From: buhr@umanitoba.ca (Kevin Andrew Buhr)
Subject: Winnipeg's Pride:  TV Descrambling Crack
Organization: University of Manitoba, Canada
Date: Wed, 16 Dec 1992 23:32:27 GMT

From the _Winnipeg Free Press_, Wednesday, December 16, 1992,
reprinted without permission (naughty me!):


			*	*	*


		    `Genius' plagues cable TV

[ Industry back to drawing board as Winnipeg pirate breaks code ]

		  by Paul Wiecek, Police Reporter

Cable industry officials in the U.S. have gone back to the drawing
board after a local man described as an "electronics genius" cracked
the sophisticated computer code that scrambles pay-TV signals.

Police believe the man cracked the code some time in the past year and
then produced more than 1,100 home-made descramblers that he sold in
local bars and as far away as Vancouver for $220 each.

Crime Insp. ron Dawon said the man's basement factory is believed to be
the largest of its kind ever uncovered by police.  It has forced
industry officials to rethink the technology cable companies use to
protect their pay-TV signals.

Sgt. Arnie Wolochatiuk -- one of the two officers who worked on the
complex six-month investigation -- said the man's arrest last summer
had reverberations as far away as Chicago.

Wolochatiuk said an official from Zenith, which manufactures
descramblers for Winnipeg's two cable companies, flew to Winnipeg
after the man was arrested to "marvel" at his craftsmanship and try to
figure out what went wrong.

"He's got to be some sort of electronics genius to dream up this
scheme," said Const. Mike Kuzma, Wolochatiuk's partner in the case.

Local cable companies charge $15-$18 a month for the channels the man's
descramblers were picking up for free.

"It's very discouraging," said Hans Schmidt, general manager of
Greater Winnipeg Cablevision, noting the current descrambling
technology was supposed to be almost foolproof.

Schmidt said Zenith officials are now looking at new designs for their
descramblers.

Police making a routine call to a Springfield Road house last June
noticed some high-tech electronics equipment in the basement along
with a large number of television converters, and passed the
information to District 4 detectives.

Kuzma said the man was arrested and 44 of the illegal converters were
seized over the summer.  The rest are unaccounted for.

James Ernest Millar, 31, who has since moved to Vancouver, is facing a
variety of charges under the telecommunications provisions of the
Criminal Code.

Kuzma said the man somehow managed to replicate the computer boards
that make up the descramblers and had them mass-produced by a company.

He then assembled them with the necessary computer chips and installed
them in ordinary television converters.

Operations manager Charron Kerr said Videon has already taken steps
that make the descramblers useless for par-per-view stations and the
movie channel.

She said the remaining channels in the pay-TV package will be
reprogrammed in the coming months.

			*	*	*

So, can anyone who knows better tell us if Zenith's scheme is *really*
so foolproof?  Or does every chip-twiddler worth their weight in radio
waves know how to defeat the scheme?

As far as I can tell from the fuzzy descriptions of the technique, the
scrambler either digitally encodes the signal, or applies "analogish"
transformations to the signal while providing a digital carrier with
the warped signal containing instructions for its reconstruction.

The descramblers seem to contain a generalized computer chip with PROM
"firmware" that allows a limited degree of on-the-fly "programming".

Anybody have some more concrete information?

Kevin <buhr@ccu.UManitoba.CA>
Newsgroups: alt.hackers,alt.censorship