Another broadcaster has admitted suffered a major hack of its transmissions. This time it’s Austria’s public broadcaster ORF use of the Cryptoworks encryption system, initially developed by Philips but now owned by Irdeto. Widespread hacking of ORF’s AustriaSat HDTV transmissions was reported at the end of December, and earlier in January on German and Austrian on-line forums.

German reports say that 1.3 million smartcards are being replaced.

While there are no reports of problems at other Cryptoworks clients (which include DigiTurk and UPC Direct) there will no doubt be urgent work done to limit the hack and upgrade systems.

Irdeto bought Cryptoworks in 2006 as part of its purchase of Philips CryptoTec, and said at the time that the business had more than 100 customers.

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Categories: Articles, Broadcast, CA/DRM