28 TECHFEED Content Security
CONFRONTING ‘BAD ACTORS’
and analyse credentials-sharing activity across streaming accounts. Unusual activity can be monitored and addressed, including by upselling to accounts whose sharing exceeds a predefined threshold. The solution can also be used to detect and shut down large-scale, ‘for-profit’ sharing. Credentials Sharing Insight is the latest addition to Synamedia’s VideoGuard portfolio, which is used to secure pay TV operators’ broadcast and streaming content, services and revenues worldwide. And Avigail Gutman, Synamedia’s director of intelligence and security operations, indicates that delivering content protection is inherently an evolving business – particularly as piracy has morphed into a more extensive ecosystem. “In the old days, a pirate network included someone at the top of the pyramid who was entrepreneurial,” she says. “Hackers would create some software illegitimately and there would be a network of dealers who would sell NOW IT’S MUCH MORE OF AN ECOSYSYEM INWHICH NOT ALL THE PLAYERS ARE PIRATES
A recent example cited by Akamai’s Ian Munford illustrates the kind of action that can be required to combat full-scale network attacks: “A well-known broadcast network became the subject of a credential stuffing attack in which hundreds of malicious login attempts were successful because they were masquerading as legitimate traffic. These logins gave the bad actors access to user accounts and the network’s premium content. Of course, when a criminal organisation gets access to viewer accounts, their details will be exploited for a range of purposes. Details could be used to directly pirate content, sold on the dark web, or be used for direct financial gain.
“At the time, the network did not have the proper safeguards in place to defend against this type of attack. In extremely short order, Akamai was able to work with the network on an emergency deployment of our Bot Manager Premier (BMP) solution, which can detect bot activity being disguised
as human interactions. Once live, BMP immediately detected nearly 300 bots and subsequently denied more than 1,000 malicious login attempts. Not only did BMP prevent any further malicious logins, bot traffic dropped dramatically once it was recognised that Akamai was denying the traffic.”
By way of example, Synamedia video security product manager, Rinat Burdot, points to legitimate cloud services handling the content, or mainstream payment services who process fees. As a result, there has to be a significant emphasis on making official providers aware of the problem, as well as action aimed at “demotivating every player in the chain”.
pirated devices. It was a challenge, but if you could take down the top of the pyramid [technically or legally] everything under it would crumble. Now it’s much more of an ecosystem in which not all of the players are pirates; there may be legitimate businesses involved who are not aware there is illegitimate activity happening in their realm.”
AN EVOLUTION As download tech develops, so too will viewers’ expectations of how and where they can access paid-for content
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