Cloakware Introduces DTCP-IP Media Player Solution

Wednesday, August 12th, 2009

Robust Security Enables Operators to Monetize Content over Broadband

CARLSBAD — Cloakware (JSE: NPN), the provider of proven software solutions for securing business and digital assets and an Irdeto Group company, today announced its DTCP-IP Media Player solution, designed to enable cable operators to secure and monetize programming content within the home entertainment network. The solution, part of Irdeto’s overall solution for cable operators, was developed to provide a robust and secure transmission path on the Internet for content to be distributed to all home-based digital devices, including the PC, and allow content owners to securely distribute content on the cable platform without the risk associated with an open platform.

The Cloakware solution is fully compliant with DTCP-IP (Digital Transmission Content Protection-Internet Protocol), a protection mode selected by CableLabs that serves as the link protection mechanism between the cable modem and a subscriber’s home digital devices. Supported by the Digital Living Network Alliance (DLNA) and its consumer electronics certification program, DTCP enables the seamless content exchange between authenticated devices in the home through an encrypted exchange of content and copy control information across a range of standard interfaces including IEEE 1394 and the Internet Protocol (IP) over Ethernet, MOCHA or 802.11 (WiFi). “DTCP-IP is designed to limit authorization of usage of content in order to assure content owners they would be able to generate new revenues with multiple device usage,” stated Ralph Brown, Chief Technology Officer of CableLabs. “Finding a robust solution using DTCP-IP to broaden the reach and distribute content to consumers on multiple platforms has been of great interest to our members and to the content community.” “A solution that satisfies the content owners’ needs for security will allow cable operators to distribute throughout the home or business the content consumers are demanding, including on the PC,” he added.

“Content distribution to the PC presents a real threat to the content industry if it cannot be done in a manner which maintains the integrity of the content,” said Jan Steenkamp, vice president, Americas, Irdeto. “The content industry is spending millions of dollars to produce the content and is looking to ensure that it can be controlled and monetized. Failing to do so will result in the ultimate demise of high quality programming that cable operators can provide to their customers” “The Cloakware DTCP-IP Media Solution successfully addresses the security and monetization issues, significantly helping both industries.”

In the past, the fact that the Internet and consumer devices are effectively open platforms has presented a host of challenges to both content owners and platform operators who have wanted to embrace the platforms but could not insure that the rights of the content owners were protected and that access of the content was granted only to those individuals who were authorized to receive it. Through group company Cloakware and years of experience from digital television distribution, Irdeto has addressed those challenges required for PCTV and other IP-based entertainment services.

The Cloakware technology overcomes the vulnerabilities that traditional encryption-based IP solutions cannot address. While in recent years, hackers have developed many ways to gain access to conditional access keys, including the use of logic analyzers to discover the encryption key algorithm by reading power consumption or electromagnetic wave patterns, Cloakware applies several techniques to defeat such hacking. By applying mathematical transformations to software and to the computing devices’ internal representation of data, these transformations have the added benefit of rendering cryptographic keys, as present in the runtime system, useless to an attacker. The platform also ensures that content is encrypted when crossing the PCI Express bus and that content remains encrypted for storage and transfer to external devices.

Irdeto also brings to the cable PCTV service environment an architectural approach to use of DTCP-IP link protection that simplifies integration with DRMs–a multi-DRM framework that allows operators to deploy DRM solutions on demand as new devices and applications require. This architecture has been widely used by OEMs, enabling Irdeto to bring pre-hardened implementations of the major IP DRMs into the cable services space, thereby assuring operators and their OEM and content suppliers that the requisite conformance to robustness and compliance rules has been met.