On Tue, 17 Dec 1996 17:30:38 -0500, you wrote:

>  One of the most popular reason to crack pics, particularly the 16c6x and
>16c84 is because they are widely used in smartcards for satellite
>television.  I understand there is a booming market in Europe, and
>particularly in the UK for hacked smartcards to acquire/steal television
>signals.  Also, I have heard that the recent 18" DBS systems in the USA (the
>RCA, Sony, etc. systems that use DirectTV or USSB) smartcards use a 16c6x
>part, and that the hackers prefer the 16c84 because they can blow them again
>and again when the satellite company implements "countermeasures"...
>  These folks want to disassemble the smartcard code so they can steal
>television.  They are stealing software in order to do that.
>  Help them if you want, but you could become an accomplice to a *felony* if
>you assist them in stealing television programming...
>Jeff Otterson
This is not directly true, the 16C84 is used in the *pirate* smart
cards. These are the clones of the actual real smartcard. So what the
people are doing when they break the 16C84 in this case is stealing
the code from somebody that has stolen it already. This is why the
pirate card makers are moving away from using the 16C84 and using more
secure processors such as the Dallas 5002 etc.

Not that I condone any of this code stealing, but as has been said
before if there is sufficient motive and money behind it just about
any kind of processor could be reverse engineered.



>-------------
>otterson@mindspring.com
>Maker and user of tools
>PGP key available at http://www.mindspring.com/~otterson/pgp.htm

---
Simon Thompson   email simon@tyrant.demon.co.uk
Electronic Engineer 
Manchester
England