Broadband TV News recently engaged with Maria Malinkowitsch, Director Product Management at Verimatrix, a global leader in content protection solutions, to delve into the escalating issue of large-scale illegal streaming operations. The discussion highlighted the growing dangers posed by unmanaged devices and unauthorized CDN access, and explored practical steps operators can take to safeguard their platforms.
BTN: What are the key piracy challenges today, particularly in streaming and live sports?
Malinkowitsch: "Piracy is unfortunately rising. Torrents may have dropped by over 40%, but they’ve been replaced by far more malicious forms of content theft. We’re seeing huge financial losses: France’s Ligue 1 recently revealed almost €400 million in lost revenue — nearly the entire value of the rights — and LaLiga estimates €600-700 million lost per year. These are numbers that can break the industry."
BTN: What's driving this rapid piracy growth? Is it simpler for criminals now?
Malinkowitsch: "Massively. In the past, breaking a set-top box or smartcard-based encryption system took years and required professional hackers. Today, content is delivered to millions of unmanaged devices – web browsers, connected TV sets, smartphones, tablets – which are easy to exploit. Worse, on the dark web you can now buy piracy-as-a-service: a complete illegal OTT platform with UI, recommendation engine, customer management and thousands of channels, including premium live sports. It looks as professional as Netflix or Disney+. You don’t even need to pay for a CDN – it all comes included."
BTN: Who is behind these illegal operations?
Malinkowitsch: "Most of these illegal IPTV platforms are not run by hobbyists, but by organised criminal networks, and the money flowing into them ultimately fuels activities such as money laundering, human trafficking, child exploitation, weapons and drug trade – the very things consumers would never knowingly support. People think they’re just saving money on football, but the criminal ecosystem in the background is extremely dark."
BTN: Are end users at risk from piracy?
Malinkowitsch: "Legally, yes – piracy is illegal, even for viewers, although prosecution is rare because legislation lags behind. The bigger danger is cyber-risk: illegal services inject unknown ads and malicious banners, leading to stolen credentials, hacked devices or credit card fraud. People behave as if the web is a candy store – it isn’t. It’s a dangerous environment, and pirate sites exploit that."
BTN: How should operators address this?
Malinkowitsch: "Most still focus on post-mortem measures: watermarking and sending takedown notices. But 81% of takedown requests are ignored. It’s unrealistic to chase pirates after the fact. Operators must shift to prevention – stopping intruders before content is stolen. One major threat today is CDN leeching, where pirates misuse stolen access tokens from legitimate apps to pull the original stream and redistribute it at industrial scale. For example, during a major live football match measured by a leading CDN provider in Spain and Italy, more than half of all CDN traffic was illegal. This hits operators twice: it drives up CDN costs precisely at peak times and simultaneously degrades the viewing experience for paying customers, who may face buffering or be unable to access the stream because bandwidth is being consumed by pirate services."
BTN: What does effective prevention entail?
Malinkowitsch: "You must bring unmanaged apps back into a trusted environment. A robust anti-piracy strategy includes: Protecting apps from reverse engineering and tampering; Authenticating every app instance to ensure it’s legitimate; Monitoring network traffic for anomalies indicating CDN leeching; Enforcing geo-restrictions to prevent content from being accessed in unauthorized regions. Without these steps, operators cannot keep pace. Piracy evolves too quickly."
BTN: Is this too complex for smaller platforms?
Malinkowitsch: "It doesn’t have to be. Modern solutions automate these steps. Verimatrix’s own Streamkeeper portfolio combines multi-DRM, watermarking, web-crawling, piracy monitoring and app-level countermeasures in one package. Our Counterspy component is designed specifically to identify protected apps, authenticate them and block illegitimate access without harming real subscribers. It gives operators a manageable, proactive defence."
Malinkowitsch concludes: "You will never eliminate piracy completely – someone can always film a screen with a smartphone. But you can drastically reduce industrial-scale theft by making it harder, riskier and more expensive. The industry must move from reacting to containing and preventing. That’s the only sustainable strategy."
Maria Malinkowitsch, Director Product Management at Verimatrix, contributes her deep knowledge in video distribution and product management. After a distinguished tenure at SES, she joined Verimatrix in 2022 to spearhead the Antipiracy portfolio, driving secure video delivery globally through innovations like Streamkeeper Watermarking and Counterspy. She is dedicated to making digital media a safer and more accessible experience for everyone.