Editing Pirate decryption (section)

==Terminology and Definitions==
Some of the terminology used to describe various devices, programs and techniques dealing with Pay-TV piracy is named for the particular hacks. The "Season" interface for example is named after the Season7 hack on Sky TV which allowed a PC to emulate a legitimate Sky-TV smartcard. The Season7 referred to the seventh and final season of [[Star Trek: The Next Generation]] which was then showing on Sky One. The "Phoenix" hack was named after the mythical bird which can reanimate itself. The hack itself reactivated smartcards that had been switched off by the providers.

Some of the terminology used on Internet discussion sites to describe the various devices, programs and techniques used in dealing with video piracy is strange, non-standard, or specific to one system.  The terms are often no different from the brand names used by legitimate products and serve the same function.

===ISO/IEC 7816 smartcard terminology===
* [[Answer to reset|ATR]] is the answer-to-reset data from an ISO/IEC 7816-compliant smartcard. A card reader would provide power, clock and reset signals to a smartcard, along with a bidirectional serial data interface to permit communication. On reset, the card would send a standard block of serial data (nominally at 9600 bit/s) to identify the card type and indicate the desired bitrate for further communication. The frequency of clock to be supplied may vary from one system or card type to another as it appears not to have been specified in the ISO standard.
* A smart [[card reader]] is a device that allows a computer to communicate with a smartcard. Technically, these are simple devices consisting of a smartcard socket, some voltage level conversion circuitry and a crystal oscillator to supply the card with its clock signal. Early models were connected to the serial port on computers so the interface circuitry had to convert between the [[ISO/IEC 7816]] card voltage levels and the [[RS-232]] voltage levels used by the computer's serial port. More recent models use a [[Universal Serial Bus|USB]] connection to the computer. The simplest of earlier devices was the ''Phoenix interface''. More sophisticated readers are often used in systems where the personal computer itself is to be secured using smartcard systems.
* [[AVR microcontrollers|''AVR'' and ''ATmega'']] are trade names for a series of general-purpose 8-bit [[microcontroller]] chips manufactured by [[Atmel]] Corporation. The terms have been misused widely to refer to blank smartcards or various other hardware devices which were built around these processors. The widely available European ''funcard'' series of blank generic ISO/IEC 7816 smartcards were based upon the Atmel processor series; there was also a ''PIC card'' based on the [[Microchip Technology|Microchip]] Corporation PIC series of processors.
* [[emulator|Emulation]] refers to the use of a personal computer in place of a smartcard using an [[ISO/IEC 7816]]-compatible "Season" interface. The PC, as far as the decoder is concerned, becomes a legitimate smartcard due to the program running on it. The program responds like a legitimate smartcard. Sometimes, for development purposes, the PC is programmed to simulate the entire instruction set of the smartcard's [[microcontroller]] to allow smartcard code to be developed more readily. As some encryption systems require an application-specific IC ([[Application-specific integrated circuit|ASIC]]) on the card to perform decryption, a pirate would also use a card which had been "auxed" (reprogrammed to pass received computer data directly to the application-specific decryption chip) in order to employ such an emulation system. Alternatively, pirates can sometimes emulate the functionality of the ASIC itself to gain access to the encrypted data.
* A [[looped smartcard]] is one where defective or malicious program code written to [[non-volatile memory]] causes the smartcard's [[microcontroller]] to enter an [[endless loop]] on power-up or reset, rendering the card unusable. This is typically a countermeasure used by encryption system owners to permanently deactivate smartcards. In many cases, not even the [[ISO/IEC 7816]] ATR message would be sent. ''Unloopers'' were smartcard repair stations intended to cause the card to skip one or more instructions by applying a "glitch" in some form to the power or clock signal in the hope of allowing the smartcard's microcontroller to exit from the endless loop.
* ''Bootloaders'' were hardware which used a similar "glitch" to break a card out of an endless loop on power-up each time the card was used; these did not provide any smartcard reprogramming ability. These could permit DirecTV "H" cards (now no longer in use) to operate despite the permanent damage done by malicious code during the "Black Sunday" attack of 2001. These devices are currently believed to be obsolete.

===Receiver (IRD) and microprocessor terminology===
* [[Digital Video Broadcasting|DVB]] is an international standard for digital video broadcasting used by virtually all European broadcasters; some North American providers use incompatible proprietary standards such as [[Digital Signature Algorithm|DSS]] (DirecTV) or [[DigiCipher 2|DigiCipher]] (Motorola) which predate the DVB standardisation effort. The packet size, tables and control information transmitted by proprietary systems require proprietary non-DVB receivers, even though the video itself nominally in some form will often still adhere to the [[MPEG-2]] image compression standard defined by the Moving Picture Experts Group.
* An [[Integrated receiver/decoder|IRD]] is an integrated receiver-decoder, in other words a complete digital satellite TV or radio receiver; "decoder" in this context refers not to decryption but to the decompression and conversion of MPEG video into displayable format.
* [[free-to-air|FTA]] is often used to refer to receivers and equipment which contain no decryption hardware, built with the intention of being able to receive unencrypted [[free-to-air]] broadcasts; more properly FTA refers to the unencrypted broadcasts themselves.
* A [[conditional-access module|CAM]] or conditional-access module is defined by the DVB standard as an interface between a standardised DVB [[Common Interface]] receiver and one or more proprietary smartcards for signal decryption. It is not the smartcard itself. The standard format of this module follows [[PCMCIA]] specifications; some receivers bypass the requirement for a separate module by providing embedded CAM functionality in the receiver to communicate with specific proprietary smartcards such as [[Nagravision]], [[Conax]], Irdeto, [[Viaccess]], [[Betacrypt]]. In the North American market, most "package receivers" sold by signal providers provide embedded CAM operation; terminology is therefore often misused to misidentify the smartcard as a CAM.
* [[JTAG]] is a standard test interface defined by the Joint Test Action Group and supported on many late-model digital receivers for factory test purposes. Operating using a six-wire interface and a personal computer, the JTAG interface was originally intended to provide a means to test and debug embedded hardware and software. In the satellite TV world, JTAG is most often used to obtain read-write access to nonvolatile memory within a digital receiver; initially programs such as Wall and JKeys were used to read box keys from receivers with embedded CAMs but JTAG has since proven its legitimate worth to satellite TV fans as a repair tool to fix receivers where the firmware (in flash memory) has been corrupted.
* The ''Sombrero de Patel'' is another device used to obtain [[direct memory access]] to a receiver without physically removing memory chips from the board to place them in sockets or read them with a specialized device programmer. The device consists of a standard PLCC [[integrated circuit]] [[Jack (connector)|socket]] which has been turned upside-down in order to be placed directly over a [[microprocessor]] already permanently soldered to a [[printed circuit board]] in a receiver; the socket makes [[electrical contact]] with all pins of the microprocessor and is interfaced to one or more microcontrollers which use direct memory access to pause the receiver's microprocessor and read or write directly to the memory. The term ''sombrero'' is used for this hack as the novel use of an inverted IC socket somewhat resembles a [[hat]] being placed upon the main processor.