Smartcard attack will not be so expensive, because pirate devices are normally based on standard microcontrollers which have much lower security protection than pay-TV smartcards. Very likely the device will be cracked in a few weeks, and the secondary attackers will flood the market with their clones. Fairly soon, the information on how to build pirate devices becomes available on the Internet and anyone can build pirate devices at almost no cost. So the pay-TV service provider loses millions of dollars; sometimes the original attacker is sued or prosecuted. But because the lost profit was distributed among all the pirates and dishonest subscribers, the service provider hardly gets any money back. The only effect of such actions is to threaten the hacker community with punishment. In addition the service provider will have to spend a fortune on redesigning his access control system, choosing and developing software for the new smartcard, and distributing cards to the subscribers

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