Re: DishNet ViP722

On Sun, 04 May 2008 15:54:28 -0500 Jer <gdunn@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:

| Another old adage I remember is "the devil's in the details" and those 
| details may be embedded in the additional un-GPL code they use on their 
| DVR, hence their mention of that potential somewhere on that same page. 
|  I didn't figure it would take long to get in way over my head on this.
:)

Of course their application code could be non-GPL.  Certainly their keys
will be hidden.

They do warn that one should not build and load from what is available for
download as it will make the receiver non-functional.  Of course it won't
function if all you have is a kernel and no programs to run.  But what
that
suggests to me is that it is _possible_ to load firmware.  What I don't
know
is how far they would go to ensure users cannot alter things.  I do know
how
to make it terribly hard to do.  But if they didn't come up with good ways
to block it, maybe I could take the firmware they do have and _add_ my own
programs to it.  Their whole encryption scheme on the birds is vulnerable,
so who knows about this.  Managers do too often make technical decisions
they are just not qualified to make, and when it involves security, things
become easy targets.

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