what channels already put in with their logo, with a couple-pixel discrepancy (an 8x8 pixel shape with only 10% opacity or something) that translates to a user ID. Forums have been doing similar for close to a decade to figure out which user leaks info (we do it on some EVE Online forums).
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- 6nf 8y ago
  The pirate could take the median pixels of many different feeds to clean out the fingerprint.
mark212 8y ago
This is the only state-sponsored pirate TV I’ve ever heard of. Makes it really tough when the entity doing the stealing is a sovereignty.
- pjc50 8y ago
  It's yet another strange manifestation of "cyberwarfare". Since there's no international agreements restricting it we're only going to see more. Controlling what another country's citizens watch (and how much they pay for it!) is a lot of power. (See also Facebook's sudden decision to ban foreign political ads in the Irish referendum)

denlekke 8y ago

they should just start airing anti-Saudi ads during the biggest matches

gonesilent 8y ago
The other broadcaster inserts it's own ad's so it would just filter them out.
- Anarch157a 8y ago
  Superimpose it on a random area of the screen, making it look like it's something painted on the field, if the image goes to the satellite with the message already there, 10 seconds wont be enough to block it without disrupting the transmission.

dmurray 8y ago

This article made me wonder if the criticism of the Qatar World Cup - the working conditions of the labourers, the weather, the lack of football tradition, the pay-for-play - if that is all planted by Saudi Arabia and her Western allies trying to discredit and isolate Qatar. I've read the stories about migrant labour and construction deaths. They sound terrible but people died in South Africa too. The climate will be significantly cooler than in Orlando. Japan wasn't a footballing power before it hosted the tournament. And literally everyone who wants to host it has to make it financially worthwhile for FIFA. So why the Qatar backlash?

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
jonknee 8y ago
It probably has something to do with the part about Qatar being a very tiny place (a native population of 300,000!) with very wealthy people and never having qualified for the World Cup before. That seems ripe for a bribe, especially because everyone knows FIFA is and was corrupt.

dalu 8y ago

All the football live streams on Facebook alone and no one is doing anything (at least it feels like it) to remove them. And they're all with arab text scrolling on the bottom. When a game is on, our visitor numbers drop by a large % (almost completely). When a game is on I can be sure our ad revenue is down by at least 70%, because those games are so widely accessible via Facebook.

deskamess 8y ago

Is beOUTq a play on beIN? If it is, that's pretty ballsy and in your face!