C/P

The "pairing" solution used by conax comes in 2 variants: soft and hard. The "soft" solution is used on older Set Top Boxes, whereas newer boxes (and CAMs) produced lately, include a hardware pairing module which is probably just a secure microcontroller, equivalent to the ones found on conax smartcards. This pairing module is probably loaded (at manufacturing time) with a "private" RSA key, and has a unique adressable serial number. The providers that uses pairing asks for the serial number of your CAM/STB when you apply for a subscription, and states that you will not get any tv-signals until they have recieved this serial number.