
Season7 -- Software Sky smart card emulator
-------------------------------------------

1994-04-11


This software allows you to connect your PC to a Videocrypt pay-TV
decoder and watch the British Sky Broadcasting Network channels on the
European ASTRA satellites without a subscription and a smart card. You
will need a Videocrypt decoder with a card slot, an IBM AT compatible
PC with at least a 12 MHz i286 processor, a serial port and DOS 3.3 or
higher and you will have to build a small interface circuit as
described in the file ADAPTER.TXT.

IMPORTANT: It is illegal to watch pay-TV programs without a subscription
           in the countries in which a regular subscription is available
           (for the Sky channels, these are currently Great Britain and
           Northern Ireland). The legal situation in other countries
           is unclear, but as it is currently tolerated that e.g. in
           Germany and Sweden so-called pirate or clone cards are sold,
           using this software in other countries should be no problem 
           at the moment. There is perhaps also no problem if you have
           already a regular Sky subscription for all channels and want
           to use this software only for educational purposes in
           Great Britain and Northern Ireland. THE AUTHOR OF THIS SOFTWARE
           TAKES NO RESPONSIBILITY FOR THE LEGALITY OF USING AND
           DISTRIBUTING THIS SOFTWARE. As far as the author is concerned,
           this software is in the public domain and may be used and
           redistributed outside Great Britain and Northern Ireland without
           restrictions.

Season7 implements currently the secret algorithm in the 07 series
card. It is very likely, that this software will malfunction after Sky
switches to the codes in the new 09 series cards which are already
being distributed to customers. Updating this software would be very
easy, if the author got the new secret algorithm for the 09 cards, but
this is unlikely at the moment just as it is unclear if clone cards
will be available after new new 09 card codes have been activated.


How do I use Season7
--------------------

You have to build an electrical interface between the decoder's card
slot and a serial port of your PC. The file ADAPTER.TXT that comes with
this package gives you more technical information about how to do this.
Then start SEASON7.EXE and give as a command line argument the port
number to which you connected your interface (default is COM2 if you
don't give a number).

E.g. enter

	SEASON7 1

if your interface is connected to COM1. If the text 'RESET' or
'Decoding ...' doesn't appear after a few seconds, then please switch
the channel in order to cause a card reset in the decoder. This
software has currently only been tested with a PACE VC100 decoder, but
it is expected to work with all other decoders, too.

You can leave the program by pressing either q, x or ESC and you can
activate and deactivate a debugging mode by pressing d. In the
debugging mode, all data packets exchanged between the card and the
decoder are listed. By pressing l you can write the last (up to 1000)
crypto messages to file VCLOG. As the log file time stamps are UTC, you
should define your local time zone in environment variable TZ (e.g. set
TZ=MET-1DST in Middle Europe). On slow computers (e.g. an i286
processor with 12 MHz is slow enough), the time needed for the
debugging output might already be too long and the decoder will get a
timeout and send a RESET signal. 

As the protocol is quite time critical, try to use only simple DOS (no
DOS compatibility box in another operating system) and if you still
have problems, remove unnecessary TSR programms that might steal time
and interrupts from Season7. 

On fast machines (e.g. with an i386 or i486 processor), it is possible
that the PC sends the bytes too quickly for the decoder. Then you'll
get a RESET message from time to time and the image won't be decoded
always. In this case you'll have to tell Season7 to wait 1 or 2
milliseconds after each byte. This is possible using the command line
options wb1 or wb2 or by pressing '+' or '-' while the software is
running. E.g. start the program with 'season7 2 wb1' in order to use
COM2 and wait 1 ms after each byte. On an old 12MHz i286 system
however, this additional wait time is not necessary and with wb1, such
a PC would even be too slow.

While decrypting, Season7 shows you two hexadecimal numbers from the
decoder's data packets. The first one is used to select the secret key
in the card, so if this one changes one day, Sky has activated new
codes. The second number identifies the channel. If the numbers bore
you, better switch off the PC monitor in order to save power while
watching TV.


Who wrote Season7
-----------------

Due to the not 100% clear legal situation that surrounds clone cards,
etc., I prefer not to state my name here. It should be sufficient to
know for you that Season7 was written by a German computer science
student just for fun and I have no commercial pay-TV piracy intentions.
The author and many other Videocrypt hobby experts who know how to
contact me periodically read the USENET group alt.satellite.tv.europe,
so please post there a message if you have problems, questions,
suggestions, bug reports, etc. regarding this software.

Season7 uses a public domain serial port assembler routine which has
been published by David Kessner some time ago.

This software was primarily written for European Star Trek fans outside
Great Britain who don't have a chance to get a regular Sky subscription
and have no other way of watching the undubbed version of their
favourite SF series. I don't want to cause any harm to Sky and I even
asked them for a regular subscription some time ago, but they refused
to sell one to Germany. So they have to live with the consequences of
attracting the interest of high tech freaks to the technical details of
their access control system. :-)


Does the existence of Season7 mean that Videocrypt is fully hacked?
-------------------------------------------------------------------

No, not at all. Videocrypt continues to be a very secure access control
system. Season7 was only possible, because one hacker in Europe got in
an unknown way access to the secret key and algorithm in Sky's 07
series smart card. This knowledge will be completely useless once Sky
has exchanged all customer cards with the 09 series cards that surely
contain a new secret key, which can't be guessed easily by
eavesdropping the dialog between the card and the decoder. The author
of this software was able to analyze one of the clone cards (with very
valuable help from someone in Northern Europe) as did many other clone
card manufacturers. The original Sky cards are much better protected.
Whether this software will be updated to the new codes in the next card
generation depends much on someone getting access again to the secret
card contents and revealing them on the USENET to hobby Videocrypt
experts.

In contrast to some clone cards, this software contains no update trap
code that allows the clone card producers to increase their profit by
telling from time to time to Sky how the clone cards can be
deactivated, which will make a trivial clone card update necessary. The
external key manipulation features provided by some clone card
manufacturers are also only a marketing trick, which is why you won't
find a similar feature in Season7 which has already all the possible
"updates" included that clone card manufacturers usually magically get
ready within 30 minutes after a modification from Sky (surprise,
surprise ...).

