Slashdot Mirror
Sri Lankan Terrorists Hack Satellite
SorryTomato writes "The Tamil Tigers Liberation Front a separatist group in Sri Lanka, which has been classified as a terrorist group in 32 countries has moved up from routine sea piracy to a space-based one. They have been accused of illegally using Intelsat satellites to beam radio and television broadcasts internationally. Intelsat says that they will end the transmissions 'within days.' Intelsat has been accused of having business links with Hezbollah before, but claim that they are blameless this time and LTTE was using an empty transponder."
The satellite was configured to retransmit on certain channels, the LTE simply beamed up a signal on a channel that wasn't in use but was configured to retransmit if something was being sent to it.
F@-lun gong hacked SinoSat from Taiwan to broadcast their propaganda program to mainland china.
g +sinosat+hack
To read more:
http://www.google.com.sg/search?hl=en&q=falun+gon
Just adding some links to my post, this is one of the systems used to locate interferences. Of course, in the marketing they present one of the most accurate results they have, normally the precision is not that good. And that same company also does the final search for the interfering transmitter.
No need for covert hacking, most satellites are little more than expensive dumb repeaters in space, anyone with a few thousand dollars can bounce a signal off one without restriction, sometimes without even being noticed for a good length of time, if at all.
:-), it is still vastly quicker to have a human operator run through with a spectrum analyser to figure out what should or should not be there. Back when I was working for the man, the visible part of the clark belt in my section of the sky was filled with satellites having many thousands of transmissions on each polarity in use. Weeding out the pirates is tedious and never ending work for a space based telco.
Given that the best automated methods of scanning and identifying energy spikes is about as good as speech recognition 15 years ago - and don't kid your selves on this point you 3 letter agency drone PHB's
I'm certain Intelsat don't want any non-paid for signals period, though the legalities of pirate transmissions are a bit of a grey area depending on which country you are in. I have seen on many occasions a sweeping CW (carrier wave) running back and forth across what I assume are unwanted transmissions. I'd say there's not really much more Intelsat can do except suck it up and try to identify unknowns a tad faster than they have been doing in the past, and then simply try to disrupt the signal - no guarantee this will work though.
The fine article makes it sound like Intelsat have some sophisticated system that'll let them drop the transmissions with a flick of a few switches - this is an interesting feel good fluff explanation probably more aimed at their investors. What they really mean is that there is sweet FA they can do about it beyond asking nicely for the naughty men to turn off their bad signal, otherwise they'll take their transponder and switch it off for everyone, only for a few minutes though.
No, it hasn't. When I was young (eighties), the US was seen as the great superpower protecting us from those evil Soviets. I vividly remember the horror stories told by my parent of desperate people risking their lives trying to get over the Berlin wall to the West, because it was so bad and repressive in those Eastern European states. Stories about secret police abducting you because you dared to criticise the state. On the other hand, the US were these great guys who protected us from Soviet annexation after WWII. Nowadays, you'll be hard pressed to hear my parents say anything good about the US though.
You're merely deluding yourself into a comfortable "whatever we do, they've never liked us and will never like us anyway, so why would we care what others say/think"-position? I hope you do not confuse that attitude with patriotism.
According to Asian Tribune, the satellite channel was part of the ceasefire agreement between the LTTE and the government of Sri Lanka. Since Ranil Wickremasinghe hasn't been Prime Minister of Sri Lanka since 2004, this agreement that LTTE could broadcast obviously isn't exactly new.
Speculation time:
Some people are claiming that the LTTE is paying for the broadcasts. It sounds like someone at Intelsat may have accepted a contract based on the ceasefire agreement, only to get burned now that a different political party is in charge in Sri Lanka.
Exactly, especially considering in Sri Lanka, since Independance, Tamils have been racially and xenophobically put down, by a a majority ruling party, who just happen to speak a different language.
0 07.
See "Black July" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_July and other awful cases of poor human rights and racist actions by a few in power.
I have seen the problem at face, as I have recently (November 2006) been to Sri Lanka myself: as a tourist, and stayed in a hotel, in Colombo, for only 3 nights, to see my girlfriend who lives in Colombo (she is half Singhalese, half Tamil, by the way) Whenever my hotel car was stopped at numerous checkpoints, and they saw on my BRITISH passport, that I was born in Jaffna, I was given "special treatment". I usually responded with a query of the officers Badge Number, as well as reasons for the delay in letting me through, which usually for me, made them back off.
But others are not so lucky.
A friend of mine, was recently spotted as a Tamil at the immigration in Colombo airport, and was kidnapped en route to the capital, and was help, until he paid a ransom of £2000. The kidnapping was done by gangs, supporting the current administration, with the help of the police, and authorities.
Unfortunately the current administration in Sri Lanka, has a unwritten, but oft repeated view that all Tamils are LTTE. Amnesty International has been recently doing a large campaign highlighting the general lack of human rights in Sri Lanka http://web.amnesty.org/library/Index/ENGASA370102
No Tamil Sri Lankan wants to separate from the rest of the country, they just desire to live together in harmony. But when the government does not protect, and then attacks members of their own people, of cause people will support the LTTE in desperation.
It's a really sad tragic situation, and destroying a very beautiful country.
Have a nice day!
You are incorrect regarding antenna size. Satellite communications is possible using COTS equipment such as a Ku-band (about 14 GHz up, 11 GHz down) antenna about 1 m across. If you want to go C-band (6 Ghz/4 GHz), then a dish about 2.5 m across is sufficient. You only need about 100-400 W of power, again available in COTS equipment.
If you're not concerned with some of the requirements for your transmitted signal (particularly beamwidth), you can use dishes even smaller than these, provided you have sufficient transmitter power.
Such equipment must be available on the black market; if groups such as the Tamil Tigers can afford to buy black-market weapons, I can easily imagine the black-market availability of such technology for the right price.
Government's idea of a balanced budget: take money from the right pocket to balance...oh who am I kidding?
You also forgot to mention - India's Union Minister of Communication and Information technology, Mr. Dayanidhi Maran, is a nephew of the Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu.
As a satellite network controller, I disagree with your post: 1) They didn't HACK anything. The obtained ephemeris data from some online website, and pointed an antenna at the satellite. 2) Satellites have predicted channel allocations. There's a huge database containing the predicted signal levels, filtering, datarates and modulation techniques. If an unauthorized access occurs, the satellite network controllers see it instantly. 3) The only thing a satellite controller can do to negate an unauthorized user is reallocate the beamweights of the footprint to exclude the transmission area. Sure, this may work in Sri Lanka (where I've worked, by the by), but if someone in the US wanted to do the same thing, do you really think Intelsat would create 0dB directive gain in Virginia? I don't think so. Read up on satellite operations. It'll amaze you how little control controllers actually have.
Vocal minorities are often confused with silent majorities.
Communications satellites normally have no protection at all,
Yes, I have "hacked" a satellite before. Temporary bandwidth is expensive. Just point to a satellite (not hard to find them), plug in a spectrum analyzer and see where there are blank spaces. Put your carrier up there. Call your friend. Have them set their receive to there. Repeat for the return link. Turn it down within a week. Leave it off for a week. Try again. You will never be found. If you were found, nothing would happen to you. I only used it for a very short-term test when my provider was having trouble finding me test space, and no one ever noticed. If you have the gear for a satellite link and a spectrum analyzer, you can "hack" just about any commercial satellite. It isn't security through obscurity. It's a complete lack of security.
Learn to love Alaska