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Satellite Hacking: Hacker hijacks abandoned Satellites

At the hacker festival “DEF CON” held in Las Vegas, USA on August 14, a group of hackers announced that they had succeeded in hijacking a satellite, and disclosed the details of the process.

The takeover was carried out by Karl Kochet and other members of the hacking group Shady Tell. It hijacks dormant Canadian broadcast satellites and actually broadcasts arbitrary movies to the ground, as well as livestreaming hacking events.

According to the American science magazine Popular Science, Mr. Koscher and his colleagues broadcast the hacking movie “War Games” as a satellite broadcast, and live-streamed a lecture at the information security conference “ToorCon”.  Furthermore, since there was extra bandwidth, it seems that they were able to issue a dedicated telephone number and successfully conduct conference calls across continents.

The target satellite is a Canadian broadcasting satellite called Arnik F1R. It has been in use since 2005 and retired in 2020 after reaching its 15-year design life.

When a satellite reaches retirement, it moves into a high-altitude orbit called a graveyard orbit to avoid collisions with other satellites. The Arnik F1R will also move to graveyard orbit, but for now it’s still hovering in geostationary orbit over North America.

Koscher , who demonstrated the takeover, focused on the satellite’s security situation at this stage. He reasoned that even though commercial operations had ended, it would still be able to receive signals from the ground before it ascended into graveyard orbit, and still meet the needs of its broadcast capabilities. With the operator’s permission, the signals were then sent to the satellite, proving that the reading was correct. Arnik F1R, which floats in geostationary orbit about 36,000 kilometers above the ground, was able to distribute arbitrary images over a wide area of ​​North America.

The series of hacks was carried out for research purposes to verify the satellite’s security risks. Mr. Koscher and his colleagues obtained prior permission from the satellite operator to attempt the intrusion. The hijacking of the satellite, which covers most of the North American continent, has highlighted the risk of attacks by malicious hackers.

No authentication required, just send radio waves to the satellite

“If the satellite  is being used by someone else, you have to shout louder i.e. transmit with more power than the other person, but no one else is using it. If not, it just sends back the signal that was sent.”

In order to send radio waves to the satellite, it seems that the hacker group was unable to prepare their own transmission equipment. But by simply connecting a $300 software-defined radio called “Hack RF,” they were able to successfully communicate with the satellite again.

Urgent need to counter satellite hacking, European Space Agency serious

In recent years, the risk of satellite hijacking has come to be recognized as a major issue. US tech site ZDNet reported in January that the European Space Agency (ESA) would host a satellite hacking contest. Communications to the ESA-operated OPS-SAT satellite are released for six minutes as hackers compete to take over control. ESA intends to collect attack scenarios and use them for future security measures.

Satellite jacking occurs infrequently, and interventions in broadcasting have been occurring since the 1980s. Wired magazine reported that in 1986, a hacker calling himself Captain Midnight hijacked the broadcasting satellite “Galaxy 1” and interrupted HBO broadcasts. Separately, 39 people were arrested in Brazil in 2009 for hijacking a US Navy satellite.

It seems that even artificial satellites, which are the pinnacle of technology, are vulnerable to malicious attacks.

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