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."
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.
I believe China has something that can solve the problem in a few minutes ;-) China Tests Anti-Satellite Laser Weapon
--
Luck is just skill you didn't know you had.
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
May I suggest you look a bit into the history of Ireland?
The theory how armed resistance can be used to overthrow government is very old and goes along the lines of: provoke the authorities with violence until they start to react as violent, but against their own innocent civilians. Every state action should generate more supporters for your cause until you have a large enough majority to oust the regime, or they just downright give up. If you follow that theory, al-qaida was very successfull with their wtc attack. The US overreacted so violently that they lost all their goodwill in the rest of the world. Indirectly this may lead to the withdrawal of the US from Saudi soil.
Btw, personally I think all violence is wrong, but neither do I like the Myopic US views on 'terrorism'.
This space is intentionally staring blankly at you
Terrorists that "win" get to call themselves freedom fighters because they "won". Terrorists who didn't "win" get called terrorists by the "winners".
That could cover just about any form of violence whether perpetrated by governments or terrorists/freedom fighters, east or west.
America, Home of the Brave.
I know, because I work for a satellite company. Communications satellites normally have no protection at all, if you know the right frequency, have a powerful enough transmitter and antenna, and know where to point your signal, you can do it. And it's *extremely* difficult to avoid, there are very few technical countermeasures. You can beam a more powerful carrier over the pirate, but this means you lose the bandwidth anyhow and, in case of an intentional interference, the pirate can just shift his frequency and start over.
It happens all the time accidentally. Sometimes amplifiers are defective, or they are inadvertently turned to the wrong frequency. These accidental interferences happen everywhere, and cost millions of dollars per year for every operator in terms of bandwidth that becomes unusable.
Since a satellite has a wide coverage area, it's very difficult to find the transmitter. There are some very expensive systems to locate interferences, they work based on small shifts in frequency and time that depend on the transmitter location, but these systems cannot locate a transmitter with an accuracy better than tens of miles. After finding the general area where the interference originates, one must sweep the whole region with a helicopter equipped with a directional antenna. Very messy and very expensive.
I am a Tamil, born in Sri Lanka, have lived nearly all my life in the UK, and work in a professional job here, as an IT consultant and am PROUD of it. I have been proud to work for my now native country, the UK, and have worked in BAe, and other companies.
Yet, because of the fact I am Tamil, you do gooders are supposed to now be looking at everything I do? It doesn't matter the fact that I have lived in the UK for so long, I cannot even speak Tamil properly.
Its bad enough, going to Sri Lanka, and being sometimes treated like dirt by immigration, customs, and checkpoints, simply because I was born in Jaffna, fearing I would be kidnapped or killed by extra-legal gangs, operating with apparent clandestine approval from authorities.
Should I expect the same treatment from my "friends"?
Should I likewise assume that every "white man" is a potential KKK, or BNP member?
I have many friends who are Singhalese (the 'other side'), who treat me as a brother.
Have a nice day!
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.