Nagravision
Encyclopedia
Nagravision is a company of the Kudelski Group
that develops conditional access
systems for cable and satellite television
. The name is also used for their main products, the Nagravision encryption systems.
The decryption unit is either integrated into a receiver, available as a conditional access module
(CAM), or as one of many encryption schemes supported on a CAM emulator
.
Nagravision has been adopted all over the world as a conditional access system, with providers:
Initially all International channels including Pakistani channels were moved from N2 to N3, then Indian channels and in the third phase Adult channels have been moved. The rest of the channels were transferred to Nagra 3 on DishNetwork, on June 18, 2009.
Digital+ is the only provider using Nagravision Cardmagedon (and also Nagravision Aladin) after its adoption in March 2005.
The original Nagravision 1 is now almost obsolete after it was originally compromised in 1999, although Dream Satellite maintain relative security by changing keys several times throughout the day, causing great inconvenience to unauthorized viewers.
The Nagravision Aladin providers have been confronting the issue of satellite signal piracy and smart card piracy, since the system was publicly compromised in summer 2005. At first, security of the system was regained, with software revisions, manipulation of the Nagravision encryption algorithm, along with the phasing out of older cards, like the ROM101, ROM102, ROM103 in USA and ROM110,ROM120,ROM130 in Europe, in favour of the newer ROM142/ROM180/ROM182.
Card hackers have, however, continued to compromise the encryption system, with continued software and key releases being made available to the public. Software emulation of the Nagravision system has been implemented in many Free-To-Air Satellite receivers, allowing unauthorised viewing to those who do not own an official card..
. A smartcard security microcontroller
(in a key-shaped package) decrypts data that is transmitted during the blanking intervals of the TV signal and extracts the random seed
value needed for controlling the random number generation. The system also permitted the audio signal to be scrambled by inverting its spectrum at 12.5 kHz using a frequency mixer
.
Like with most smartcard-based conditional access
systems, the smartcards used with the digital Nagravision system were repeatedly reverse engineered by hackers, which allowed the production of clone cards and "patched" receivers. However, the analog Nagravision system was the first widely used cryptographically controlled conditional access system that was broken in a way that bypassed the tamper resistance
of its smartcard entirely and from which no recovery was possible by replacing all smartcards. The weakness exploited by this attack is the random seed
value that is used to control the descrambling process. It is only 15 bits long and by the late 1990s, even low-cost home computers with frame grabber
s were computationally powerful enough to try all 215 = 32768 possible permutations of video lines for each frame in real time
. Software decoders were written that selected of this small number of possible permutations the one that maximized the similarity of neighboring image lines in the resulting image and displayed the result. The scrambling of the audio signal was not a cryptographically controlled process and could easily be undone using the same frequency mixer
circuit used for scrambling.
Kudelski Group
The Kudelski Group claims to be a "world leader in digital security and convergent media solutions" for the delivery of digital and interactive content...
that develops conditional access
Conditional access
Conditional Access is the protection of content by requiring certain criteria to be met before granting access to this content...
systems for cable and satellite television
Satellite television
Satellite television is television programming delivered by the means of communications satellite and received by an outdoor antenna, usually a parabolic mirror generally referred to as a satellite dish, and as far as household usage is concerned, a satellite receiver either in the form of an...
. The name is also used for their main products, the Nagravision encryption systems.
Digital systems
Four versions of Nagravision are in common use for digital satellite television, known as Nagravision, Nagravision Cardmagedon, Nagravision Aladin and Nagravision Merlin. Nagravision Cardmagedon and Aladin are often confused with each other and used under the term "Nagravision 2" which technically does not exist. Nagravision Cardmagedon is, however, a complicated combination of Nagravision Aladin and Mediaguard SECA 2 encryption. Nagravision Merlin is also known as Nagravision 3.The decryption unit is either integrated into a receiver, available as a conditional access module
Conditional access module
A conditional access module is an electronic device, usually incorporating a slot for a smart card, which equips an Integrated Digital Television or set-top box with the appropriate hardware facility to view conditional access content that has been encrypted using a conditional access system...
(CAM), or as one of many encryption schemes supported on a CAM emulator
Emulator
In computing, an emulator is hardware or software or both that duplicates the functions of a first computer system in a different second computer system, so that the behavior of the second system closely resembles the behavior of the first system...
.
Nagravision has been adopted all over the world as a conditional access system, with providers:
- Bell TV (Canada) (Nagravision 3)
- BIG TVBIG TVReliance Digital TV is one of the largest Indian pay TV providers, providing direct broadcast satellite service—including satellite television, audio programming, and interactive television services—to commercial and residential customers in India. It uses MPEG-4 digital compression technology,...
(India) - Claro TV (Central America, Dominican Republic) (Nagravision 1 with MPEG-4MPEG-4MPEG-4 is a method of defining compression of audio and visual digital data. It was introduced in late 1998 and designated a standard for a group of audio and video coding formats and related technology agreed upon by the ISO/IEC Moving Picture Experts Group under the formal standard ISO/IEC...
Encode) - Cyfrowy PolsatCyfrowy PolsatCyfrowy Polsat is a Polish DTH platform. It was launched on December 5, 1999 and is owned by Cyfrowy Polsat S.A. It is the fourth largest digital platform in Europe and the largest in Central and Eastern Europe. Cyfrowy Polsat have 3,47 million subscribes.Cyfrowy Polsat S.A...
(Poland) (Nagravision 3) - Digi TVDigi TVDigi TV is a DTH platform of RCS&RDS, a Romanian cable, telephony, and Internet provider.- Countries where Digi TV is available :* Romania - about 1,100,000 customers* Hungary - about 420,000 customers* Slovakia - about 320,000 customers...
(Romania, Hungary, Czech Republic, Croatia, Serbia, Slovakia) (Nagravision 3) - Digital+ (Spain) (Nagravision 3)
- Dish NetworkDish NetworkDish Network Corporation is the second largest pay TV provider in the United States, providing direct broadcast satellite service—including satellite television, audio programming, and interactive television services—to 14.337 million commercial and residential customers in the United States. Dish...
(USA) (Transition to Nagravision 3 was completed on 6/18/09) - Dream Satellite TVDream Satellite TVDream Satellite TV is the first all-digital Direct-To-Home television broadcasting service via satellite in the Philippines.Broadcasting from the Dream Broadcast Center located at the Clark Special Economic Zone in Pampanga...
(Philippines) (Nagravision 3) - Look CommunicationsLook CommunicationsLook Communications is a telecommunication company that has been in liquidation since November 2009. It was a digital wireless cable, internet service, and web hosting provider...
(Canada) - NET (Brazil, Nagravision 2/3)
- NumericableNumericableNumericable is a British-American-Luxembourgian owned cable television operator operating in France, Belgium and Luxembourg, currently proposing standard quadruple-play services .- History :...
(Belgium, France, Luxembourg) (Nagravision 3 "Merlin") - Sky Deutschland (Germany) (Nagravision 3)
- StarHub TVStarHubStarHub Limited is a full-fledged telecommunications company providing a full range of services over mobile, internet and fixed platforms in Singapore...
(Singapore) - Telenet (Belgium)Telenet (Belgium)Telenet Group is the largest provider of broadband cable services in Belgium. Its business comprises the provision of analog and digital cable television, high speed internet and fixed and mobile telephony services, primarily to residential customers in Flanders and Brussels...
(Belgium) (Nagravision 2) - Tivù SatTivù SatTivù sat is a free-to-air digital satellite television platform, launched by the joint venture between RAI, Mediaset and Telecom Italia Media, and serving Italy, Vatican City and the Republic of San Marino....
, Mediaset PremiumMediaset PremiumMediaset Premium is an Italian digital terrestrial television service provided by Mediaset. It provides pay tv and pay-per-view services through use of a smart card.-History:...
and Pangea platform (Nagravision 3) - ZONZonŻoń is a village in the administrative district of Gmina Margonin, within Chodzież County, Greater Poland Voivodeship, in west-central Poland. It lies approximately south-east of Margonin, south-east of Chodzież, and north of the regional capital Poznań....
(Portugal) (Nagravision 3) - TelefonicaTelefónicaTelefónica, S.A. is a Spanish broadband and telecommunications provider in Europe and Latin America. Operating globally, it is the third largest provider in the world...
(Brazil, Chile, Colombia Nagravision 2/3) - TVATVA-Organizations:*Tennessee Valley Authority*Toronto Vegetarian Association*Tibetan Volunteers for Animals*TVA Media, a media corporation operating out of Littleton, Colorado formerly called The Valley Authority.*Tidewater Volleyball Association-Television:...
(Brazil, Nagravision 2) - UPC IrelandUPC IrelandUPC Ireland is Liberty Global Europe's telecommunications operation in Ireland. UPC Ireland is the largest digital cable television provider within the Republic of Ireland. As of September 2010 the company offers broadband internet, digital television and digital telephony to over 531,000 customers...
(Nagravision 3) - UPC NetherlandsUPC NetherlandsUPC Netherlands is the second largest cable operator in the Netherlands, providing cable television , broadband Internet, and telephone service to both residential and commercial customers.-History:...
(Nagravision 2) - UPC Romania (Nagravision 3)
- Via EmbratelVia EmbratelVia Embratel is a Brazilian operator of Pay television. The service is supplied by Embratel company and operates in Star One C2 satellite. Its transmission system is DTH in Ku Band, and the channels are encrypted by Nagravision 3 system. The reception is made via mini-satellite dish and a DVB-S2...
(Brazil) (Nagravision 3) - Virgin MediaVirgin MediaVirgin Media Inc. is a company which provides fixed and mobile telephone, television and broadband internet services to businesses and consumers in the United Kingdom...
(United Kingdom) (Nagravision 3 "Merlin", swapped from Nagravision 1 during 2009/10) - Top Up TVTop Up TVTop Up TV is a pay television service in the UK launched in March 2004, operating on the digital terrestrial platform. The aim of the service is to "Top Up" Freeview customers by providing additional channels and services....
(United Kingdom) (NagraVision 3 "Merlin" swapped from SECA2 in 2008) - K+ Satellite TV (Vietnam) (Nagravision 3)
Initially all International channels including Pakistani channels were moved from N2 to N3, then Indian channels and in the third phase Adult channels have been moved. The rest of the channels were transferred to Nagra 3 on DishNetwork, on June 18, 2009.
Digital+ is the only provider using Nagravision Cardmagedon (and also Nagravision Aladin) after its adoption in March 2005.
The original Nagravision 1 is now almost obsolete after it was originally compromised in 1999, although Dream Satellite maintain relative security by changing keys several times throughout the day, causing great inconvenience to unauthorized viewers.
The Nagravision Aladin providers have been confronting the issue of satellite signal piracy and smart card piracy, since the system was publicly compromised in summer 2005. At first, security of the system was regained, with software revisions, manipulation of the Nagravision encryption algorithm, along with the phasing out of older cards, like the ROM101, ROM102, ROM103 in USA and ROM110,ROM120,ROM130 in Europe, in favour of the newer ROM142/ROM180/ROM182.
Card hackers have, however, continued to compromise the encryption system, with continued software and key releases being made available to the public. Software emulation of the Nagravision system has been implemented in many Free-To-Air Satellite receivers, allowing unauthorised viewing to those who do not own an official card..
Analog system
An older Nagravision system for scrambling analog satellite television programs was used in the 1990s, for example by the German pay-TV broadcaster Premiere and the French pay-TV broadcaster Canal+. In this line-shuffling system, 32 lines of the PAL TV signal are temporarily stored in both the encoder and decoder, and read out in permuted order under the control of a pseudorandom number generatorPseudorandom number generator
A pseudorandom number generator , also known as a deterministic random bit generator , is an algorithm for generating a sequence of numbers that approximates the properties of random numbers...
. A smartcard security microcontroller
Microcontroller
A microcontroller is a small computer on a single integrated circuit containing a processor core, memory, and programmable input/output peripherals. Program memory in the form of NOR flash or OTP ROM is also often included on chip, as well as a typically small amount of RAM...
(in a key-shaped package) decrypts data that is transmitted during the blanking intervals of the TV signal and extracts the random seed
Random seed
A random seed is a number used to initialize a pseudorandom number generator.The choice of a good random seed is crucial in the field of computer security...
value needed for controlling the random number generation. The system also permitted the audio signal to be scrambled by inverting its spectrum at 12.5 kHz using a frequency mixer
Frequency mixer
In electronics a mixer or frequency mixer is a nonlinear electrical circuit that creates new frequencies from two signals applied to it. In its most common application, two signals at frequencies f1 and f2 are applied to a mixer, and it produces new signals at the sum f1 + f2 and difference f1 -...
.
Like with most smartcard-based conditional access
Conditional access
Conditional Access is the protection of content by requiring certain criteria to be met before granting access to this content...
systems, the smartcards used with the digital Nagravision system were repeatedly reverse engineered by hackers, which allowed the production of clone cards and "patched" receivers. However, the analog Nagravision system was the first widely used cryptographically controlled conditional access system that was broken in a way that bypassed the tamper resistance
Tamper resistance
Tamper resistance is resistance to tampering by either the normal users of a product, package, or system or others with physical access to it. There are many reasons for employing tamper resistance....
of its smartcard entirely and from which no recovery was possible by replacing all smartcards. The weakness exploited by this attack is the random seed
Random seed
A random seed is a number used to initialize a pseudorandom number generator.The choice of a good random seed is crucial in the field of computer security...
value that is used to control the descrambling process. It is only 15 bits long and by the late 1990s, even low-cost home computers with frame grabber
Frame grabber
A frame grabber is an electronic device that captures individual, digital still frames from an analog video signal or a digital video stream. It is usually employed as a component of a computer vision system, in which video frames are captured in digital form and then displayed, stored or...
s were computationally powerful enough to try all 215 = 32768 possible permutations of video lines for each frame in real time
Real-time computing
In computer science, real-time computing , or reactive computing, is the study of hardware and software systems that are subject to a "real-time constraint"— e.g. operational deadlines from event to system response. Real-time programs must guarantee response within strict time constraints...
. Software decoders were written that selected of this small number of possible permutations the one that maximized the similarity of neighboring image lines in the resulting image and displayed the result. The scrambling of the audio signal was not a cryptographically controlled process and could easily be undone using the same frequency mixer
Frequency mixer
In electronics a mixer or frequency mixer is a nonlinear electrical circuit that creates new frequencies from two signals applied to it. In its most common application, two signals at frequencies f1 and f2 are applied to a mixer, and it produces new signals at the sum f1 + f2 and difference f1 -...
circuit used for scrambling.
External links
- Nagravision
- Markus Kuhn: Analysis of the Nagravision video scrambling method, 1998 – explains an attack against the old Nagravision system for analog television