Card sharing

Typically, a smart card is installed in a DVB-card , receiver (receiver) or card reader that are connected to the Internet . This device is a server to which other receivers (receivers) are connected to decrypt the signal from the satellite , as if they had their own access card ^[1] . As a necessary technical condition for the use of card sharing, we can note the need for a permanent connection via a local network or the Internet. For normal operation, a 64 kbit / s channel will be sufficient, but the connection should be quite stable. FTTx , xDSL , or 3G / 4G access technologies are ideal, since even when using GPRS during peak hours of network load, interruptions are possible ^[2] . Different emulators are used for card sharing.

Since conditional access systems and satellite television encoding are constantly being improved, interest in card sharing is growing proportionally. Most software and equipment for card sharing are used in Europe , where within one country you can receive signals from many satellites, but there is no way to legally use the paid television service due to the lack of licenses for broadcasters from other countries.

The length of the decrypted key in many cases does not exceed 16 bytes , for many home Internet users it is not difficult to transmit it to the network. This led to the fact that began to appear network user groups, which you can enter by transmitting the decrypted key. Members of this group can use any decrypted key of other members of the group. There is also another type of group, in which there is a central server, with access cards connected to it, moreover, several original cards can be used to obtain the key of one operator. And users pay the owner of the server money for the opportunity to receive the decrypted key. The cost of viewing by the end user is reduced at times and usually amounts to no more than $ 5 per package. The most reliable cardsharing servers do not have pages on the network, billing, and therefore are more secure, more stable.

Sometimes a user, in order not to pay for the same thing twice, uses card sharing to watch channels on several televisions in the same house ^[2] . On the one hand, this is a violation of the rules of the broadcaster, and on the other, it is not a violation of the law , since one card is used only by this user in one house.

Card sharing causes a lot of problems for DTH operators , as well as conditional access companies. Unlike hacking , card sharing is a relatively new phenomenon, which was made possible by improving the quality and speed of the Internet for home users. Conditional access system manufacturers have only a few options to deal with this. One of these methods is the frequent change of the control key used to decrypt the signal (once every five seconds). This adds a lot of problems with viewing channels for ordinary legal users.

The future of card sharing is unknown, because it is unclear how widespread the use of this method is at the moment. It should be understood that additional security, in the long run, may not pay back the costs. For example, new Irdeto 2 cards were produced in such a way that card sharing seemed impossible, but then a way was found to circumvent this limitation.