Why did DishTV India choose an embedded root-of-trust?

Earlier this summer, DishTV India selected Rambus’ CryptoMedia Security Platform for use in its Pay TV satellite system. Essentially,CryptoMedia ensures secure distribution of premium content for cable and satellite operators with a hardware root-of-trust embedded in the set-top-box (STB) chipset that is resistant to side-channel attacks.

With 14.9 million subscribers and a growing user base, DishTV India required a simple, yet effective method of protecting premium content from unauthorized access. Ultimately, DishTV India chose Rambus’ CryptoMedia technology over competing solutions to facilitate the design of a secure, cardless set-top box.

Securing next-gen drones

John Edwards of Semiconductor Engineering recently penned an article that explores the security risks associated with drones. The biggest drone threat of all, says Edwards, may turn out to be attacks made against the vehicles themselves.

“Drones, also known as UAVs (unmanned aerial vehicles) and UASs (unmanned aerial systems), need a variety of internal components to work effectively. The list includes MEMS (such as accelerometers, gyroscopes, magnetometers and pressure sensors), GPS modules, processors and digital radios,” he explained.

Rambus microsite goes live on The Next Platform

A new microsite curated by Rambus is now live on The Next Platform. According to Kendra De Berti, Director, Solutions Marketing at Rambus, the microsite hosts a wide range of in-depth content on applications from the data center to the mobile edge for readers of the popular publication.

IBC 2016

Join us at IBC to learn how DishTV India is going cardless with our CryptoMedia Content Protection Core.

Going cardless for CAS with a hardware root-of-trust

The majority of set-top boxes (STBs) on the market in the 1990s were secured by Conditional Access System (CAS) smart cards that stored STB identities along with their respective service rights. While these early smart cards offered operators basic levels of content protection against unauthorized viewers, they were ultimately incapable of guarding against increasingly sophisticated methods of attack by criminal hackers and pirate collectives.

Smarter than a Smart Card

Set-top boxes (STBs) were initially secured by Conditional Access System (CAS) smart cards. However, this approach is no longer effective. Smart cards cannot prevent unauthorized access to premium 4K and UHD content, as they are not designed to protect the interface between the card and box, or the STB SoC itself. This is one of the reasons why cardless CAS set-top boxes, equipped with a hardware-based root-of-trust, are increasing in popularity amongst major operators such as Dish TV India. A hardware root-of-trust, provided by platforms such as Rambus’ CryptoMedia, offers operators robust security protection with an integrated security core that acts to effectively decrease potential attack vectors. Moreover, eliminating the smart card significantly reduces cost, for both short-term BOM and long-term liability in the form of frequent card swaps. It should be noted that not all hardware security cores are created equal. One important consideration is that any hardware security core should be compatible with multiple leading CAS and DRM systems. This ensures operators are not locked into a single vendor for the entire lifetime of a set-top box. Moreover, the ability to function alongside numerous CAS and DRM systems can potentially enable new ways of securely distributing pay content, offering tangible benefits to both DTH operators and OTT distributors. For example, operators can provide their subscribers OTT content alongside broadcast content on the same set-top box, using the same robust hardware security, while maintaining cryptographic isolation between the different systems.