Intellectual Property Law

Sabotage, Spies, Suspicious Suicide Surrounding Murdoch-Owned Co.

By Cynthia Brumfield

Scanning my reader this morning I came across this marvelous Wired article dealing with a remarkable trial in California that involves NDS, a UK-Israeli firm owned by Murdoch's News Corp. NDS is accused of cracking the encryption of rival NagraStar, which makes security cards for DBS provider EchoStar and other satellite pay TV companies, and then hiring hackers to make and distribute counterfeit cards to pirates.

Nagrastar and EchoStar are seeking $101 million in damages from NDS, but that's not the best part. The alleged NDS scheme is rich with details straight out of an international espionage novel, including $40,000 in cash payments to an NDS hacker in Texas, shipped via U.S. mail inside CD and DVD players, the establishment of a research lab in Haifa, Israel to crack the Nagrastar code and the hiring of an intriguing cast of characters including a former Israeli defense official, a supposed terrorist, a U.S. navy intelligence officer, a former Scotland yard commander and more.

The elaborate scheme apparently worked well until 1999 when a German hacker in Berlin known as Boris Floricic, aka Tron, was found hanging in a park with incriminating correspondence from NDS in his possessions. NDS had attempted to hire Floricic.

Although the death was ruled a suicide, Floricic's hacker friends find many of the details surrounding his hanging suspicious. The investigation originally led to a lawsuit by French satellite company Canal Plus (also apparently a victim of NDS' purported hacking), which dropped the charges when its parent company Vivendi forged a pact with News Corp.

Nagrastar and EchoStar picked up the litigation from there. The trial started April 9 and is slated to produce a very curious mix of witnesses, including EchoStar's CEO Charlie Ergen.

Full post as published by IP Democracy on April 21, 2008 (boomark / email).