IPTV technology enables IP-based digital TV, video-on-demand, and other technologies. IPTV is made possible by the advent of broadband and voice services using very high bit-rate DSL (VDSL). Similar to other traffic over the data network, IPTV is also subject to spamming, spoofing, content theft, and other hacking attacks. The security threats for IPTV services are:

MPEG Video Content privacy and integrity
Is Digital Right Management (DRM) being used?
Stealing content directly from content source?
Information integrity - Can content be modified?
Spreading worms, trojans, virus
Broadcast own material (for political or other reasons)
IPTV service platform
Access fraud, Platform exploits, Billing attacks, SPAM, SPIT, SPIV
Denial of Service (DoS) attack and Distributed DoS (DDoS)
Buffer overflow
Weak TCP/IP or protocol stack implementation

The main security objectives for IPTV service are:

• IPTV service should be high stable and high available.
• Only legitimate people can access and operate on the assets of IPTV services after be authorized.
• The legitimate users’ abuse actions should be controlled to reduce garbage data.
• The IPTV service should be protected against unauthorized deletion, insertion, modification or replay attack.
• The IPTV service programs should be protected by copyrights.

IPTV Security Architecture