Researchers used a decommissioned satellite to broadcast hacker TV:
Independent researchers and the United States military have become increasingly focused on orbiting satellites' potential security vulnerabilities in recent years. These devices, which are built primarily with durability, reliability, and longevity in mind, were largely never intended to be ultra-secure. But at the ShmooCon security conference in Washington, DC, on Friday, embedded device security researcher Karl Koscher raised questions about a different phase of a satellite's life cycle: What happens when an old satellite is being decommissioned and transitioning to a "graveyard orbit"?
Koscher and his colleagues received permission last year to access and broadcast from a Canadian satellite known as Anik F1R, launched to support Canadian broadcasters in 2005 and designed for 15 years of use. The satellite's coverage extends below the US southern border and out to Hawaii and the easternmost part of Russia. The satellite will move to its graveyard orbit soon, and nearly all other services that use it have already migrated to a new satellite. But while the researchers could still talk to the satellite using special access to an uplink license and transponder slot lease, Koscher had the opportunity to take over and broadcast to the Northern Hemisphere.
"My favorite thing was actually seeing it work!" Koscher tells WIRED. "It's kind of unreal to go from making a video stream to having it broadcast across all of North America."
(Score: 4, Interesting) by jrmcferren on Sunday April 03 2022, @10:27AM
Satcomm vulnerabilities are widely known among many people. This just happens to be a demonstration that was done with permission as they leased the transponder slot and had the uplink license. Remember, the Captain Midnight Incident? This is a widely known exploitation of Satellite vulnerability. Another incident I've heard of is how a US military uplink error killed a transponder with too much power as someone pointed the uplink to the wrong transponder.
Satellite access is very easy and as someone who has transmitted over an amateur radio satellite from my backyard with the proper authorization I can say this based on experience. For the record, amateur radio operators have access to amateur satellites as they are open to licensed amateurs.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 03 2022, @11:04AM
> It's kind of unreal to go from making a video stream to having it broadcast across all of North America.
Maybe Karl could get his Amateur Radio licence and join in on the video over QO-100 AMSAT action, which has a wideband 8MHz channel available for DTV.