Pirate Card Rejection

Renewable security cards provide the primary security protection in conditional access (CA) systems. Since the legitimate cards are intended to be inexpensive to produce, easy to distribute, and user-installable via externally accessible slots, sales of counterfeit cards may offer the pirate a profitable business. However, since the legitimate infrastructure is likely to be backed by a significant operating budget, it is reasonable to design that infrastructure to detect and reject counterfeit cards. Such an infrastructure would require customers of the pirate to use pirated hosts as well as pirated cards. This secondary security layer increases the pirate’s cost of doing business, and may therefore reduce the amount of piracy. This paper presents a protocol that the legitimate infrastructure can use to detect and reject content decrypted by counterfeit cards.