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."

Comments

Frost Pist

[Anonymous Coward]

#!/usr/bin/ruby
# Script to screw over the Slashcode 2.0 Compression filter

# Roughly right for English text, all lowercase but who cares?
chars = %q[aaaaaaaabbcccddddeeeeeeeeeeeeffgghhhhhhiiiiiiik llll] +
%q[mmnnnnnnnoooooooopprrrrrrsssssstttttttttuuuvwwy y] +
(%q[ ] * 35) +
%q[...,,;!?]

# Start with this...
text = 'Confusius say: '

# Add some text...
(5000 + (rand 5000)).times {
text << chars[(rand chars.length), 1]
}

# Print it out
print text

fp

[Anonymous Coward]

and, weeeeeeee.

Reminds me of that scene in Hackers

[CaffeineAddict2001]

"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!"

There goes to show...

[lay]

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.

Falun Gong are terrorists.

[sinserve]

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.

Well that's nothing compared to what I did

[Anonymous Coward]

Flight 93 was shot down.

I know because I was ordered to shoot down the plane. Due to the classified status of that day's events, I can not divulge my name or the method I used to bring down the target. After I touched down back at the base that day, I found that the passengers on flight 93 had successfully overpowered the hijackers moments before I killed them all. I have suffered immeasurable guilt since then, to the degree that the unit shrink has grounded me indefinitely.

You will probably never know the full story. I do not think I can bear another six years of service before retirement and may be medically discharged by then, in which case I have nothing to live for any more.

--anonymous patriot

You did the right thing

[Anonymous Coward]

Who's to say that the terrorists could not have regained control of the aircraft? In times of national emergency, we must place faith in our actions and rely on the brave men and women we assign to be our protectors. Sometimes, being human, we make mistakes. Everyone does.

But ask yourself this... Would you have shot the plane down if there WASN'T a terrorist threat on board?

You, Sir, are a True American Hero. And this Thursday I shall raise a toast in your honor.

GOD BLESS AMERICA!

Re:You did the right thing

[Anonymous Coward]

...we must place faith in our actions and rely on the brave men and women we assign...

I no longer understand this mentality after what I did. The day my wings got clipped I left the base in my flight suit and people in the mall stopped me to thank me for protecting their freedoms, being so "brave", yada. I was so mad I wanted to kill them. There's nothing brave about pushing the 'fire' button. The only brave thing I ever do is pull back on the stick at the end of the runway and leave the safety and comfort of the ground. Don't call me a hero. I'm not a hero. I'm not brave enough to fly into a building. I'm a tool, or at least I was a tool.

You have a lot of free time when you're on medical leave. Lately I have been spending less time obsessing over that day and spending more time in the public library learning about what has really been going on. It sickens me that rich businessmen had the government create the CIA to meddle in the affairs of other countries to ensure our profits. It sickens me that we have destabilized the middle east because of our oil lust. It sickens me that we wage war in the middle east to "protect Democracy", which is really about protecting our oil supply, while the oil companies are squandering alternative technologies. We have had 12 years since Iraq invaded Kuwait, 12 years to ween ourselves off of middle eastern oil. What did we do? We waged a bullshit war over "Democracy" (Kuwait:oligarchy. Iraq:dictatorship. America:republic. Where is the democracy?) and slaughtered millions of people, creating countless justified enemies. The media, instead of calling on Bush to resign, waved the flag and the yellow ribbons and made Americans desensitized to killing innocent people. Now we have his idiot son in office. Everybody hated him on 9/10. He's still the same idiot, but now everybody gives him credit because we haven't been attacked again after 9/11. That's stupid logic because the terrorists took six years to plan the attacks. They can't possibly attack anytime soon.

Most of all it sickens me that you jackasses believe all this bullshit about protecting our freedoms and the terrorists hating our freedoms. We are not free. The wool is being pulled over our eyes. We have entered a permanent state of war. You will all continue to give up freedoms and the government and media will continue to manipulate you.

Offtopic cheap shot on the Swiss.

[saider]

It has often been said that satellite security is swiss-like (as in cheese)...
Much like their air-traffic control systems.

Re:Disregard the politics for a second

[Anonymous Coward]

Sure, its right here.