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."
OK, because at least someone on Slashdot knows, I have to ask: how would they do this? Is there some form of access key or security needed to uplink to a transponder, or is it simply a matter of finding the right satellite and frequency? I would hope that the latter is not true, but "security by obscurity" is a well-known (amusingly) procedure in many companies..
Hacks of satellites have been predicted by experts numerous times before; the older ones were, rather worryingly, designed mostly with security by obscurity. Need uplink codes? Probably not a problem if you can get near to the ground station with appropriate equipment, no radio transmission is 100% directional.
IIRC it was one of the Blackhat conference speakers who outlined the nasty possibility of a satellite somewhere in a geosynchronous constellation being hijacked and deliberately crashed into another one. Given that this area is fairly densely populated, the debris could start a chain reaction and do a lot of damage.
After taking a look at your past comments, it seems more likely that you just wanted to rationalize the antics of the violent insurgents that are basically destroying my native country, because you like that they're anti-American rebels. (Although they ARE part of the reason I came to the US, I have to thank them for that.)
Mods- I'm not trolling here-- look at his profile if you don't believe me.
Whatever they say, the large majority of the terrorists cannot be seriously called "freedom fighters".
People who used terrorism agains nazi occupation in several european countries and to a certain extend some of the intifada fighters may claim that title as long as they only attacked military or police targets of a brutal occupation force or dictatorship in their homeland. Tamil tigers might have fallen in that category, but they really have too much innocent blood on their hands.
But on the other hand, although I hate GWB as much as any other non-US citizen, I refuse that title to people who, for example, come from Iran or Syria (or any other place) to Irak and blindly kill civilian because bringing chaos to Irak serves the political agenda of the country that funds them.
And yes, propaganda can be a tool of terrorism.
Is it really that hard to hack satellites? Is the security not so great since there are few people who actually have the capacity to try such tricks?
Horns are really just a broken halo.
Very insightful, it is also exactly what is happening in Sri Lanka. I have personally witnessed a civilian being beaten up by the Sri Lankan army: on the main road connecting the capital to the parliament. People who travel to the war torn east of the country have told me such things happen regularly there. I shudder to think what happens out of sight and in more of the way places.
The LTTE are very ruthless and achieved their position partly by killing any dissenters. They are also the world leaders in suicide bombings, both in the number of attacks and the technology used. I suspect if the Sri Lankan forces had been more restrained, the LTTE's own brutality would have undermined them.
They are certainly ingenious and are unique among their peers in operating on land, sea and in the air - they recently used light aircraft to bomb an air force base, and had dropped bombs and got away before the air force get its air craft off the ground.
In the meantime, Sri Lanka faces horrible side effects from war. Corruption, vote-rigging, suppression of free speech, a rise in Buddhist fundamentalism and huge economic damage.
On a more cheerful note, its a great time to go to Sri Lanka on holiday. The hotels are dirt cheap. The conflict is localised, foreigners are not targets, and you would be safe from violence as long as you avoid the north and east of the country. The risks from Sri Lankan driving are another matter....
Posting anonymously for obvious reasons: my profile links to my blog and I do not want to make unnecessarily make enemies in Sri Lanka as I spend a lot of time there. The fact that I feel it necessary to be anonymous should tell you a lot about the state of free speech in Sri Lanka.
It might not have been approved by the higher ups either in the family/party. India's Minister for Communication Kalanidhi Maran, is a nephew of the Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu and their family owns the SunTV conglomerate. Tigers are to be feared, their pledge of alligiance to their leader Prabakaran supercedes any other consideration.
Trying hard to present NPoV without my biases. Hope I succeeded.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
The satellites that carry a lot of the TV and telephone transmissions are decades old. They simply aren't capable of doing any of this, and it's impractical to attempt to upgrade them. You can put measures like this in newer communications satellites that go up, but those old satellites aren't going anywhere, and so long as they're still running, it's not economical to abandon them.
It's always been assumed that it would be cost-prohibitive for random malcontents to obtain access to the hardware needed to successfully uplink a signal (or interfere with one) to a satellite, and for all intents and purposes, it is, to this day.
In addition, a lot of the transmissions going over these satellites remains analog, either audio or video. An encryption scheme like the one you're suggesting would only work if the satellite were data-only, which would require costly upgrades for a lot of the people using satellites for analog transmissions today. It's not just the broadcasters (the uplink) that would need to digitize the data, but everyone that receives those transmissions would have to have equipment to decode it.
With that said, digitized signals and data encryption are used on a lot of transmissions today, but the satellites generally play no role in that layer of the transmission. They remain "bent pipes" and simply retransmit what they hear (analog). This can be useful to differentiate on the ground between authorized and unauthorized transmissions (no "hijacking" of an encrypted transmission), but won't help if the authorized transmission is simply overpowered by the interfering one. (And, indeed, even in the data-only case, you'd still have this problem.)
[quote]That the U.S. had goodwill before 9/11 and then threw it away with the invasion of Iraq is a myth. [/quote]
You are the one reciting a myth. After 9-11, Le Monde proclaimed, "We are all Americans". The band outside Buckingham palace played the Star-Spangled Banner. All around the world, vigils were held, marches were held, and US embassies were plastered with flowers. Have you forgotten so soon? Well, perhaps polls will help remind you.
In some countries, positive opinions of America have more than halved.
The big brain am winning again! I am the greetist! Now I am leaving for no particular raisin!