This points to a blogpost that points back to a 2001 article, so this isn’t news but it TL;DRs an interesting tactic that DirecTV used in their efforts to prevent circumvention of their content protections. With content providers putting more effort into content protections, I think it’s interesting to see what has been done in the past.

For those outside of the US, DirecTV has been a major satellite TV provider in the US since the 90s. They utilized smart cards (“access cards”) in consumer satellite receivers to gate access to channel packages and various features, and these satellite receivers could program the smart cards for various purposes.

Pirate satellite TV groups have found security issues in these smartcards that could be used to circumvent content access limitations. Eventually, DirecTV surprised everyone by finding a way to lock out pirates via an unpredictable pattern in their update mechanism a week before the Superbowl, one of the most watched TV programs.

The linked article as well as the WIRED article (https://www.wired.com/2008/05/tarnovsky/?currentPage=all) it cites are an interesting read on how someone worked to crack satellite TV but then devised a mechanism to block pirates from their knowledge of the inside.

I’m burying the lede here for you to read yourself ;)