A Study on Evaluation Scheme for Exchangeable CAS (XCAS)

A condition access system (CAS) refers to a hardware-based system that allows only authenticated users to have access to contents. The CAS has many disadvantages found in that in the replacement of multiple service operator (MSO) a set-top box should be also changed and the smart-card often causes malfunction. To deal with the problems, exchangeable CAS (XCAS) was developed in 2009. However the standards or evaluation schemes for XCAS are absent. Existing evaluation schemes are not appropriate for evaluating XCAS due to the evaluation standard, the evaluation cost and efficiencies. Therefore, a specific scheme that can evaluate the security and suitability of exchangeable conditional access systems has been requested. In this paper, we propose an appropriate evaluation scheme for XCAS. The evaluation scheme includes an evaluation purpose and four components to evaluate the evaluation target, the evaluation process, the evaluation subject, and the evaluation cost involved.