College student charged with distributing DirecTV trade secrets online

[InfoSec News <isn () c4i org>]

http://www.nandotimes.com/technology/story/699152p-5172282c.html

By TED BRIDIS
Associated Press
 
WASHINGTON (January 2, 2003 7:20 p.m. EST) - Prosecutors charged a
college student on Thursday with distributing on the Internet hundreds
of secret documents that could help TV owners steal signals from one
of the nation's leading satellite television providers.

Igor Serebryany, 19, of Los Angeles, faces stiff prison penalties if
convicted under economic espionage laws. The FBI said in court records
that Serebryany acknowledged distributing the documents on the
Internet. Investigators do not believe Serebryany sought any money in
exchange for the disclosures.

Serebryany "specifically stated that he wanted to help the ... hacking
community," FBI agent Tracy Marquis Kierce said in court records. A
woman who answered the phone at the family's apartment in Los Angeles
declined to speak with a reporter or pass a message to Serebryany. He
also did not respond to e-mails sent to four of his Internet accounts.

The documents leaked onto the Internet described details about the
latest access-card technology from DirecTV Inc. The devices,
resembling credit cards, are plugged into a viewer's satellite box and
control which movie and sports channels each of the company's 11
million subscribers can watch.

DirecTV, owned by Hughes Electronics Corp., said it spent more than
$25 million to develop its latest "Period 4" anti-piracy cards, which
hackers have so far been unable to break. Marc J. Zwillinger, a lawyer
for DirecTV, said the company would sue or seek criminal charges
against others caught redistributing such documents.

"To the extent people have these documents, we expect this news will
cause them to delete the documents immediately," Zwillinger said.

Older, pirated cards are widely traded and sold illegally among
satellite customers. Companies occasionally destroy rogue cards by
sending damaging electronic signals across their systems, forcing
subscribers to buy new cards in what has become an escalating
technology battle.

The stakes are high: Satellite programming can cost $2,400 annually
for a household. Only about 18 million U.S. viewers subscribe to
satellite services, compared with nearly 69 million cable TV
subscribers, according to the Federal Communications Commission. But
DirecTV added 2 million subscribers last year, compared with 250,000
new subscribers for the entire cable industry.

The sensitive DirecTV documents, which included details about the
design and architecture of these latest cards, began showing up in
October on underground Web sites and discussion groups that specialize
in defeating the devices. One site is operated by a person known as
"Maxximus."

Maxximus told FBI agents that he was contacted in September by someone
who called himself "Igor" and used the nickname "Igor32." This person
e-mailed Maxximus and said he wanted internal DirecTV documents
published on the Internet.

Investigators said Serebryany took copies of many of the documents to
his family's home in Los Angeles and from his home computer sent more
than 800 megabytes worth of electronic copies to at least three Web
site operators.

The operator of one Web site, http://www.PirateDen.com, said he did
not receive copies from Serebryany but acknowledged seeing some of the
documents.

"It was mostly like snippets of internal meetings, technical meetings,
about the new access card and such," the site's operator - who
identified himself as J. Gray of Nanaimo, British Columbia - said in a
telephone interview. "It gave people a start on where to start
looking, the technical specifications."

Serebryany was charged under the federal Economic Espionage Act of
1996, which prohibits anyone from disclosing trade secrets for
economic benefit and carries penalties in this case up to 10 years in
prison and a $250,000 fine. Only about 35 criminal cases have been
filed under the law.

Although investigators acknowledge that Serebryany apparently didn't
profit from the disclosures, the law bars giving away secrets for
anyone else's economic benefit.

Zwillinger, the lawyer for DirecTV, was formerly an expert on the law
for the Justice Department and prosecuted the nation's first case
under the law.

The internal DirecTV documents were under court seal as part of a
lawsuit between the company and rival NDS Group PLC, a unit of News
Corp., over an agreement for NDS to provide access cards for DirecTV
subscribers. In a series of lawsuits and countersuits, NDS had alleged
that DirecTV itself was responsible for leaking the internal documents
onto the Internet.

A spokeswoman for NDS, based in England, could not be reached
immediately.



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