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We show you everything you need to know about setting up a FTA Receiver, Scanning your channels and loading FTA FILES on your
receiver.

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This is a service we provide free of charge to the FTA Community to help provide the very best FTA Support that we possibly can.

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According to the telco, the service, which is part of a joint venture between AT&T and Raysat Broadcasting, includes content from USA, CNN Mobile, SciFi, Adult Swim, Discovery, Lifetime, Animal Planet, ESPN and others and costs $28 per month. The hardware itself retails for $1,299 and includes an antenna and an in-car “set-top box” device.

So far, about 600 retailers have signed on to to carry the CruiseCast hardware and sell subscriptions, and car makers are reportedly considering offering the system as a factory installed option on some new vehicles.

Most international channels (Asian, Latino, etc.)
XXX Porn channels
Most HD channels

The following channels have moved to Nagra 3 as of May 28 2009

Echostar 110

111, 113, 115, 119, 121, 133, 141, 145, 146, 147, 149, 152, 153, 163, 167, 175, 177, 178, 179, 187, 190, 192, 193, 194, 195, 198, 199

203, 206, 207, 211, 273

301, 302, 304 ,305, 307, 309, 310, 311, 312, 313, 314, 319, 320, 321, 322, 323, 327, 328, 329, 330, 332, 333, 340, 341, 342, 343, 344, 345, 346, 347, 350, 351, 352, 353, 354, 355, 356

400, 401, 410, 412, 413, 439, 455, 456

560 to 572

873, 876, 877, 882, 888, 891, 892, 893, 894, 898, 899

905 to 981, 987

5440, 5441, 9575

Many Sirius Music channels

FTA Keys
FTA Forum
FTA Files

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 **** *********. 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 . **** *********’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 **** *********. 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 **** *********, 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.

April 10, 2009

For many Dish Network customers today is really a “Good Friday” as last night they gained 7 new national HD channels.

The new channels launched were Spike HD, CMT HD, Comedy Central HD, MTV HD, VH1 HD, Nick HD ad BET HD. Also in a surprise move Dish Network also added popular teen network “The N” to their lineup. Perhaps now Dish Network will offer The N and the popular pre school channel Noggin as separate channels. (Updated – Dish Network added BET HD on Friday Afternoon)

And while many people are very happy with the additions to Dish Network there are some customers who are upset over the additions. It appears that a number of these new channels (Nick HD, MTV HD and VH1 HD) are not available to Dish Networks HD only “TurboHD” customers.

This is not the first time Dish Networks “TurboHD” customers were passed over for new HD. Earlier this year Dish launched Fox News HD and Fox Business HD and failed to make the Fox News channels available to their HD only customers.

The launch of these channels comes 8 days late as Dish Network CEO Charlie Ergen announced on his March “Charlie Chat” that these channels were going to launch “by April 1st.”

And while the channels launched late many HD fans seemed quick to forgive the nations second largest satellite provider by reporting that HD shows such as South Park and TNA Wrestling looked great last night on Dish Network.

A DDoS attack attempts to flood the server hosting the site with junk requests, forcing the server to become overwhelmed and freeze up.

The source of the attack is usually a botnet of compromised computers known as zombie PC’s.

Techwatch itself was targeted repeatedly, experiencing spikes of over 2GB per second, before a solution was put in place.

Other major satellite forums have also apparently been targeted with denial of service floods over recent weeks.

S*tellites.co.uk, als*t.co.uk, and s*tpimps.com are other major satellite forums that were reported to have been attacked over March, as well as smaller boards such as s*t-haven, and d*nktenk.com.

When Techwatch was first attacked by repeated DDoS floods in February, messages posted to the forums from anonymous proxies suggested that extortion was the primary motivation.

However, there have been no such demands with the more recent wave of attacks over March.

This and the fact that it appears to be satellite forums specifically targeted has led some to suggest that one or more companies within the satellite industry itself may be responsible, even though DDoS attacks are considered a criminal offence in the UK.

In the meantime, all of the larger forums including Techwatch have taken different steps to minimise disruption caused by the DDoS attacks, and so far each appears to be staying online.

It remains to be seen if any identifying information on the attackers can be traced through continued monitoring of the situation.

Programming services that are supported on the Aladin (old) Smart Cards will be taken down based on the staggered schedule below.
The dates in parentheses are when reminder pop-up messages will begin appearing on an affected customer’s TV screen.

4/1/09 = Adult programming (pop-up reminder messages begin 3/18).

4/8/09 = HD programming, Starz, and Encore (pop-up reminder messages begin 3/25).

4/15/09 = Latino programming, Showtime, HBO, and Cinemax (pop-up messages for Latino begin 3/25 and for Showtime, HBO, and Cinemax begin 4/1).

4/22/09 = Classic Gold 250 (pop-up reminder messages begin 4/8).

4/29/09 = Classic Silver 200 (pop-up reminder messages begin 4/15).

5/27/09 = Last round of on-screen messaging begins on 5/6 for any remaining services.

All remaining services (including local network programming) will be shut off to Aladin Smart Cards by 5/27.

The marketing calls were made to some consumers who signed up for the Federal Trade Commission’s national do-not-call registry to fend off unwanted sales pitches, the agency said.

“Because a few bad actors still don’t get it, we want to make it crystal clear. If you call consumers whose numbers are on the Do Not Call Registry, you’re breaking the law,” said Eileen Harrington, acting director of the FTC’s consumer protection unit.

Dish Network said the company obeyed the law and should not be held responsible for violations by independent retailers.

“An independent audit demonstrates that DISH Network is in compliance with ‘do-not-call’ laws, has proper controls in place, and is well within the safe-harbor provisions of the law,” the Englewood, Colorado-based company said in a statement.

“We also believe that the FTC is equating merely doing business with an independent retailer to ‘causing’ or ‘assisting and facilitating’ violations by that retailer,” Dish Network said. “We look forward to resolving these differences of opinion through the judicial process.”

The FTC said the lawsuit was filed in federal district court in Springfield, Illinois and was joined by state attorneys general from California, Illinois, Ohio and North Carolina.

The federal lawsuit seeks to stop Dish from making the calls either directly or indirectly through its dealers, asks for unspecified civil penalties and asks that the company be required to enforce compliance with the do-not-call registry regulations. Two other related lawsuits were also filed against two of Dish Network’s authorized dealers, the agency said.

The FTC’s do-not-call registry became effective in 1995, allowing consumers to register their telephone numbers without charge. Telemarketers can access the registry via the Internet but are prohibited from calling the phone numbers.

Dish provides service to more than 13.7 million satellite television customers.

Federal Trade Commission v Dish Network, U.S. District Court, Central District of Illinois, No. 09-03073.

His weapon of choice is an unassuming, pizza-sized satellite dish that can literally harpoon signals from space – and provide lucrative and illicit profit.

And it’s happening across the country. The Canadian Motion Pictures Distribution Association estimates that the total loss to the industry from satellite piracy in 2001 alone was about $1 billion – and that number is likely far higher today.

But lately, satellite companies, including Bell ExpressVu and U.S.-based DISH Network have been fighting back. The companies are switching to a tough new encryption system while using the threat of court action to target end users.

“We take this very seriously and we have taken a number of actions to counter signal theft,” Bell spokesperson Julie Smithers said. Satellite companies like to remind users that theft of signal not only means less subscription revenue for providers, but a fall in ratings for stations which translates into lost advertising revenue, and for artists who are given a portion of profits from subscriptions through the Canadian Television Fund.

Los Angeles-based media analysts The Carmel Group estimates there are at least two million illegal television households in the U.S. and Canada, out of a universe of about 15 million legal households. And the number is growing exponentially.

In the digital age, pirates are likely to look a lot like James, a middle- aged Toronto engineer with two children who happens to enjoy watching the Tennis Channel.

“I can’t believe I was actually paying for cable before,” he enthuses. James has access to a universe of more than 200 channels, including current pay-per-view movies that are only available at the video store for a cost. Last summer he put up a second satellite at his cottage, with a dish and receiver from a computer store in downtown Toronto that he purchased for less than $200.

James is currently watching a live tennis match in his living room which is decorated with trophies from his local club. Flipping through channels on a black set-top box reveals that he has fully unscrambled access to dozens of Hollywood movies (currently playing are The Dark Knight and Milk) for which legitimate subscribers have to pay up to $5.99 each.

At the heart of the problem are “Free To Air” satellite receivers that are widely available throughout Canada. While the possession of the equipment is not a crime, modifying it to access subscription signals is.

Free to Air is a system widely available in Europe, where television and radio broadcasts are typically sent unencrypted. There are some 250 Free to Air channels in North America, typically for ethnic programming.

“The way piracy works in North America is when consumers turn their Free to Air receivers into Free to Air units that steal,” says a Carmel Group report.

A USB port on the system allows consumers to change the internal programming of the module after downloading software from the Internet.

“What the manufacturers and retailers are doing may not be illegal, but it is wilful blindness,” argues Luc Perrault, co-chair of the Coalition Against Satellite Signal Theft and a vice-president of the Weather Network. “These things are being imported by the container load into Canada and it’s a serious issue.”

The coalition, which represents Canadian cable and satellite providers is lobbying government to toughen laws against piracy, including harsher sentences for pirates.

There have been some charges, but they aren’t coming quickly enough for the industry. Chris Frank, vice-president of programming for Bell ExpressVu, says the company has “done everything to ensure the integrity of our platform. Secret services around the world spend billions of dollars upgrading encryption systems to make sure their data is secure,” he told the Star’s Chris Sorensen last year. “We are a commercial company, we can’t spend billions, but we spend what it takes within reasonable bounds.”

Frank would not say how many people steal from Bell only that it was “speculative to try and figure it out. But the illegal reception is well within industry bounds.”

So far, Bell’s electronic countermeasures with a new encryption route introduced last November, seem to be working, blocking access to many channels. DISH Network is also in the process of migrating to the new system.

But hackers have been here before. Hacker groups are currently working on the new system, and some feel it is only a matter of time before the code is broken.

Meanwhile, one final route that would have a powerful deterrent effect is to go after consumers who steal signal.

In a get-tough policy, Bell has targeted end users by threatening legal action against customers who have been sold FTA receivers and are registered members of websites that promote piracy.

“We are contacting you because the operation or possession of illegal signal theft equipment to access Bell ExpressVu’s programming constitutes a violation,” says a letter sent to customers of a distributor selling satellite equipment.

The letter states that Bell is willing to drop legal proceedings if the user pays a $1,000 fine and hands over the equipment to Bell.

But the new tactics aren’t scaring some pirates.

“They’ll have to pry the remote control out of my hands before I give it up,” says James.

The new technology is a step towards the creation of computer hard drives with no moving parts, which would be much faster, less expensive and use less energy than current ones. In the future, the new battery could be developed to power cars.

The study is published in the journal Nature.

The device created by University of Miami Physicist Stewart E. Barnes, of the College of Arts and Sciences and his collaborators can store energy in magnets rather than through chemical reactions. Like a winding up toy car, the spin battery is “wound up” by applying a large magnetic field — no chemistry involved. The device is potentially better than anything found so far, said Barnes.

“We had anticipated the effect, but the device produced a voltage over a hundred times too big and for tens of minutes, rather than for milliseconds as we had expected,” Barnes said. “That this was counterintuitive is what lead to our theoretical understanding of what was really going on.”

The secret behind this technology is the use of nano-magnets to induce an electromotive force. It uses the same principles as those in a conventional battery, except in a more direct fashion. The energy stored in a battery, be it in an iPod or an electric car, is in the form of chemical energy. When something is turned “on” there is a chemical reaction which occurs and produces an electric current. The new technology converts the magnetic energy directly into electrical energy, without a chemical reaction. The electrical current made in this process is called a spin polarized current and finds use in a new technology called “spintronics.”

The new discovery advances our understanding of the way magnets work and its immediate application is to use the MTJs as electronic elements which work in different ways to conventional transistors. Although the actual device has a diameter about that of a human hair and cannot even light up an LED (light-emitting diode–a light source used as electronic component), the energy that might be stored in this way could potentially run a car for miles. The possibilities are endless, Barnes said.

“There are magnets hidden away in many things, for example there are several in a mobile telephone, many in a car, and they are what keeps your refrigerator closed,” he said. “There are so many that even a small change in the way we understand of how they work, and which might lead to only a very small improvement in future machines, has a significant financial and energetic impact.”