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Date Posted: 00:20:19 02/07/02 Thu
Author: Zargon
Subject: Re: BOMB CODES
In reply to: CardShark 's message, "BOMB CODES" on 22:11:19 02/06/02 Wed

Don't know if you read this article or not but it may help explain somethings for you.This article was put out over many"Tester's Forums" just after the "02 command" came down.I think the guy is legit'.

Interesting post from Sattech
Taken from Sattech:

Ex-Bev employee sets the record straight.
First, let me start off by saying that I'm not a BEV employee myself and have never worked for them. I'm posting this message following a very interesting discussion that I had with my brother in law yesterday.

All I'm doing here is reporting to you the content of our discussion and I'm in no way involved in any kind of business with BEV. So, please do not flame the messenger (me) nor ask me to tell you more since this is all I know. Furthermore, please do not ask me technical questions because, simply put, this aint my cup of tea.

My brother in law has been working for the software engineering group at BEV for the past 3 years. I can confirm that part of it, at least). He's no longer working for BEV since his wife gave birth to their first born and he's now working part time as a consultant. For the most part of his 3 years at BEV, he's been working in a team in charge of developping/adapting the firmware in our receivers. In the last 4 months of his employment at BEV he's been moved to a team in charge of coordonating liscencing issues between Nagravision (NV) and BEV.

Here is goes:

I was talinkg with him about what I was reading in the various forums. Among other things, I was telling him about the people who were reporting that BEV would never send an "ECM" because it was illegal. I also told him that I had seen comments that BEV would loose too many subscribers if they ever sent such a thing.

His answer was quite interesting, in the least.

First, my brother in law tells me that BEV has been is, as of now, capable and willing to send an "ECM" (ECM is apparently not the term used by BEV internally, but anyways..). However, 9 months ago, BCE's legal department, in collaboration with the CRTC, the RCMP and Echostar, came back to instruct BEV's executives that an ECM tagetted at an internal component of a customer's receiver would pose serious legal problems. In fact, it appears that it's all a matter of property. YES, the firmware in our receivers is BEV's property. However, it's running and written on microchips and circuits owned by the customer. The concept of rendering innoperable a chip (hardware) by modifying it's content (software) in our receivers does not seem quite legal. Don't ask me, I'm not a lawyer). So, BEV has been looking elsewhere for an answer.

If an ECM was to be sent, BEV would have to target something that was completely owned by them. Furthermore, that piece of equipment, if damaged accidently, would have to be easilly replaced and/or swaped if the receiver belongs to a "legit" or "semi-legit" customer. BEV is NOT prepared to receive/repair/send back thousands of receivers that could of been accidentally affected by an ECM while the customer is waiting without TV.

This leaves BEV with one option: target the CAM. As you know, the CAM is BEV's property and it's use is liscenced by Nagravision. In the case of an ECM, if the CAM is damaged accidently in a legit IRD, it's very easy, cheap and fast to purolator you a new CAM).

However, this poses yet another problem...

Each year, BEV pays NV liscensing rights for the use their software and technology on the CAM. As we speak, BEV is trying to obtain liscensing rights to modify the CAM's software themselves so it could be written to (and destroyed) with an ECM. NV does not seem to be cooperative in this matter and this issue might not be resolved for some time. But it will, eventually, some way or another.

The liscensing rights paid for by BEV to NV are very precise and BEV can not play around with NV's software on the CAM. They are not allowed to reverse-engineer NV's software neither can they re-write portions of their code on the CAM. It's a matter of legality and contract and any mesure taken by BEV to "modify" a CAM without NV's agreement and proper liscences would result in major legal issues (breach of contract and illegal use of the software).

Anyhow, in the mean time, I'm told that BEV will be trying many things to force testers to insert the CAM in their receivers (hence the recent 02 command). I'm also told that BEV was working, at the time my brother in law left the company on several other methods to ensure that camless receivers will no longer work. So far, we've seen one (02 command), I'm told to expect more, soon.

Also, I was surprised to hear that BEV is going a different way (from DISH) to force us to unlock our chips. Instead of just naging us to simply unlock the eeprom/tsop and tagging "something" in the software for future use, BEV wants to send us a new, modified firmware that will be very agressive towards the CAM. I think they found a way.

The last project my brother in law was working on when he was still in the software engineering group was a new firmware code that would not let the IRD boot if the chips were locked. If completed and tested properly, this update would be sent down to ALL receivers (wheather you accept it or not. Remember, BEV OWNS the software and is legally able to modify it at will). If such is the case, once people start unlocking their receivers to get rid of the NAG screens, this new update will be downloaded to the IRD and, in theory, would not let you lock your IRD anymore. I asked my brother in law what would happen if people left their IRD powered on all the time or never unlocked their IRDs. He replied that another team is working on a "timer" fonction that will force people to take the update if not already done before a preset date. At that time, a command should be incorporated into the stream, permananently, to watch on a regular basis, for a firmware version and freeze your IRD with a nag screen if the version is no longer "supported". This would force us to eventually power down and accept the new firmware. This new firmware would contain, I'm told, AVR detection scripts and functions to write to/destroy CAMs (once they get approval from NV of course). This throws away the thory of backing-up/restoring TSOP and EEPROM since the versions will no longer match what BEV is expecting. This means that once you've got the new firmware, as soon as you insert an AVR in the IRD: boom ! Nag screen asking you to insert your CAM. If you do: boom! no more CAM. If you don't? Well, hope you like watching that nasty nag screen ... If you wish, you could restore an old EEPROM/TSOP and keep watching TV for another couple hours, until the version check command kicks in again... Then what? Are we going to reflash chips all day long? This is not as quick and easy as updating keys... All this is quite disturbing, to say the least.

To obtain a new CAM (if destroyed by the ECM), you will be forced to call BEV (if you are a legit subscriber, of course) and read to the CSR some sort of memory dump sequence so they know what happened to the IRD/CAM. No "my dog ate my card" excuse... Obvioulsly, I would not call this one in....

Finally, to the people who think that BEV would loose many "semi-legit" subscribers if they sent down an ECM, my brother in law tells me that this is not a worry of BEV, at all. Face it, as a tester, if your CAM/Receiver were to be damaged in an ECM, what would you do? Myself, I would buy another cheapo receiver, get a decent sub and keep on testing when new methods are developped (hopefully). Would I go to *Choice and pay upwards of 60$/mo + new hardware and have no chance (almost) of being able to test again? NO. Would I go back to cable at 50$/mo and get a crappy picture/sound and poor programming? NO. I would do exactly like most people here would do, that is: buy a new receiver, get a decent sub for the time being and wait (hopefully, some of the PROS in here will find ways to get us back on track at some point). In the mean time, BEV will be selling new IRDs like hot cakes. Do you think they will really be loosing money? Think not.

Anyways, as I said, this is NOT my saying and I'm in NO way involved in all of this. I simply wished to share the information I've been given. All I can confirm is that my brother in law DID work for BEV as a software engineer (gees, I even met him at his office last year) and that there is no point for him to lie to me. I know for a fact that by talking to me about all this he could be violating non-disclosure agreements and I'm not inclined in asking him more questions than he's willing to answer. I'm not writing this to create a panic or start rumors. Please do not flame me and I will try to do my best to answer any questions.



>Apparently Bell is going to issue a strike against AVR
>owners with an ECM code similar to the one dishnet
>released. I heard ... and I hope it's not true, that
>when this happens not only will your AVR fry but your
>smartcard will suffer damage as well. My question is
>.... how is it possible and is there away around it ...

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