A practical key management and distribution system for IPTV conditional access

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dc.contributor.advisorKayem, Anneen_ZA
dc.contributor.authorHarding, Gregory Leightonen_ZA
dc.date.accessioned2014-08-20T19:42:00Z
dc.date.available2014-08-20T19:42:00Z
dc.date.issued2013en_ZA
dc.description.abstractConditional Access (CA) is widely used by pay-television operators to restrict access to content to authorised subscribers. Commercial CA solutions are available for structured broadcast and Internet Protocol Television (IPTV) environments, as well as Internet-based video-on-demand services, however these solutions are mostly proprietary, often inefficient for use on IP networks, and frequently depend on smartcards for maintaining security. An efficient, exible, and open conditional access system that can be implemented practically by operators with large numbers of subscribers would be beneficial to those operators and Set-Top-Box manufacturers in terms of cost savings for royalties and production costs. Furthermore, organisations such as the South African Broadcasting Corporation that are transitioning to Digital-Terrestrial-Television could use an open Conditional Access System (CAS) to restrict content to viewing within national borders and to ensure that only valid TV licence holders are able to access content. To this end, a system was developed that draws from the area of group key management. Users are grouped according to their subscription selections and these groups are authorised for each selection's constituent services. Group keys are updated with a key-tree based approach that includes a novel method for growing full trees that outperforms the standard method. The relations that are created between key trees are used to establish a hierarchy of keys which allows exible selection of services whilst maintaining their cryptographic protection. Conditions for security without dependence on smartcards are defined, and the system is expandable to multi-home viewing scenarios. A prototype implementation was used to assess the proposed system. Total memory consumption of the key-server, bandwidth usage for transmission of key updates, and client processing and storage of keys were all demonstrated to be highly scalable with number of subscribers and number of services.en_ZA
dc.identifier.apacitationHarding, G. L. (2013). <i>A practical key management and distribution system for IPTV conditional access</i>. (Thesis). University of Cape Town ,Faculty of Science ,Department of Computer Science. Retrieved from http://hdl.handle.net/11427/6644en_ZA
dc.identifier.chicagocitationHarding, Gregory Leighton. <i>"A practical key management and distribution system for IPTV conditional access."</i> Thesis., University of Cape Town ,Faculty of Science ,Department of Computer Science, 2013. http://hdl.handle.net/11427/6644en_ZA
dc.identifier.citationHarding, G. 2013. A practical key management and distribution system for IPTV conditional access. University of Cape Town.en_ZA
dc.identifier.ris TY - Thesis / Dissertation AU - Harding, Gregory Leighton AB - Conditional Access (CA) is widely used by pay-television operators to restrict access to content to authorised subscribers. Commercial CA solutions are available for structured broadcast and Internet Protocol Television (IPTV) environments, as well as Internet-based video-on-demand services, however these solutions are mostly proprietary, often inefficient for use on IP networks, and frequently depend on smartcards for maintaining security. An efficient, exible, and open conditional access system that can be implemented practically by operators with large numbers of subscribers would be beneficial to those operators and Set-Top-Box manufacturers in terms of cost savings for royalties and production costs. Furthermore, organisations such as the South African Broadcasting Corporation that are transitioning to Digital-Terrestrial-Television could use an open Conditional Access System (CAS) to restrict content to viewing within national borders and to ensure that only valid TV licence holders are able to access content. To this end, a system was developed that draws from the area of group key management. Users are grouped according to their subscription selections and these groups are authorised for each selection's constituent services. Group keys are updated with a key-tree based approach that includes a novel method for growing full trees that outperforms the standard method. The relations that are created between key trees are used to establish a hierarchy of keys which allows exible selection of services whilst maintaining their cryptographic protection. Conditions for security without dependence on smartcards are defined, and the system is expandable to multi-home viewing scenarios. A prototype implementation was used to assess the proposed system. Total memory consumption of the key-server, bandwidth usage for transmission of key updates, and client processing and storage of keys were all demonstrated to be highly scalable with number of subscribers and number of services. DA - 2013 DB - OpenUCT DP - University of Cape Town LK - https://open.uct.ac.za PB - University of Cape Town PY - 2013 T1 - A practical key management and distribution system for IPTV conditional access TI - A practical key management and distribution system for IPTV conditional access UR - http://hdl.handle.net/11427/6644 ER - en_ZA
dc.identifier.urihttp://hdl.handle.net/11427/6644
dc.identifier.vancouvercitationHarding GL. A practical key management and distribution system for IPTV conditional access. [Thesis]. University of Cape Town ,Faculty of Science ,Department of Computer Science, 2013 [cited yyyy month dd]. Available from: http://hdl.handle.net/11427/6644en_ZA
dc.language.isoengen_ZA
dc.publisher.departmentDepartment of Computer Scienceen_ZA
dc.publisher.facultyFaculty of Scienceen_ZA
dc.publisher.institutionUniversity of Cape Town
dc.titleA practical key management and distribution system for IPTV conditional accessen_ZA
dc.typeMaster Thesis
dc.type.qualificationlevelMasters
dc.type.qualificationnameMPhilen_ZA
uct.type.filetypeText
uct.type.filetypeImage
uct.type.publicationResearchen_ZA
uct.type.resourceThesisen_ZA
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