The Australian Financial Review has added to the weight against NDS, claiming that the News Corp pay-TV technology and security specialist was responsible for undermining pay-TV companies Austar, Optus and Foxtel at a time when News was looking to expand its pay-TV interests in the country.
The accusations, strenuously denied by both NDS and News Corp, are said to have cost Australian pay-TV companies some A$50 million (€39m).
It follows this week’s BBC Panorama programme relating to piracy of the ITV Digital pay platform over 10 years ago.
The newspaper alleges that a unit within NDS known as Operational Security headed by Reuven Hasak, a former deputy director of the Israeli domestic secret service, with Avigail Gutman running operations in the Asia-Pacific region, Ray Adams in Europe and former US Army intelligence officer John Norris in the US.
It claims the actions are documented in some 14,000 emails by Adams, the former Metropolitan Police commander who worked with the British hacker Lee Gibling, who ran the piracy website known as The House of Ill Compute (Thoic).
Australian Financial Review has released a selection of the emails online.
The report claims NDS encouraged and facilitated piracy by hackers not only of its competitors but also of companies, such as Foxtel, for whom NDS provided conditional access smart cards.