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Falun Gong Hacks Chinese Satellite
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."
"I feel kinda like god." The chinese are horrible at defacing websites. I mean come on. Can't you be a little clever and do something more exciting than "Hacked by Chinese!" or "Falun Gong is Good!"
You can actualy see how "security" in systems has been uncautiously implemented. With all this hype in the last months since Set. 11 about security, you get government satelite signals hacked.
What is the most ridiculous is that this is some serious stuff. Everyone knows that the military are years ahead of civil society in terms ov technological advancement (OK, maybe they weaken out in a couple of things, but you get the picture). So what do you get when the power to easily interfere in satelite communications is available to civil society? Take some guesses...
Even more than the use that individual citizens could give to it (don't get me started with the "terrorist" stuff, not everybody is as paranoid about it as you american guys. People in Europe don't worry as much as you), I just think of the power that the corporations can acheive trough this.
Yeah, Detroit, Robocop, stuff. Call me insane.
Lay
Weakly typed languages will bring us armageddon
Using crime to make yourself heard makes one a "terrorist", as per U.S tradition,
and two wrongs never make it right.
As an American who always supports the civil rights of all people everywhere,
including religous freedom, I condemn this action and label it as "cheap shot",
no matter the technical-coolness factor associated with it.
It has often been said that satellite security is swiss-like (as in cheese)...
Much like their air-traffic control systems.
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