News Corp accused of getting hackers to pirate and clone Sky-rival smartcards

The BBC has accused News Corporation company NDS of paying computer hackers to crack and freely distribute keycodes that would allow pirates to clone the pay-TV smartcards of a Sky rival.

BBC Panorama, first screened on the evening of 26 March, claims that the firm, itself a manufacturer of smartcards, hired hacker Lee Gibling to expand his website The House of Ill-Compute (aka THOIC), and discover and post the codes needed to open up pay-TV company On Digital’s smartcards to cloning.