What is N3 and why does it effect the viewing of programming while using fta receivers. In order to understand this myself I did some research online. While this might not be 100% accurate or very technical based, I think it will serve as a rough outline of what N3 is and what we can expect AT THIS TIME.
To really understand this question we must first learn some terminology and background on what is involved in viewing those programs. Let’s start out with some definitions.

CAM or conditional access module is defined by the DVB standard as an interface between a standardised DVB common interface receiver and one or more proprietary smartcards for signal decryption. It is not the smartcard itself. The standard format of this module follows PCMCIA specifications; some receivers bypass the requirement for a separate module by providing embedded CAM functionality in the receiver to communicate with specific proprietary smartcards such as Nagravision, Conax, Irdeto, Viaccess, Betacrypt. In the North American market, most “package receivers” sold by signal providers provide embedded CAM operation; terminology is therefore often misused to misidentify the smartcard as a CAM.

CW control words are also some times called Keys. (see explanation below)

DSA. Digital signature algorithm. DSA is based on a different mathematical problem than that of RSA (discrete logarithm problem) or the difficulty of inverting a mathematical exponentiation operation in a finite field. DSA generates a digest of the message to be signed using a hash function as with RSA. The digest is then processed by a DSA signing operation, which requires private key and generates two 160 bit numbers. This signature accompanies the original message when sent. A recipient system that needs to verify the signature recomputes the digest by applying the hash function to the received message.

DES algorithm was initially published as FIPS publication 46 (USA Federal Information Processing Standards ) in 1977. The algorithm is designed to encipher and decipher 64 bit blocks of data using a 56 bit
key.

DVB. Digital Video Broadcasting is a suite of internationally accepted open standards for digital television. DVB standards are maintained by the DVB Project, an international industry consortium with more than 270 members.

ECM (Electronic counter measures) Electronic counter measures are signals that are sent via satellite to to the IRD to combat satellite tv piracy.

EEPROM (also written E2PROM and pronounced e-e-prom or simply e-squared), which stands for Electrically Erasable Programmable Read-Only Memory, is a type of non-volatile memory used in computers and other electronic devices to store small amounts of data that must be saved when power is removed, e.g., calibration tables or device configuration.

EKS. Extreme Key Sharing. This is basically another name for IKS. (see explanation below)

Emulation . is the imitation of behavior of a computer or other electronic system with the help of another type of computer/system

Encryption is the process of transforming information (referred to as plaintext) using an algorithm (called cipher) to make it unreadable to anyone except those possessing special knowledge, usually referred to as a key. The result of the process is encrypted information

FTA is often used to refer to receivers and equipment which contain no decryption hardware, built with the intention of being able to receive unencrypted free-to-air broadcasts; more properly FTA refers to the unencrypted broadcasts themselves.

Hash functions. A one time function of a data value which is easy to compute but difficult to reverse. The most credible hash function is the U.S. government’s secure hash algorithm (SHA-1). SHA-1 generates a 160 bit output,(with DSA) which gives it a substantial advantage over algorithms with a 128 bit output.

IDEA is a block cipher which uses a 128-bit length key to encrypt successive 64-bit blocks of plaintext. The procedure is quite complicated using subkeys generated from the key to carry out a series of modular arithmetic and XOR operations on segments of the 64-bit plaintext block. The encryption scheme uses a total of fifty-two 16-bit subkeys

IKS. Internet Key Sharing is using a web server to share CW’s from a cam or stand alone 3rd party bin file to share the Cw’s of encrypted tv programs.

IRD is an integrated receiver-decoder, in other words a complete digital satellite TV or radio receiver; “decoder” in this context refers not to decryption but to the decompression and conversion of MPEG video into displayable format.

KEYS. Keys are a seemingly random string of bits, with the number of bits (key length) depending on the particular cryptosystem. There are private (secret) keys and public keys.

MAP Modular Arithmetic Processor and enhanced DES accelerator are designed to speed up cryptographic calculations using Public Key Algorithms and Secret Key Algorithms.

MPEG-2 (Motion Picture Experts Group technical standard 2) This is a widely used standard for digital encoding of motion pictures. It typically achieves a 50 to 1 compression of data. It achieves this mainly by not retransmitting areas of the screen that have not changed since the previous frame.

RSA. Rivest, Shamir, Adleman. A public key based digital signature scheme. Encryption and decryption has to be applied to the entire message contents and the volume of data is at least double the original message size. To improve the scheme a hash function is introduced into the processing.

Smart card. A tiny processor and storage system realized in a microcircuit embedded in a plastic card.

There are some brief definitions to help us understand things a little better as we get into what N3 is. N3 stands for Nagravision3. This is a form of encryption produced by a company called the Kudelski Group. This is a company owned and operated by Andre Kudelski, based in Cheseaux, Switzerland. The Kudelski Group specialize in security and access control solutions for digital television for many companies around the world. The Kudelski Group forms partnership with companies Like Echostar to provide security and encryption services for Echostar’s pay per view programming service they offer. The Kudelski group and Echostar formed a company to offer this support by the name of Nagrastar. Nagrastar is responsible for the security of the encoded broadcasts of the American satellite tv provider Echostar and the Canadian satellite tv provider Bell Expressvu. Nagravision is the type of encryption and Nagrastar manage how this encryption is used. Nagrastar does this by the use of smart cards or built in Cams in some of the newer models of IRD. They update these Cams by sending a ECM to update the EEPROM in the smart card or cam installed in the IRDs. This ensures only authorized or paying customers are the only ones who can view their encrypted programming. To explain in simple/basic terms, what this means is Nagrastar will encrypt the signal at their uplink center using the present form of nagravision encryption. Echostar uses an uplink center which is based in Cheyenne , WY, USA to compress their signal into the Mpeg2 and Mpeg4 format and add the encryption . Bell Expressvu’s uplink center is located in North York which is in the Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
When Direct tv secured their signal with the introduction of the P4 card, satellite tv hackers moved on to the weaker encryption used by Echostar and Bell Expressvu. At that time it was Nagravision1 encryption being used to secure the signal broadcast from the satellites. Hackers got help in decrypting the N1 cards by Europeans who already were heavy into researching weaknesses in the N1 cards. Also at this same time someone figured out that you could use an FTA receiver to decrypt the programming by loading 3rd party software onto the fta receiver to emulate the smart cards used in the pay for view providers IRD’s. After numerous ECM’s sent out by Nagrastar, failed to stop hackers from getting access to the programming, it was concluded that a new card would be needed to fully secure the stream. So in the spring of 2005 nagrastar started to change to the Nagravision2 encryption. However once again with help from overseas hackers, N2 was defended almost as soon as the signal was secured. After several more attempts with ECM’s, one of which was quite successful for awhile (MAP57) it was concluded that another card swap was necessary in order to once again secure the signal.
This brings us to this point in time. I’m sure many of you are wondering why it is so hard to crack N3 when N1 and N2 seemed quite easy to crack. Well the answer is quite simple. The Nagravision people have had a few years experience dealing with hackers and in fact have hired some of the former hackers to help them secure their signal from any future breaks in the encryption. They have done this by building better firewalls and increasing the complexity of the algorithms used to encrypt the signal broadcast by the pay per view providers. They do this by using a combination of RSA, IDEA, DSA, DES, algorithms. This makes it next to impossible to guess what the CW’s are because the possible output combination of these Algorithms equal more then all the molecules in the universe. So hackers must get inside the card to see what exact is going on and how the card/cam is using the MAPs to process the CW’s. Now this is not easy to do. They do it by a complex method of using acids to peel the layers off the chip and sending electrical currents to the chip to see how it reacts. This is a science mastered by very few hackers/card crackers in the world. N3 has been in use in Europe for at least a year now and no one has a successful hack for a free standing hack of the N3 encryption. Remember Europeans are the ones who helped crack N1 and N2.

Now what does this mean for people using FTA receivers at this time. Well it is obvious to anyone who was using a FTA receiver to view the programming of Bell Expressvu, it means a black screen. OH no, you cry, what will I do. Well you have several opinions. You could start paying the providers to watch tv. It’s expensive, has allot of crappy stations but it never goes down. Next you could do true FTA. After all you already have a FTA receiver and cables run. You would only need to switch to a larger dish and linear lnb. This is minimum cost and you get quite a few channels such as fox, abc, cbs, etc. However what you don’t get is, HBO, PPV or porn. Let’s face it, this is what most FTA receiver or card hackers want to view. So what does that leave you with? Well I’m afraid it’s Card sharing, IKS or EKS. The Nfusion was the first FTA to be successful on a large scale in North America. However even these will not give you wide open tv. You can only view what you buy as a package for the providers. A basic explanation of how IKS or at least how I think works (because I’m not a hacker but a student/studier of satellite tv), is like this. A group buys a sub or combination of subs and sends all the CW’s for ALL the channels to a central server where the CW’s are cache until a request comes in to the server requesting the information for a certain channel. A fta receiver is connected to the internet, 24/7. As you choose a channel to watch on your tv, the receiver sends an encrypted packet to the central server with the receiver’s ID and CW request for that channel. The server reads this packet of data and sends back the CW’s needed to view that programming.

Cool you say. Well this method has it’s pit falls as well. For example, decrypting the encrypted programming of the pay per view providers is considered illegal in North America. This could lead to a fine from a civil lawsuit by the providers or even a criminal charges by the legal authorizes in your area. If a person was to use this method they should take steps to hide their true identity because despite what these salesmen will tell you, your IP can be traced. If your receiver makes contact enough to process the data packet requested by the receiver then there is a trail to your house. No country is safe from a server seizure either. Even Hong Kong as turned over servers to Echostar when they got sued to get possession of those servers hosting hacking files by Echostar. How do you stop from getting caught?? Well some use a proxy. However not all proxies are created equal. Some proxies are transparent and can be seen right through. IKS has a hard time process CW’s using good proxies because of the time delay in the request data packet. My PERSONAL opinion is it’s not worth the risk. However now that you have the facts you can make up your own mind as to what you want to do as N3 nears completion and all channels go black.

I’m hoping many of you try TRUE fta and become hobbyist at this fta stuff. I think you will find it is educational and fun to boot.

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