How to completely erase a Nagravision A smartcard

[Leoheart]

I own an unused UK top up TV smartcard.
I suppose that this card is Nagravision A and not B, since B is not indicated on top of that card.

The interesting point is that the chipset (visually) is identically the same as a gamma card's chipset..

So if this card has got the same atmel's processor, then I could unloop/unlock it (I don't know if this is usefull since this card is never activated)
and sequently run nagraedit 4.1..
When I run nagraedit I receive:

"
Opening of COM2 was successful
ATR String: F6 FF 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
Error reseting card, ATR string invalid
Closing of COM2 was successful"

So the question is; Can I erase nagravision and load gamma card OS

Thanks in advance

[tariqz118]

mate it looks as if your card may be fried. have you connected your programmer through serial cable and put your programmer in phoenix mode 3.68 if you have and it still says this message most likely card is dead

[Leoheart]

this smartcard has never been activated

[BL4K3Y]

No use then, you may still be able to get BK and IRD but the box won't be activated either so you will only get freeview even if you mod the card.

[Leoheart]

Originally Posted by blakey_8

No use then, you may still be able to get BK and IRD but the box won't be activated either so you will only get freeview even if you mod the card.

Thanks but my intention is to use the smartcard for irdeto emulation (load gamma team OS), not for nagravision and cable. I want to use it in a satellite receiver. Since vissualy-I am not yet sure, is identically the same as gamma cards-which are very expen$ive to get..

Thanks

[BL4K3Y]

I don't think satellite receivers support Nagravision. They run on NDS don't they? I know Sly cards are NDS.

[Leoheart]

Originally Posted by blakey_8

I don't think satellite receivers support Nagravision. They run on NDS don't they? I know Sly cards are NDS.

This is not correct. The encryption system has nothing to do with satellite/cable. Imagine in how many countries around the world, satellite and cable providers do business right now..

Is it possible to completelty erase an original smartcard?

[Tesla]

Generally I would say no, certainly not the VM rom cards. If you were a cable company would you say to your card supplier produce me cards that are easy to read, write and erase so that anybody can read the rom code and image copy it rewrite it if its f**ked up and generally do what they like with it. No you would say I want a card that has protection built in to prevent unauthorized people gaining access to the card, I want firewalls, backdoor keys, loops etc to prevent people form getting at my information and stealing my TV wouldn't you! So a genuine card by design has limited access and when they first appear no access at all until someone is able to find a way to defeat the protection built into the card ie nagra 3 if and when it arrives. Will nagra 3 be hacked? Anything can be hacked but you need in order of importance expertise, equipment/facilities, time, and money, lets imagine the American government wanted to hack nagra 3 for some reason it would probably be done within a week. I doubt the hack will be achieved by the average amateur at home. So no more can I completely erase my ntl card, no you can not you might be able to read and write to it if you use hardware and software specifically designed to enable you to defeat the cards protection.

[Leoheart]

How codebreakers cracked the secrets of the smart card

'Unbreakable' code was posted on the internet

* John Cassy and Paul Murphy
* The Guardian


The process was complex, time-consuming, and very expensive. This was not about a lone hacker sitting at a computer screen trying to guess passwords. Instead, it was an attempt to split the foundation stone supporting an entire industry - the technology protecting pay TV.
The challenge handed in the autumn of 1997 to a team of scientists working quietly at a laboratory in Haifa, northern Israel, was to crack the encryption technique used to unscramble TV signals delivered to many paying customers through cable and satellite across Europe and the US.
The so-called "smart" or "conditional access" cards used to access Sky, ITV Digital, and other premium channels contain wafer-thin computer chips holding complex codes to make sure viewers see only what they have paid to see.
The Haifa team knew all about this. They worked for N.D.S., a Murdoch company which had begun life as a start-up firm, News Datacom, in Israel eight years earlier. Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation had backed the venture in the belief that the coming digital age required a quantum leap in areas such as data security and the encryption of communications.
N.D.S. was to go on and design the encryption process that would be used on the smart cards handed out with every Murdoch pay TV package in the world. With 27m viewers using its cards in 40% of the world's satellite receivers, it would become a company valued at well over $1bn in its own right.
But N.D.S. had one important rival, an encryption technology developed in France by the local broadcaster Canal Plus which had been adopted by just about all News Corporation's rival broadcasters.
The N.D.S. team in Haifi, according to a lawsuit filed in the US district court for the Nothern District of California, set out to "sabotage Canal Plus technological security measures engineered into its smart cards."
Breaking the encryption alone would cost up to $5m. The process demanded the use of ultra-expensive electron-scanning microscopes, with the team probing wafer-thin chips no bigger than a thumbnail. Each chip contained up to 50 layers, with each layer in turn carrying up to 1,000 transistors, every one of which had to be pulled apart and analysed.


Unlimited funding

Even with access to the most sophisticated equipment and seemingly unlimited funding, it took the Haifa team six months to unravel a code which was supposed to be impossible to decipher.
From there, according to Canal Plus's $1bn claim for damages, it was a relatively straightforward matter of releasing the information and then waiting for the world's counterfeiters to undermine every rival broadcaster using the French encryption system.
In early 1999, the N.D.S. team isolated a piece of the encryption software known as the UserROM, a portion of computer memory on a smart card which controls access to the rest of the digital data. This information was dropped into a downloadable internet file called Secarom.zip, which, according to the Canal Plus claim, was then sent to the Haifa team's colleagues in California at N.D.S. Americas with instructions that it be published on the internet so that anyone wanting to produce pirate Canal Plus cards could do so.
Canal Plus claims that the file was then transferred to a web operator called Al Menart, who ran a website known as DR7.com, a geekish internet service which promptly published the Canal Plus code for all to see.
By late 1999 the first counterfeit cards had begun to appear and, according to Canal Plus, by September 2000 the Italian market was flooded. Proliferation across Europe was in full swing.
The cards have become commonplace in Britain, with ITV Digital complaining recently that more than 100,000 pirate cards are in circulation here.
Executives at ITV Digital, which has struggled to build a strong base of subscribers and which continues to hemorrhage cash, were apparently appalled recently by comments made by Sky's chief executive, Tony Ball, during an address to the company's US investors. "ITV Digital/DTT is completely pirated, a joke. For $7 you can buy a card for all channels," he is reported to have said.
Canal Plus faces the exhaustive process of renewing the technology in the 12 million cards issued worldwide. ITV Digital customers can expect completely new plastic by the end of the year.
Francois Carayol, chairman and chief executive of Canal Plus Technologies, said: "When it emerged that the most secure part of our smart card system had been invaded we immediately launched an investigation into why and how it happened.
"We certainly didn't expect our investigations to lead us to N.D.S.. It is not the type of action we would have expected from such a well-established firm."
For its part, N.D.S. says the whole piracy claim is an outlandish fabrication. A statement from Abe Peled, the company's president and chief executive, last night said the counterfeiters had simply targeted an inferior technology and succeeded without any help from anyone.
He suggested that Canal Plus is in commercial trouble and revealed that the French firm had approached N.D.S. before Christmas suggesting a merger, adding that the French had been trying to poach the N.D.S. employee accused of leaking Canal Plus's code.


Corporate battle

In a pointer to the corporate battle that is unfolding, Mr Peled also drew attention to news reports over recent weeks suggesting disagreement within Canal Plus's parent company, Vivendi Universal, over what direction the French media business should take.
Vivendi, in its current form as a media and communications giant with interests ranging from Hollywood movies to third-generation mobile phones, has been built in double-quick speed by a former investment banker called Jean Marie Messier. He is known as Jean 2M and considered a messianic figure in French business circles, having burst out of the confines of the French national market to create a real threat to Mr Murdoch.
But he built Vivendi with a furious round of acquisitions just as the internet boom was hitting its peak.
Last week he was forced to take a write-down in Vivendi's accounts to cover the value which has been destroyed as dotcom and technology companies have imploded.
The battle with N.D.S. is likely to test his mettle even further.
As for News Corporation, executives there will be well aware that this is not the first time that its 80% owned associate N.D.S. has polluted the group's public image.
One morning in October 1996, Israeli tax officials, apparently acting on a tip-off from a former employee, raided the company's Jerusalem offices and also the site in Haifa. They were looking for evidence that N.D.S. had evaded £100m in tax oversix years; 70 tax officers removed more than 50 cartons of papers from the N.D.S. offices.
In the event, the allegations never stuck. But the mud did.

[Tesla]

Interesting reading, many things have been described as unbreakable over the years and it is always more difficult when you have to start at the beginning on a completely new system. Its my opinion that nagra 3 will be a variant of the two previous versions and may use a similar type of card because unless you go to the expense of upgrading all the hardware the new system will have to work within the constraints of the old equipment.