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. "

Comments

Bring On The Packet Monkeys....

[Uruk]

Slashdot will have that thing DOS'd out of the sky by this evening, I'm sure.

Security -- this is foolish!

[waldoj]

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&quot? 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

Re:Security -- this is foolish!

[SatelliteBoy]

Well,

Actually, satellite ground systems are already using TCP/IP. Ground systems communicate through the satellite on special commanding boxes, but those boxes get their commands through ethernet.

Now, many amateurs receive signals from satellites, then decommutate and decode the telemetry. The old style C band satellite dishes work for this, they just need a little refit. One COULD command a bird with more hardware and some hacking - the US and USSR did it to each other's birds during the cold war.

What's my point? I don't think this necessarily makes satellites more vulnerable. After all, the commanding and payload (commercial signals) ususally pass through different paths, and the command paths have a bit of security involved, including encryption chips with closed-source algorithms, courtesy NSA. That encryption applies only to US owned birds, BTW.

This will make Vint Happy

[David A. Madore]

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:

"The Internet is moving off the planet. Already, an interplanetary Internet is part of the NASA Mars mission program now under way at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. By 2008 we should have a well-functioning Earth-Mars network that serves as the nascent backbone of an interplanetary system of Internets: InterPlaNet is a network of Internets. Ultimately, we will have interplanetary Internet relays in polar solar orbit so that such relays can see most of the planets and their interplanetary gateways for most if not all of the time."

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)

PINGS....IN....SPACE

[yoshi]

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

Re:How about some Amateur Sats?

[Tackhead]

And of course, I'm surprised nobody has suggested the obvious application:

Get Gold & Appel (or some similar organization) to launch a mess of "sats" into "orbit" at the Earth/Sun Lagrange points. Run something like "Freedom" on them. Give each sat a bunch of space-hardened (i.e. you need an atmosphere and some radiation and heat shielding) umpteen gigabyte RAID drives.

15 minute ping times, sure. But how the fsck will RIAA stop us from downloading MP3s when the servers are located in deep space? :) :) :)

All it takes is one .com billionaire with a really twisted sense of humor.

Im^H'm in but thel ag is horrribl^H^H^H^Hible

[SIGINT]

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

You'll have to ping farther than that.

[Tau Zero]

just something so cool about sending packets into outerspace and getting a response

Space scientists would disagree with you on that point. This satellite is in low-earth orbit (LEO), which is not technically considered to be "outer space". If you uploaded a TCP/IP stack to one of the Voyager probes or even Galileo, that would certainly qualify. How many million msec is your timeout again?
--
This post made from 100% post-consumer recycled magnetic

Packets from Mars?

[CSG_SurferDude]

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)