Gizmodo
This is classic corporate espionage/sabotage at its finest. Dish Network is accusing News Corp.—which used to have a 39 percent stake in DirecTV and still provides its security tech—of hiring hacker Christopher Tarnovsky to break into Dish's network, steal the security codes, and use them to make pirated cards to flood the black market. It sounds insane, but Tarnovsky admitted in court he was paid James Bond villain style, with $20,000 cash payments mailed from Canada hidden inside "electronic devices."
He says that he was just hired to write pirate programs to make DirecTV's own network more secure, but one of his projects for News Corp., the "stinger," can talk to any smart card in the world. Another hacker claims that he bragged about using the stinger with News Corps.'s people to reprogram a bunch of Dish's cards, but Tarnovsky claims he's being set up to take the fall.
Dish says the hack attack has cost them over $900 million. Either way, this whole thing is some serious material for a TNT movie of the week. [Reuters via Valleywag]
Comments
1864
To the web people: please fix your site, you've got all sorts of stuff piled on top of each other, like headlines under ads and headlines under the posting date, author and number of views info. Using Firefox here...
@iridius: Same problem on OSX and Safari.
This story is pretty crazy. If it did happen, I doubt it would ever go to court. I'm sure News Corp. cleaned up their tracks pretty well.... and if not, good. They get what's coming to them.
So, where are these pirated card?
We don't have these there fancy machines in our time
20,000 dollars buys Samurais these days? Must be the 'R' word. I should get a loan and pick me one up, I'm sure I can come up with a couple of scenarios that would pay off.
stuff like this really makes you wonder about those piracy numbers the RIAA is always touting. i mean, the numbers are already exaggerated, but you really have to wonder how many of those "illegal" dvds and cds are being quietly supplied by media companies interested in convincing governments to protect their business models through legislation
This was back in the day of hu cards according to some fta sites I frequent.
FCC to News Corp.: "Lemme smell yo d*ck"
Oh My Jesus Christ Monkey Balls!
hmm, 900 mill, is that just a number they pulled out of their ass, because it seems like it is.
@iridius: They cater to Internet Explorer here, not Firefox...After all it's Firefox users that block ads and all that jazz.
@citizen024: Yeah, Dish has never made 900 mil in the history of their existence much less in a few months or whatever time this has been going on for. A lot of these companies trend to exaggerate a bit when it comes to revenues "lost"
@citizen024: Nope. It is 900 mil in future dollars. They calculate how much they lost now, then project it 100 years into the future because thats how long TV's will last. I think they use the same accountant as the RIAA.
/sarcasm
@CFStang: Brilliant!
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