 is the use of trusted hardware really worth it answering that requires fairly complete knowledge of the business model but in all probability no it isn t usually worth it so it comes down to how difficult you want to make the cracker s job look at the dvds iirc css was cracked by reverse engineering a software player and one where the developers forgot to encrypt the decryption key at that this make me wonder about the relative protection of smart cards they have an internal procession unit around NUMBERmhz can we consider them as trusted hardware the ability to ship smart cards periodicaly uppon cashing of a monthly subscription fee would not raise too much the cost of renting the system smart card do their own self encryption can they be used to decrypt data needed by the system the input of the system could me mangled and the would keep a reference of how long it was in service this sounds really feasible but i may be totaly wrong i may also be wrong about the safety of a smart card what do you think yannick gingras coder for obb oceangoing bared bonanza URL 