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Falun Gong Hacks Chinese Satellite

Posted by timothy on from the egg-on-face dept.

maetenloch writes: "Last week Falun Gong hackers in China were able to briefly take over the Sinosat-1 satellite and broadcast a banner for several minutes on all channels of China Central Television. This was apparently repeated several time on different channels on Sunday but so far the Chinese government has imposed a news blackout on the incident. However thanks to the Internet and the millions of witnesses, word has leaked out. Surprisingly, security on satellites can be very weak - often transponders are left on when not active and will continue to rebroadcast whatever is beamed at them. It's believed that Falun Gong used a 3 meter dish antenna mounted on a vehicle to overpower the government's uplink signal. This is not the only time that satellite signals have been hacked - there was the famous 'Captain Midnight' incident in 1986 and it's believed that Iraq has been attacking Kurdish satellite tv channels for several years. Hackers have even (discreetly) made use of the U.S. Navy's FleetSatCom satellites."

7 of 378 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Reminds me of that scene in Hackers by CaffeineAddict2001 · · Score: 4, Funny

    s/websites/things

  2. But are you SURE by Mr+Guy · · Score: 4, Funny

    Are we very sure they weren't trying to signal AMSAT-OSCAR 7 and just missed?

    --
    Never confuse volume with power.
  3. What a waste of effort... by Te1waz · · Score: 2, Funny

    They could have hacked the satellite and broadcast some decent programs.

    Anybody fancy making a similar effort as regards ITV? (preferably Saturday evening about 7 o'clock)

    --
    From my Autobiography - "Lifestyles of the Sad and Desperate"...
  4. They have by gelfling · · Score: 2, Funny

    The greatest Kung Fu. They are unbeatable.

  5. Re:An analogy by ceejayoz · · Score: 3, Funny

    I'll just start my own game wittily named "soccer" and pretend it's different...

    :-p

  6. Bad Pun Alert (Again) by KC7GR · · Score: 5, Funny

    Well, you have to admit this does have other possibilities. Perhaps Chuck Barris should be contacted to see if he'd like to host the Falun Gong Show...

    (I wonder if I'm going to lose karma points for that one...)

    --

    Bruce Lane, KC7GR,

    Blue Feather Technologies

  7. Don't they know anything? by TheTomcat · · Score: 3, Funny

    Banner advertising is _SO_ 2000.

    (-:

    S