3 ms·
I worked for a cable company in the mid-90s. The amount of boxes that disappeared (and couldn't be located) was insane. The folks that procured them also used a
by nobleach 3y ago
I worked for a cable company in the mid-90s. The amount of boxes that disappeared (and couldn't be located) was insane. The folks that procured them also used a "bullet blocker" (basically a resistor) to avoid the box being disabled.
In the satellite realm, DishNetwork was always the easier service to hack. The FTA scene was completely overrun with folks buying 3rd party tuners. Once Dish switched to an encrypted signal, a few vendors (nFusion if I recall) even could rotate keys in a matter of hours to decrypt Dish's new encryption schemes. I doubt any of that works these days simply because there's no reason to push too hard for content that is likely available via easier means.
- jandrese 3y agoI read an article about the early DirecTV hacking days and the cat and mouse game the hackers played with the company. DirecT cards were smart cards that ran programs for the decryption path. The hackers kept just duplicating whatever DirecTV sent down to keep them workign, mystery bits and all. Then one day a final update came out and those weird bits turned out to be a specially designed program that bricked all of the hacked cards. I'm sure that was a temporary setback for the hackers but it was a great story.
- kortilla 3y agoDidn’t this happen recently with a usb to serial port vendor or something like that? Vendor released a new driver that bricked all of the knockoff ones…
- yjftsjthsd-h 3y agoYes, FTDI did that - https://www.zdnet.com/article/ftdi-admits-to-bricking-innocent-users-chips-in-silent-update/ https://www.zdnet.com/article/ftdi-admits-to-bricking-innoce...