Christopher Tarnovsky (born 20 April 1971, Nyack,

New York New York most commonly refers to: * New York City, the most populous city in the United States, located in the state of New York * New York (state), a state in the northeastern United States New York may also refer to: Film and television * '' ...

) is an integrated circuit

reverse engineering Reverse engineering (also known as backwards engineering or back engineering) is a process or method through which one attempts to understand through deductive reasoning how a previously made device, process, system, or piece of software accompli ...

specialist or

hacker A hacker is a person skilled in information technology who uses their technical knowledge to achieve a goal or overcome an obstacle, within a computerized system by non-standard means. Though the term ''hacker'' has become associated in popu ...

who has come to public attention.Chenoweth N
''Rupert Murdoch: The Untold Story of the World's Greatest Media Wizard.''
Crown Business 12 November 2002. p. 353. .

Life and career

In the 1990s, Tarnovsky was a soldier in the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 U.S. state, states, a Washington, D.C., federal district, five ma ...

army in the field of intelligence, security and cryptography. From 1997 to 2007 he worked for

NDS NDS may stand for: * Low German ( nl, Nedersaksisch, links=no, german: Niederdeutsche Sprache, links=no, ISO 639-2 language code: nds), a West Germanic language native to Northern Germany, Denmark and the Netherlands * Lower Saxony (german: Niedersa ...

. He then started his own company, Flylogic, which he sold to IOActive in 2012. Until 2014 Tarnovsky was vice president of semiconductor services at IOActive. Tarnovsky has a diagnosis of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, which gives him the ability to "hyper-focus" on projects for hours at a time.

Legal action

In 2001,

DirecTV DirecTV (trademarked as DIRECTV) is an American Multichannel television in the United States, multichannel video programming distributor based in El Segundo, California, El Segundo, California. Originally launched on June 17, 1994, its primary ...

, a client of

, a company majority owned by

Rupert Murdoch Keith Rupert Murdoch ( ; born 11 March 1931) is an Australian-born American business magnate. Through his company News Corp, he is the owner of hundreds of local, national, and international publishing outlets around the world, including ...

Newscorp News Corporation (abbreviated News Corp.), also variously known as News Corporation Limited, was an American multinational mass media corporation controlled by media mogul Rupert Murdoch and headquartered at 1211 Avenue of the Americas in N ...

, demanded Tarnovsky be kept away from their systems. Plaintiffs DirecTV, Dish Network and Nagrastar alleged Tarnovsky was hacking the protections they placed on their

set-top box A set-top box (STB), also colloquially known as a cable box and historically television decoder, is an information appliance device that generally contains a TV-tuner input and displays output to a television set and an external source of si ...

smart cards which were used to lock transmission from customers who defaulted.Chenoweth N
''Cash in News budget for police informants.''
The Australian Financial Review. 4 April 2012. Accessed 26 April 2012. From 1997 to 2007, Tarnovsky worked for

developing copy protection technology.Everett D
''What the silicon manufacturer has put together let no man put asunder.''
Smartcard.co.uk March 2010. Accessed 29 September 2015. In 2002,

Canal Plus Canal+ (Canal Plus, , meaning 'Channel Plus'; sometimes abbreviated C+ or Canal) is a French premium television channel launched in 1984. It is 100% owned by the Groupe Canal+, which in turn is owned by Vivendi. The channel broadcasts several k ...

, a French premium

cable television Cable television is a system of delivering television programming to consumers via radio frequency (RF) signals transmitted through coaxial cables, or in more recent systems, light pulses through fibre-optic cables. This contrasts with bro ...

commenced a civil action against NDS and Tarnovsky. Tarnovsky was alleged to have extracted the source code of a

SECA The SecA protein is a cell membrane associated subunit of the eubacterial Sec or Type II secretory pathway, a system which is responsible for the secretion of proteins through the cell membrane. Within this system the SecA ATPase forms a tran ...

card and then on 26 March 1999

upload Uploading refers to ''transmitting'' data from one computer system to another through means of a network. Common methods of uploading include: uploading via web browsers, FTP clients], and computer terminal, terminals (SCP/ SFTP). Uploadi ...

ed it to a

file sharing File sharing is the practice of distributing or providing access to digital media, such as computer programs, multimedia (audio, images and video), documents or electronic books. Common methods of storage, transmission and dispersion include r ...

website.Chenoweth N
''Murdoch's inside job.''

The Australian Financial Review ''The Australian Financial Review'' (abbreviated to the ''AFR'') is an Australian business-focused, compact daily newspaper covering the current business and economic affairs of Australia and the world. The newspaper is based in Sydney, New S ...

. 31 March 2012. Accessed 26 April 2012. A jury later largely cleared NDS and Tarnovsky.Zetter K
''From the Eye of a Legal Storm, Murdoch's Satellite-TV Hacker Tells All.''
Wired.com San Diego. 30 May 2008. Accessed 30 September 2015.''Vivendi settles row with NDS.''
''

The Guardian ''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper A newspaper is a periodical publication containing written information about current events and is often typed in black ink with a white or gray background. Newspapers can cover a wide ...

'' 2 May 2003. Accessed 26 April 2012. In 2007, Tarnovsky was dismissed from NDS for copyright infringement while in their employ. Tarnovsky denies this accusation.

Acts of hacking

In 2008, Tarnovsky broke into a

Trusted Platform Module Trusted Platform Module (TPM, also known as ISO/IEC 11889) is an international standard for a secure cryptoprocessor, a dedicated microcontroller designed to secure hardware through integrated cryptographic keys. The term can also refer to a ch ...

, a type of chip used in the

Xbox 360 The Xbox 360 is a home video game console developed by Microsoft. As the successor to the original Xbox, it is the second console in the Xbox series. It competed with Sony's PlayStation 3 and Nintendo's Wii as part of the seventh generati ...

for example. Tarnovsky required nine months of study to discover the main contents of the module.Van Tilborg H. (ed.
''Christopher Tarnovsky.''
Encyclopedia of Cryptography and Security, Springer, 10 August 2005. Accessed 26 April 2012. In 2010, at a

Black Hat Black hat, blackhats, or black-hat refers to: Arts, entertainment, and media * Black hat (computer security), a hacker who violates computer security for little reason beyond maliciousness or for personal gain * Black hat, part of black and whi ...

Washington DC ) , image_skyline = , image_caption = Clockwise from top left: the Washington Monument and Lincoln Memorial on the National Mall, United States Capitol, Logan Circle, Jefferson Memorial, White House, Adams Morgan, ...

conference, Tarnovsky described how he had used acid, an

electron microscope An electron microscope is a microscope that uses a beam of accelerated electrons as a source of illumination. As the wavelength of an electron can be up to 100,000 times shorter than that of visible light photons, electron microscopes have a ...

and small conductive needles to hack the

Infineon Infineon Technologies AG is a German semiconductor manufacturer founded in 1999, when the semiconductor operations of the former parent company Siemens AG were spun off. Infineon has about 50,280 employees and is one of the ten largest semicond ...

SLE66 CL PE chip.Stevens T
''Christopher Tarnovsky hacks Infineon's 'unhackable' chip, we prepare for false-advertising litigation.''
Engadget.com 12 February 2010.

References

External links

Tarnovsky’s official website
{{DEFAULTSORT:Tarnovsky, Christopher People associated with computer security Living people 1971 births