http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/02/17/satellite_tv_hacking/ By Dan Goodin The Register 17th February 2009 White-hat hacker Adam Laurie knows better than to think email, video-on-demand, and other content from Sky Broadcasting and other satellite TV providers is a private matter between him and the company. That's because he's spent the past decade monitoring satellite feeds and the vast amount of private information they leak to anyone with a dish. "Looking at what kind of data you can see being broadcast, some of that is quite surprising," he says. "Things you would expect to be secure turn out not to be secure. The most worrying thing is you can just see all this data going by." Using off-the-shelf components Laurie assembled himself, it's not hard for him to spot private emails in transit, web browsing sessions, and live stock market data that's not supposed to be available for free. The most unforgettable thing he's seen came in 1997, when television reporters in Paris used unsecured feeds to beam back what was supposed to be closed-circuit coverage of Princess Diana's death to a UK television network. "The journalists were smoking cigarettes and gossiping," Laurie says. "We were witnessing these journalists and the events unfolding in the raw, before they were edited. That's not something you normally get access to." Laurie plans to share the findings of his research on Wednesday at the Black Hat security conference in Washington, D.C. He's not the only hacker to research satellite feeds. Researchers Jim Geovedi, Raditya Iryandi, and Anthony Zboralski have exposed similar weaknesses here (PDF). [...] 5B _______________________________________________ Best Selling Security Books and More! http://www.shopinfosecnews.org/Received on Wed Feb 18 2009 - 00:25:28 PST
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