I thought pirate smartcards are still widely used - especially for Satellite and Cablebox use...

It's pretty difficult to read a chip once the fuse is blown - though not impossible. I do recall a gentleman who did that on Sky's smartcard, telling everyone about it on the internet and getting sentenced to 7 years in jail for his ingenuity... to that end, those who know usually keep it to themselves. Some time spent on internet searches will reveal all kinds of things...

It's easy to get a 16F87x and similar to self-destruct their code... see thread "Making program codespace your playground". Other chips that don't support the WRITECODE command may require additional hardware and power supply.

Melanie