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."

Comments

Re:How?

[Frogbert]

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.

Not original....

[afa]

F@-lun gong hacked SinoSat from Taiwan to broadcast their propaganda program to mainland china.

To read more:
http://www.google.com.sg/search?hl=en&q=falun+gong +sinosat+hack

Re:The Best Hackers

[digitalchinky]

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.

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 :-), 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.

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.

Re:Where do they get the skills?

[SenseiLeNoir]

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.

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/ENGASA3701020 07.

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.

Re:The Best Hackers

[frdmfghtr]

Exactly. There is basically no security at all, apart from the requirement to have a big phat (and thus obvious...) transmitter. 30 meter antennae are somewhat hard to procure and hide, so anybody pulling such a stunt from an industrialized country would probably be caught within days. But do it from within a third-world country where nobody gives a damn, and you're free to air.

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.

You Can't HACK a satellite.

[ryanhornbeck]

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.