Murdoch security chief linked to TV piracy site

[InfoSec News <isn () c4i org>]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/internetnews/story/0,7369,667052,00.html

John Cassy, David Leigh and Kevin Maguire
Thursday March 14, 2002
The Guardian 

Evidence in the hands of the Guardian suggests that a former Scotland
Yard commander who represents two of Rupert Murdoch's companies
provided funds to a website that enabled counterfeiters to produce
forged smart cards used to defraud ITV Digital, a principal rival in
the pay TV market.

Ray Adams, who is the head of security at NDS, a company controlled by
Mr Murdoch's News Corporation, had a working relationship with the
website, which has now been closed down and whose founder, Lee
Gibling, has gone missing.

According to emails in the possession of the Guardian, Mr Gibling was
in contact with Mr Adams and received several thousand pounds from NDS
paid directly into his personal bank account.

As a representative of NDS and BSkyB, News Corporation's British TV
business, Mr Adams is a board member of AEPOC, a European industry
action group set up to combat piracy.

Questions about Mr Adams's role have emerged following a legal action
begun in California on Monday. Canal Plus, the French media company,
is claiming $1bn (£700m) in damages from NDS, alleging it used a
laboratory in Israel to crack the secret codes on Canal Plus's own pay
TV smart cards. The information was then made available to
counterfeiters around the world through favoured websites.

ITV Digital, in fierce competition with BSkyB, uses the Canal Plus
access system and claims that piracy in the business has cost it at
least £100m.

Last night, Labour MP Martin O'Neill, chairman of the Commons trade
and industry select committee, urged the office of fair trading to
investigate allegations that ITV Digital's pay TV codes were
deliberately cracked and distributed to counterfeiters. He said the
broadcaster's "fragile finances" meant it could be driven out of
business.

The website, Thoic.com, also known as the House of Ill Compute, was
routinely distributing the secret codes used to make counterfeit cards
for accessing ITV Digital before its sudden closure last year.

NDS has admitted a financial link with the website, but is adamant
that this was part of a legitimate intelligence gathering exercise
aimed at keeping a close eye on hackers who might breach its own
pay-TV security. The company says it was effectively purchasing
intelligence about the hackers who were attracted to the site.

ITV Digital says neither Sky nor NDS should have had any dealings with
such a website and believes the Murdoch companies should have stopped
any financial support as soon as they realised the internet service
was being used to undermine a rival such as itself.

The emails suggest NDS was paying the website's expenses, and even
providing them with a second computer "server" when the high level of
interest through the internet began to strain their facilities.

One email, from Mr Gibling to Mr Adams reads: "I hope you don't mind
me spending so much time on aus and nz activities because I know you
cover my work out of your budget."

Another from another NDS employee, Mike Warren, to Mr Gibling says:  
"Lee - your expenses were signed by R.A and have been taken by hand to
finance and received by them last Wednesday I asked that they were
dealt with asap."

Mr Adams denies ever having been aware the website published ITV
Digital's codes. "We never saw any of those codes," he said. Asked why
he had supported the website financially, and what the content of his
encrypted messages had been, he said: "I am not allowed to discuss
operational matters".



-
ISN is currently hosted by Attrition.org

To unsubscribe email majordomo () attrition org with 'unsubscribe isn' in the BODY
of the mail.