Digital television broadcast data stream authentication

摘要

A digital television broadcast data stream authenticator which provides an indication of authenticity 405 of a digital television broadcast data stream 401. A receiver is configured to verify the broadcast stream by processing the indication of authenticity. The broadcast stream is backwards compatible such that it can be understood by conventional receiver equipment which has not been upgraded to read the indication of authenticity. A hash algorithm 402 may be applied to subsets of the broadcast data stream, and the indication may be a digital signature 405. The indication may be computed using a public key. A synchronisation mark may be included in the broadcast data stream to enable authentication data for that stream to be sent via a different means, such as a web server. The data stream may be partitioned for authentication to make it more robust to transmission errors. The data stream may include an interactive application component. The indication of authenticity may relate to the whole data stream, or it may relate to just a part such as a payload of the stream or a part not including the PID identifier of the data stream.