Read out chip on the pay TV smart card is quite prevail in the beginning of last 80’s. chip read outor will normally invest a lot of money for reverse engineering of the smart card, and then disassemble the internal code from it.
If the chip read outor know the signature and operation process, it will be quite possible for them to find the vulnerability, such as provide the power supply noise in the most appropriate time will cause the processor malfunction which can be granted the unlimited access authority of channel, once it done successfully, chip read outor can offer the tv channel service with very competitive price or produce the fraud pay TV card.
It is very obviously that such chip read out action need to spend a lot of money. Once the privacy product being launched into the market, the chip could be read outed by others. Other’s chip read out don’t need that much time. Since the privacy product will usually choose the relative low cost microcontroller chip, its security level could be even lower than the original pay TV card.
Privacy product chip can be read outed within weeks and the second read outor will soon dump the privacy products onto the market. And very soon the chip read out method information will be published on the internet and everyone can access to these information with extremely lost cost. At the same time, pay TV card service provider will end up lost millions of dollars.
Sometimes, the earliest chip read outer will be sued but the service provider is very difficult to get the money back, the only purpose of this lawsuit is to intimidate the chip read outor group. Moreover, service provider need to spend a lot of money to redesign the access controlling system, choose the new smartcard and develop the software.
