Who doesn’t love a good corporate espionage story? We certainly don’t mind them, especially when they involve hiring a notable hacker to do the company’s dirty work. It seems this is exactly what happened in the case of Dish Networks vs NDS Group. Last month, Christopher Tarnovsky admitted he was paid $20,000 in cash to crack the security protocols used on DISH Network access cards. NDS Group claimed the reverse engineering was simply for comparative reasons while DISH is said it resulted in $900 million in damages.
The trial came to an end this week with the court finding NDS group guilty of cracking 1 card (a fine of $49.69) and liable for an additional $1000 in damages. Not quite the big payoff DISH was hoping for, but both companies have expressed feelings of vindication about the decision. DISH Networks says that the jury ruled in their favor, proving that they were right all along (just not $900 million dollars right). NDS maintains that Tarnovsky’s work was never publicly shared and that they never intended to flood the black market with cracked cards as DISH has implied.
haha. i knew those cards could be cracked. ive wanted to do it but didnt want to risk getting caught. now somebody needs to do it to a cable box like cox, comcast, ect.
Around 2000 there was actually rumors among a lot of the more serious(firmware reversing) crackers of some guy who wrote custom firmware for a certain receiver, and ended up dead.
I heard it from a lot of different people. It supposedly did something with different bands.
Hey, is that part of one of my pictures guys ;)