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ICMP_HOST_BELOW_HORIZON - TCP/IP Into Orbit
Christopher Neufeld writes "As reported on ScienceDaily today, on April 10 of this year, some standard IP modules were uploaded to UoSAT-12, and got it answering pings. "
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Hi slashdot-terminal! Enjoying the AC account?
Hehe.
thank you
Now I can telnet to my refrigerator to change its orbit.
It has an interplanetary network on that scale, with huge inter-solarsystem gateways... ya know, the economies of a whole planet would stem from the fact it was a gateway... dman fascinating read, very recommended.
I wonder what UoSat-12's IP address is?
...phil
...phil
"For a list of the ways which technology has failed to improve our quality of life, press 3."
The rest is left as an excercise for the reader.
...phil
...phil
"For a list of the ways which technology has failed to improve our quality of life, press 3."
Let's say that the engineer has logged into the satellite via ssh. His connection is a little laggy, but nevertheless he's entering attitude-control commands for future execution. You're sniffing his packets, but what do you see? Noise, mostly. What could you do with it? Probably nothing.
The "cue the foo posts in 3, 2, 1..." posts will commence with no subsequent foo posts in 3, 2, 1...
According to that Voyager is about 75 AU from Sun.
Notice that the User has a period in the front.
Hal Duston
hald@sound.net
Except for the US scientists that work with nuclear weapons....;->
I'm refering to Gary Clail's early work; just wondering...
Hey, thanks for the link! I used to have a pretty good collection of Tackhead records, but they were swiped by a "friend" many years back. All I have left is the "alien cover" album sleeve... and for the life of me I can't find another copy in any record stores I've been trolling; it's pretty obscure stuff.
I've got a good collection of old Cabaret Voltaire, Throbbing Gristle, Zoviet France, Controlled Bleeding, Negativland (including the wallpaper sample album!), Nocturnal Emissions, Psychic TV, among others (oh wow I just found a Tackhead "Whats your mussion now?" EP... cool!). This stuff is just itching to get converted to mp3 -- I don't consider that so much a copyright violation as preserving history. Oh well, feel free to email me if you'd like to discuss this further.
As much as I respect this as a really, really cool hack (installing IP software alongside the old stuff is a pretty nifty trick) you really have to wonder if this is a great idea. No matter how much security they put in, this makes either the satellite or their router vulnerable to a lot of the stuff people pull with TCP/IP these days. I have to think that maybe a completely private TCP/IP based intranet (as opposed to the "engineer logging in from home" image the article presents) is probably the only way that they could make this secure. :)
OTOH, the idea of DOSing a TV sat is pretty cool
~luge
IAAL,BIANLY
Slashdot will have that thing DOS'd out of the sky by this evening, I'm sure.
-- Truth goes out the door when rumor comes innuendo. -- Groucho Marx
The real question becomes: "How do we extend internet protocols to handle ping latencies ranging anywhere from seconds to centuries?" The new protocols should have redundant transmissions and *very* large buffer caches. Timeouts shouldn't occur until some multiple of the latency has passed.
How about this, if the objective is Earth<->Mars, you have several artifical sats that orbit the sun. You route through these sats using a potocol _LIKE_ BGP routing. You may even be able to make the routing protocol smart enough to know its position in space and select the best next hop. By breaking the trip down into smaller hops, data integrity can be checked at each hop.
--fatboy
As far as I was aware, some (if not quite a bit of) internet traffic is already routed through sattelites as with telephone calls. Okay, so now you got the actual computer in space, but this is nothing groundbreaking.
:P)
I mean, just think of all the extra NASA missions: STS-31337 - Astronauts launch to press reset button on blue-screened sattelite!
And for the script kiddies, the IP is 207.46.130.14. (The intelligent among you will realise that this is merely an elaborate plot to packet/slashdot the evil empires (aka M$) website.
I remember seeing somewhere that people were working on a Deep space protocol, a successor to TCP/IP that didnt need acknowledgements for every packet and avoiding the timeout problems.
The problem with thinking about internet in space is that we are going to need people at the other end, and unless there is a colony on mars, then there is no point in placing an internet link to one or two probes.
The same goes for interstellar networks, if (when) we advance far enough to colonise other solar systems, we will most likely have discovered a method to send signals faster than light (as well as Superluminal velocities in spacecraft). If not, and radio signals are our only method of communicating via computers, then it would work out far faster simply jumping in one of our little spceships and delivering the message by hand.
Thing is, when we get to the stage of travelling interstellar distances, we can just ask bug-eyed-bill and his space poodle how their species did it! (Assuming M$ and government philosophy of what they dont know, assume they are to stupid to know, and charge them for the priveledge, didnt take them over that is)
I'll take down this puppy yet. Me and a few Palm VIIs should be enough to run a nice DDOS attack...
<rubbing hands together evilly>
;)
Let's say that the engineer has logged into the satellite via ssh. His connection is a little laggy, but nevertheless he's entering attitude-control commands for future execution. You're sniffing his packets, but what do you see? Noise, mostly. What could you do with it? Probably nothing.
I guess we could go back and forth over this forever, but what about something on their machine? You know -- get a friend of his daughter's to install a poisoned version of ICQ that traps keystrokes. I think the problem isn't so much TCP/IP, but it's that this can be accessed from non-secure locations. IMHO, satellites ought to be adjustable only from steel-clad bunkers thousands of feet beneath the earth.
OK, well maybe not that extreme. But you know what I mean.
-Waldo
This is cool and all, but, all jokes aside, isn't this a security nightmare. Sure, you can put up a firewall, password proection, IP filtering, PGP, etc., but is that really enough?
From the article:
From the comfort of home, an engineer logs onto the Internet using a laptop computer and communicates with an orbiting spacecraft. Using industry standard Internet protocols, simple keystrokes send commands adjusting the spacecraft's attitude.
"Comfort of home"? Pretending that I'm a $6/hour ISP admin, couldn't I trap those packets and crash a satellite?
I'm not trying to be a fearmonger, but I really do think that this is a case of Too Much Stuff Connected To The Internet. We all laughed a few years ago when kooks started saying that "Internet hackers" could shut down power plants and kill small woodlands animals. At the time, of course, none of these things were net connected.
Now, between IPv6-addressable squirrels and this satellite, we really could have a problem on our hands.
-Waldo
There are some comments about this in the Linux kernel... see net/ipv4/tcp_timer.c:
* [...] Note that 120 sec is
* defined in the protocol as the maximum possible RTT. I guess
* we'll have to use something other than TCP to talk to the
* University of Mars.
*
* PAWS allows us longer timeouts and large windows, so once
* implemented ftp to mars will work nicely. We will have to fix
* the 120 second clamps though!
could be interesting.
--
Hard drives contain air at normal atmospheric pressure, not a vacuum. Most of them are not completely sealed, there is a small air filter that allows for pressure equalization. You would need to mount the hard drive inside a pressurized container on the spacecraft.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
i am actually suprised this wasn't done earlier with amateur satellites, as it is (aside from the issues involving communication with orbiting communications systems) just a wireless network connect. if the satellite was in polar orbit you'd have availability problems, but a sat in the clarke belt would be nifty.
anyone know of plans in the amateur community to do this?
oh, and check out AmSat for info on amateur satellites and whatnot.
cvoid - satellites are cool
I think scientists are mostlikely smart enough to sit the thing on a private network behind a firewall ;)
Apple in 1979 released DOS 3.2 soon to be followed by DOS 3.3 in 1980.
This was the operatingsystem Apple used on the Apple ][(+) with the 140 K 5.25 inch drives.
In 1983 Apple released ProDOS which supported things like subdirectory's and hard drives.
This was before the Mac and HFS (the first Mac uses MFS which didn't supported real subdirectory's).
satellite-13.iridium.orbit not responding still trying
This story is good news for the Save Iridium project. If the technology can be transferred to run on the Iridium satellites they could be used to enhance the internet backbone. Any idea what the ping is to a satellite from earth? AFAICT it will be in the 1 to 2 seconds range, which isn't terribly ideal but would suffice for large downloads with large packet sizes, making the ping time have little effect.
Just my 2c.
Actually, after a thorough study of alien communication protocols and network topologies, I have determined that this is not likely. Their computing systems are based on ternary numbering (their equivalent to bytes, which they call munches, are 9 ternary integers, or tits, wide). Furthermore, they have not developed star based network topologies - all of their systems connect using token ring topologies. Also, they are more advanced than us in certain areas: they never developed stupid connectionless protocols like UDP - they always had sockets and streams. Go figure.
With the tits and everything, it is doubtful they will send a virus that is even executable on whatever processor is in there. We're safe for now.
-Leo
when Napster was loaded onto it and a Metallica song uploaded. This is confirmed to be the highest upload recorded. The spacecraft has no comment at this time
e to the i pi equals negative one
You would need to mount the hard drive inside a pressurized container on the spacecraft.
:-)
Actually, you would need to mount two disks, back-to-back, otherwise, when the drives spin up, the whole satilite will start rotating in the other direction. Newton's Third Law makes working in space a pain in the butt at times.
When I was working at the Space Science Center at Unnamed U., they were building instruments for data collection. They found it cheaper in the long run to simply use hundreds of megabytes of static RAM (what we computer geeks call "cache RAM"). RAM because disks are a pain to work with in space, and static RAM because it resists radiation better and doesn't need to be refreshed.
I wonder what 192 MB of cache RAM goes for?
dragonhawk@iname.microsoft.com
I do not like Microsoft. Remove them from my email address.
A Martian packet is one that appears to have made a round trip to Mars (i.e. is older than the TCP 120 second timeout) en route to your computer.
~/linux/net/ipv4$ grep martian * /* Check for the most weird martians, which can be not detected
devinet.c: {NET_IPV4_CONF_LOG_MARTIANS, "log_martians",
devinet.c: &ipv4_devconf.log_martians, sizeof(int), 0644, NULL,
route.c:
route.c: goto martian_source;
route.c: goto martian_source;
route.c: goto martian_destination;
route.c: goto martian_source;
route.c: goto martian_destination;
route.c: goto martian_source;
route.c: goto martian_source;
route.c: * Do not cache martian addresses: they should be logged (RFC1812)
route.c:martian_destination:
route.c: printk(KERN_WARNING "martian destination %08x from %08x, dev %s\n", daddr, saddr, dev->name);
route.c:martian_source:
route.c: * RFC1812 recommenadtion, if source is martian,
route.c: printk(KERN_WARNING "martian source %08x for %08x, dev %s\n", saddr, daddr, dev->name);
(yes, I am kidding, and yes, that grep will actually print out what I posted)
We have been using linux, a direcpc dish and MSAT (mobile satellite) phones for about 2 years now in several locations. http://knet.on.ca/poplartrip/photogall2.html Ping times are about 1700ms. The system is painfully slow awaiting responses but fairly quick for downloads. Considering there was no access to begin with and in some communities no telephones this is a blessing for those who now use email to communicate and are able to do ICQ and such things.
Vinton Cerf (the "father" of the Internet, perhaps even without the quotes) is constantly talking about Internet in space, interplanetary Internet and so on. For example, in his celebrated essay (an Internet draft) "The Internet is for Everyone" (now the official motto of the ISOC), he writes:
To be quite honest, if I didn't have so much admiration for him, I would say that Vint is going just a bit off his rocker, there. But, who cares? The idea is fun, and if a man can't dream, what's left for him to do?
Did you know it, the ISOC has even formed an "Interplanetary International Special Interest Group" (IPNSIG).
--
David A. Madore (ISOC member)
I just hope that it is not made into another Iridium-like network. The reason the current satellites are not too busy right now is the need for an amateur radio license and the skills needed involved to track a low-orbit satellite. If TCP/IP is used for this purpose in the future, don't expect to have it on your cell phone or anything.
Visit Amsat if you want more information about the current state of amateur radio in the sky.
A hard drives heads are shaped so that they 'fly' over the surface. In other words, in order to actually have a relieable spacing of the heads above the platter, they utilise the Bernoulli efect (you know, same thing that keeps aircraft up). There is something of the order of 100 air 'molecules' between the head and the platter. It's spaced that much to allow for variation in head head (if you knocked it and caused a head crash, you wouldn't be impressed, would you?).
I do recall that someone (Western Digital?) a few years ago (about 7 or so) reported on filling a harddrive with a liquid, that is more viscous than air. This allowed the head to platter spacing to be reduced, as the more visquius liquid is a better shock adsorber. I belive they had a working prototype at one molecule above the surface. Advantage of this is that it allow more precise control of applied force, and better spatial location of magnetic domainms (IOW - higher data density)
"Comfort of home"? Pretending that I'm a $6/hour ISP admin, couldn't I trap those packets and crash a satellite?
That's why things https and ssh exist. If I were a $6/hour ISP admin and could crack those, I wouldn't be a $6/hours ISP admin for long. There's tons of RSA encrypted traffic that's way more juicy.
Combine VPN, strong encryption, and vigilant system administration and I don't think anyone will be sending spurious orders. Other than that I would see potential DOS problems, especially if the engineer is sending a sequence low level maneuvering orders that could be interrupted during execution. However you'd have to be brain damaged to design the system to work that way anyway -- what if your transmitter failed?
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Ok.. now who is going to port Seti@home to run on it? Kinda ironic don't ya think?
Sorry, I had to do this. Puns are way too much fun.
On a more serious note, this bodes well for network engineers who want to get into the satcom industry. The differences between the computer industry and the communications industry are rapidly disappearing.
-Josh
So what do we call it? The OuterNet?
Have a Happy.
The hard drive heads use air to keep from touching the disk. A hd in space needs some air.
There are also problems with heat transfer because of no air. Cooling in space is not an easy thing to do.
Let's face it. It's highly likely that eventually, we're going to go forth and spread throughout the cosmos. Let's assume for a second that we don't discover ways to transmit data faster than the speed of light. How well will the Internet scale when it extends to distant planets or even stars?
Washington, DC: It's like Hollywood for ugly people.
Contrary to some people's beliefs, "DOS" never stood for "Disk Operating System". There was a popular PC operating system called "DOS" (now renamed "Windows"), but the name still meant "Denial Of Service", as anyone who used it knows.
Washington, DC: It's like Hollywood for ugly people.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
This isn't exactly as ground-breaking as one might be lead to believe. What it allows for is native-protocol communication between the Internet and other satellites. Crackers have "taken over" satellites in the past, so the thought is nothing new. And satellites are used in communication systems quite frequently. But now the satellites get their own IP address and can make use of native TCP/IP functionality, so it can only enhance telecommunications.
"`Ford, you're turning into a penguin. Stop it.'" -Douglas Adams, THHGTTG
I remember hearing about a new TLD, ".orb", for things in orbit. At the time, it was "shuttle.orb" for communicating with STS missions.
You cannot apply a technological solution to a sociological problem. (Edwards' Law)
If you want some geniune spaced bits, just do a traceroute to mcmsun5.mcmurdo.gov. It goes through a geosynchonous sat along the way, and your bits will pick up lots of frequent flier miles.
-- There is no truth. There is only Perception. To Percieve is to Exist.
ObTack: :)
This Tackhead site has pretty up-to-date info. And some really interesting links. Nuff said
Seriously, I've been trolling for vinyl too. Very hard to find. All I have is the more recent stuff on CD. I'm regularly polling a couple of good indie record stores that have good industrial coverage and will let you know if I find anything rare. Meanwhile, keep your eyes on the obvious site that you've probably found from the Tackhead site I mentioned. (It was news to me too :)
As for Tackhead - I'll heartily recommend the three "Power, Inc." volumes, which should still be available on CD. They're also being done through Keith LeBlanc's own label, which I would hope means that Keith actually gets some of the proceeds from the sales...
(...getting back on topic, at least marginally...) ...unlike certain other bands which don't want their music *traded* as a commodity, but being bought and sold as a commodity is just fine. *g*
Guess you can't call them globally unique idenitifiers anymore.
Sorry, I've been waiting to make that crack for a looooong time.
standard Internet software modules were uploaded to the spacecraft.
Brings new meaning to the term "upload".
-Michael
Do you have ESP?
If I read the article correctly, the door isn't open as far as many of the posted comments would make it appear.
They've enabled ICMP. They've talked about controlling orbital adjustments. I'm not up on how these birds are built, but I'm not sure from what I've read that this in any way opens up the data stream to the Internet.
Sure, you might be able to (literally) crash the satellite, but the idea of a DoS attack interrupting the data stream seems a bit of a reach. These are good examples of the problems which will need to be solved before our satellites all become nothing but nodes, but if someone managed a DoS attack on the IP port, it would only appear to mean they'd have to go back to inband satellite control instead of IP-based satellite control.
But I suppose it IS logical to assume that all the satellite functions would eventually be exposed via IP. IF that were the case with Iridium, it would be ironic to see a hacker deorbit all the birds, then let Motorola file an insurance claim and finally turn a profit on the system!
http://drteknikal.blogspot.com/
That won't work either if the hop is 4.3 light-years away. The standard TCP method is to hold a copy of the packet for retransmission until you know conclusively that it is no longer needed. In the case of USENET, articles can and do expire from the local disk storage before they can be transmitted to the next hop -- there are several "corrective" mechanisms for handling such overloaded feeds...
The next thing ya' know, the universe will filled with drone arms...
w^HWell i finally got a shee^Hll on the satellite, but thhe lag is so bad i can'''t ^H^H^H^H''^Ht even use lynx well. Man, and theres something wrong with they^Hir stty settings. Anyway, FIRSTT POST FROM SPP^HACE! :wq^H^H^H oh yeah, i'm not in vii^H
Packing a TCP/IP stack into one of the Voyagers would be tougher than a PIC! And of what use would it be? You'd have to ping it before you went to bed to see the result in the morning, and 90% of your packets would be lost!
.sig: Now legally binding!
Into which jursdiction would the lawsuit fall??
penguinicide... when jumping out a window just won't do.
that was the lamest movie Brent Spiner was ever in...
What the article is talking about is different. The satelite is actually part of the network and not just a transfer medium. They are talking "to" it. A paragraph in the article points this out:
Satelites have never really been used in this way before and I'm interested in it. It has the potential to speed up intercontinental communication quite a bit. I would think that it is a lot faster to bounce a signal through the air to a satelite to another satelite and then back to land on the other side of the planet than it is to pass the signal under the ocean via copper or fiber. Fiber is a faster medium for transfer but the routers and things slow it down.
On another note, it would be a lot of fun to play with this. Anyone want to upload the source for DeCSS to an orbiting satalite?
-magicsloth
Earth is 93 million miles from Sol; that's about 500 light-seconds. Jupiter, 5.2 AU or 2600 light-seconds; less than 45 minutes. Pluto is what, 40 AU more or less? 20,000 seconds, or about 5.5 light-hours. You'd have to be over 80 AU from Sol before your round-trip time reached a day. I remember when Usenet posts could easily take a day or more to propogate around the various servers; somehow, I don't think that the time delay would keep electronic culture from flowering across an enormous expanse of space.
--
This post made from 100% post-consumer recycled magnetic
Time is Nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once... the bitch.
TCP/IP essentially doesn't work over such distances. On the other hand, schemes like Fidonet and Usenet News would work fine as long as they had a transport scheme underneath. You can forget a System-Wide Web, but a system of caching servers for Usenet posts, static web pages, or any other kind of content that doesn't require active communication with the originator will work fine. All you have to do is broadcast everything that's new or changed, and use appropriate encoding to guarantee that the receiver can reconstruct any data errors (something like trellis encoding would be appropriate). What you'd get at Pluto would be some hours out of date and Alpha Centauri would be years behind the fashions, but it would get there.
--
This post made from 100% post-consumer recycled magnetic
Time is Nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once... the bitch.
If you have your own radio gear, you could have sent commands to the satellite using whatever protocol and authentication it wants even without TCP/IP. Adding TCP/IP, if the satellite functions are protected with the same authentication codes, doesn't make it significantly easier.
The other way is to hack through someone else's gateway. If they've firewalled it, you've got the problem of defeating the firewall before you get to the satellite and its authentication mechanisms. Of course, if someone has left the authentication info lying around in an accessible place on their Internet-accessible computer, you're all set... assuming the satellite will accept configuration commands over the TCP/IP channel (it might not, the article didn't say if this was only used for the store/forward system or command and control as well).
It's a pity we can't just ask Bruce Schnier for his opinion of their security model.
--
This post made from 100% post-consumer recycled magnetic
Time is Nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once... the bitch.
--
This post made from 100% post-consumer recycled magnetic
Time is Nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once... the bitch.
bet that last hop close to timing out!
Linux... Of course, since a BSOD at 600 ft could ruin your day
I am part of a team that is operating an Apache Linux based webserver at 600 feet. The vehicle is unmanned and thats why reliability is paramount. Topside Communication is via a fiber optic cable.
The Linux box is host to a data acquisition system that acquires vehicle health data and provides a human interface to control power. A Perl based application communicates to data acquisition modules (check www.Opto22.com) using a firewire driver rewritten from C++ to Perl.
The operator interface is CGI/Perl and if a condition alarms occurs and is not acknowledged the application sends out e-mails alerts. The operator can view historical data which is plotted with Gnuplot which I can do at home in my underware.
The entire system is 100% Open Source software.
correct me if I am wrong but I would imagine that the engeniers would have left something along the lines of a air gap for security on this sat considering that from what I read they are using this just to test the feasability of this concept
:-)
or I am way off
Jon
... (MSL) is defined in RFC793 as "2 Minutes", so with current electromagnetical communication methods the maximal diameter of a TCP/IP network like the internet is 2 light minutes wich doesn't even reach the next planet.
(Sorry, I'm too lazy to check what difference TCPv6 makes here (if at all).)
@$%*#! dat dumb birdie nezt on ze satellite dish... give me lagz and LPB American SDI quakerz fragged me Russian satellites. There went ze whole Russian economy... no soup for me tomorrow....
Daniel J. Peng
The jurisdiction over which the satellite was travelling at the time of the alleged action :)
IANAL, but I have read `The Man Who Sold the Moon' by Robert Heinlein.
Maybe I'm showing my age here, but does anyone else remember "Packets from Mars"?
martian: n. A packet sent on a TCP/IP network with a source address of the test loopback interface [127.0.0.1]. This means that it will come back labeled with a source address that is clearly not of this earth. "The domain server is getting lots of packets from Mars. Does that gateway have a martian filter?" Compare Christmas tree packet, Godzillagram.
jargon/m/martian.html
From The Jargon file (4.2)
LongTail SSH Brute Force analysis tool is here!
They are going to re-enter the iridiums anyway...so how bout a raffle/contest. They put TCP/IP on them. Some basic firewalls...and sell tickets to nerds. Then pick however many nerds there are satellites in the Iridium constelation and see who can crash thier satellite first! Talk about bragging rights.
Where are the keys to my whore?
With the tits and everything, it is doubtful they will send a virus that is even executable on whatever processor is in there. We're safe for now.
;-)
You've forgotten about Java - write once (on alien mothership), run everywhere (once the worm hits our Net).
James.
-Foxxz
...Is not advanced antisat missiles, but scr1pt k1dd13s with airforce commissions...
'The Chinese tanks are advancing on our position sir!' '"ping -F north-hem.GPS" soldier!'
Tyranny = Government choosing how much power to give the people.
This is definitely the way to go IMO. It will allow easier access to satellites or whatever in space and when this kind of thing becomes more common, the general public will be able to perhaps interact with satellites over the internet from their own computer.
If they're not sealed completely, won't the pressure equalize? Is there anything inside a hard drive that's dependent on atmospheric conditions, aside from crud (friction, etc.)?
Forgive my ignorance, but it doesn't seem like it would matter terribly much.
[|]
Now the satellite is going to get slashdotted, and the whole thing is going to come crashing down on our heads.
I want to e-mail ET. Get an e-mail address like gravis777@nospam.voyger.nasa.ac (alpha centari). I was going to say that I wanted to e-mail Captain Janeway, but that was pushing it a little too far.
Ever seen Independence Day? I guess you have. But now we can use our Apple Powerbooks to send them a virus back, and we won't have to go into space this time.
Okay, here's my take on the security thing. As of now, they are implementing TCP/IP over their satellite signals. I assume that they do not have the ground-based receiver connected to the public Internet, so there's not a whole lot of risk. Of course, then we get to the fun part.
At some point in time, it is likely that researchers using the Internet proper will be able to communcate with a satellite. At that point, yes, there is a possibility of malicious individuals (or groups) getting into your sattellite. At least one barrier to entry would be the ground station-to-satellite link. If you kept this secure (using open and tested protocols and such), a malicious entity would require both a ground station of their own and strong knowledge of the ground-satellite signal specifications and protocols.
If you set the satellite to only act on signals coming from known-good ground stations (based on geophysical location), then a ground station would have to be compromised in order to take over a satellite. This would add another layer of security.
If you, say, hard code those coordinates and the verification routines (and make sure you don't pull a Hubble), you could be fairly certain that your satellite can't be controlled by anyone else, except through your links. If, then, you use secure connections through said link (which means keeping the stuff current, of course), you should be fine.
All in all, it should be no easier to maliciously control a 'Net sat than it is to use an existing attack against the current generation. (Disclaimer: I am not a rocket scientist, although I did take a class covering the basics.)
Check out direcpc.com I have had satelite internet from them for months - about 9 times faster than a 56k modem.
Granted it is just a router really but still - it's cool. I get the internet and Directv off of one dish.
(You still have to have a modem and dialin for the outgoing traffic...)
Frankly, I'm a little worried. Sure, it's way cool to have a satellite on the Internet, but, come on, control it's position from the Internet? At least I hope they have some very good VPN and authentication set up (for when they do have control- I get the impression it wasn't set up for that yet, heres hoping it never does.)
Security critical components should be on a private network. Sure, use TCP/IP, TCP/IP rocks, but if you are going to have remote control I for one would be far more relaxed if you were on a private network (the solar system intranet!).
Maybe I'm overreacting, but I can't help looking up to the sky, thinking of a script kiddy, and ducking under cover.
I've seen a story on slashdot about the making of the actual Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
This would be the perfect way to do that! Make the Iridium Satellites Interface with TCP/IP and
you've got a way to update the entries via satellite!
This would be very Froody indeed
KillerPenguin
How about tuning up slashdot or buying a bigger box? Clicking on a link and then playing a game of tennis taking a shower, etc etc well the page might load in that time.
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
This reminds me of a comment I once read in the source of a TCP/IP stack (KA9Q probably) to the effect that IP would be no good for communication in space as the round trip time to Mars would cause standard IP to time out every packet. Damnit, why didn't they see this coming back in the seventies? :-)
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I have a spacecraft moving at 20,000mph time on that craft is going slower then here on earth. (This has been proven btw.) .01 sec. Now pretend computer B is traveling at a speed where there is a 1 sec disparity between their time. Meaning when its 12:00:00 at computer B, its 12:00:01 at computer A.
so, if I send it a packet, and the turn around time is less then the time difference between myself and the space craft, what would my ping time be? Example: I have a computer A, and the ping time between computer A and Computer B(when stationary in respect to each other) is
Still with me? good
So if computer A can send a packet to Computer B and get a return Before that time actually happens to Computer B.
or
Computer B can send a packet to Computer A and get a return, and it will happen in the 'past' of computer A. that means computer A will 'see' the packet before computer B sends it!
Wow, I wonder if I should write a paper on this? Anybody know any physicists I can talk to?
If you where on a ship travelling at the speed of light, would All your computer communication seem to happen instantaneously?
Your time is not moving, but all time outside the craft is moving, so it could take 'forever' outside that craft to process your communication, but you would perceive it as instantaneous.
I think I sprang my brain.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Everyone and their brother would then /. the server so that they can have orbital tcp/ip traffic...
Not to mention the script kiddies wanting to "0w/\/" it...
BlackNova Traders
Hmmm... linux? too obvious
Apache? sounds like a recent april fool'j joke
A QUICKCAM hanging from the parallel port? oh baby!
MP3 Server? Definately! Gives a whole new opening to interesting services
I mean, one threat to security has always been PHYSICAL SECURITY, right? putting it in spcae is a way to virtually ASSURE that noone can PHYSICALLY get to your box. Imagine a place where logging in on your console didn't require a password. Well, since it is government, they probably have some sort of biometric device tacked onto the damn thing. Disregard the previous statement.
screw the webcam, how about a Jennycam for all the female astronauts... OOOooh baby... that spacesuit turns me on.
Today, I have attached a device, which I call a "laser" to the Internet. This "laser" is pointed directly at Redmon Washington. Unless I receive..... One Hundred Trillion dollars, I will issue the following "command"
/usr/local/bin/fire /dev/"laser"
# ssh alanparsons.project.moon -ldr-evil \
now packets from british porn sites are gonna be routed up to outer space, making it take even LONGER for them to get to my machine......
Can you say, slashdot effect? :)
I can't seem to understand why this is anything new. Communication satellites have been with us for a very long time, and many of them are in active use as Internet relays. So what's the big difference? That now the satellite itself responds to PINGs, instead of just relaying the packets along? Doesn't seem much of a news...
DIBS on god@UoSAT-12.gov!
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www.chowda.net
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YouTube & Google Video -> podcast http://castcluster.blogspot.com/
... and it causes the satellite to crash, does it *REALLY* crash ... :)
Rob
cost of UoSat-12 satellite ... $150 million
... $9.95
... priceless !
cost of dialup access with AOL
ability to spam from outer space
:)
Rob
Oh wait, I'm laughing!
Maybe NASA could take one of the older lower orbit satellites they have sitting around the lab and load LRP on it to act as the firewall/router.
It worked with my old 486 sitting over there by my bookcase; I can't see why it wouldn't work for them.
LRP - Embedding the bird for the sake of all humanity
problem is I highly doubt that the satellite itself has an internet connection, probably setup as an internal lan for test purposes, and if they did setup the satellite for internet they are fools.....
Atticka
No sig here...
Wait a minute ... now aliens can come down and upload a virus to our satelites. We're opening the backdoor to alien hackers!
The pings times to an orbitting satellite wouldn't be so bad because the Sat is only 50-100 miles above the earth's surface...if that. The signal to the sat travels as fast if not faster than regular dialup over copper phone wires. It might even speed up the internet because to transmit long distances you would have fewer routers to go through.
Maybe this is a setup to get all of the script kiddies to find the "satellite" and try to hack it. Then, when WaReZD00D thinks he's realigning a satellite to beam porn into his TV, he gets caught. Then again, maybe not... Besides my requests are so slow from home, I think they are already been routed through space for years.
*everything* is Orwellian to cats.
I wonder if someone could learn to use lowercase letters and spaces?
No time for
New protocols will be needed for greater distances. A set of protocols for an asteroid belt sized network would probably not work very well for an Oort cloud sized network, let alone an interstellar network.
Revenge is a dish best served cold -- grits should be served hot!