IPTV: WHO BENEFITS FROM THE CRIME?

[Chewy_fox]

Some present it almost as a measure of self-defense. At a time when Mediapro believed that it was possible to gather 3.5 million subscribers around a 25 euros monthly offer for Ligue 1 , IPTV suddenly took on the air of a white knight. Faced with the greed of broadcasters, the pirate offer seemed all the more legitimate. Even the collapse of the Téléfoot channel has not changed the equation: too expensive, too scattered, too volatile, paid football on television is boring and annoying. For several years, it has been IPTV (Internet Protocol Television)which convinces a growing number of French households. The deal? Pay a monthly or annual amount to afford a box or an application, which gives access to dozens, even hundreds of pay channels. In particular those which broadcast football matches, normally reserved for their subscribers. End of the story ? Not at all. Behind slashed prices and HD quality matches, the backdrop of IPTV isn't quite clean. Travel to the other side of the mirror of a well-established business, which may soon find itself in the hands of serious organized crime.

Internets gangsters

Illustration on September 18, 2019. This Wednesday, Eurojust, the European Union's Judicial Cooperation Unit, announces that it has dismantled a vast network of online pay-TV platform piracy. More than 200 servers are disabled in Germany, France and the Netherlands, while more than 150 criminal PayPal accounts are blocked. Twenty-three suspects are arrested in Italy. It is the illegal IPTV service Xstream Codes, particularly popular in the Boot, which is then targeted. The latter looted the content of many pay channels such as Sky Italia (holder of a large part of the rights to Serie A) and even online streaming services such as Netflix, to sell them at low prices to its subscribers. Among the individuals arrested, one distinguishes in particular a certain Franco Maccarelli, designated by the Guardia di Finanza as one of, if not the brains of the operation. Small computer genius to believe the transalpine media, the guy has set up a platform that would have generated a shortfall estimated at 6.5 million euros for legal broadcasters. A high-tech crime that would not have been without attracting the greed of the Mafia: in a phone call recorded by the police, Maccarelli mentions in particular threats he would have received from the Lo Russo clan, a of the “families” of the Neapolitan Camorra. the guy has set up a platform that would have generated a shortfall estimated at 6.5 million euros for legal broadcasters. A high-tech crime that would not have been without attracting the greed of the Mafia: in a phone call recorded by the police, Maccarelli mentions in particular threats he would have received from the Lo Russo clan, a of the “families” of the Neapolitan Camorra. the guy has set up a platform that would have generated a shortfall estimated at 6.5 million euros for legal broadcasters. A high-tech crime that would not have been without attracting the greed of the Mafia: in a phone call recorded by the police, Maccarelli mentions in particular threats he would have received from the Lo Russo clan, a of the “families” of the Neapolitan Camorra.
 

“Do the traditional mafias have their hands on a piece of criminal IPTV? This is something we have to watch out for ... "Cameron Andrews, beIN Group Anti-Piracy Legal Director

What to wonder if organized crime is not already eyeing illegal IPTV. Even if he does not already have partial control over it. “Do the traditional mafias have their hands on a piece of criminal IPTV? I think this is something we need to watch out for ... says Cameron Andrews, director of beIN Group's anti-piracy legal department. It is in this direction that the illegal IPTV business could move. Although I think that, for the moment, the existing networks are more managed by hackers with a more traditional profile. For example, like the individuals who administered this site in France, which hijacked the beIN signal. "Andrews is referring here to the closure of the beinsport-streaming.com site in June 2019. It illegally broadcast live sports events from the main French sports broadcasters such as Canal +, RMC Sport or even beIN Sports. “Where appropriate, it was streaming, not IPTV , nuance Andrews. But the managers of this site were quite organized. They had offshore accounts, they generated significant sums by broadcasting advertising on their platform ... "

 

From suppliers to resellers

In fact, if we can assume that organized crime will take an increasingly close interest in IPTV in the years to come, the activity remains mainly the preserve of pirates familiar with the process of hijacking television signals. “In the countries of northern Europe, the pirates who did what is called cardsharing (a hacking technique that allows multiple users to access TV channels from a single shared subscription card , Editor's note) have migrated massively to IPTV ”, observes Stian Loland, security manager of Nordic Content Protection, an anti-piracy organization working for television channels in Scandinavian countries. The illegal IPTV distribution chain, for its part, follows a rigorously studied operation, the command core of which is protected by several intermediary actors.
 

“Youtube is a very active supplier. If you flag any content, they remove it. Other ISPs are much less receptive. "Stian Loland, Security Manager at Nordic Content Protection

Basically, there are two main types of actors behind these networks. First, large-scale providers, who capture and pirate the signal of TV channels and offer illegal IPTV subscriptions to their subscribers. These providers also use resellers, to whom they “lend” their pirate signal. The latter use the broadcasters' streaming infrastructure and also offer IPTV packages to their customers. They then donate a percentage of their income to the (often unique) supplier with which they are associated. It is also necessary to mention the re-streamers which constitute a sub-category of resellers more technically sophisticated. The latter indeed have their own infrastructure to distribute illegal streaming."Resellers and re-streamers are the public face of piracy, it is quite easy to spot them ," says Cameron Andrews. The trickiest thing is to find those who copy the source to distribute it. Why ? Because the Internet makes it easy to hide, regulations facilitate anonymity. Internet service providers are under no obligation to keep precise records of the activity and nature of their customers. Obtaining this information is also difficult and time consuming. "

Edited May 21, 2021 by Chewy_fox

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