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Could You Hack Into Mars Curiosity Rover?
MrSeb writes "NASA's Curiosity rover has now been on the surface of Mars for just over a week. It hasn't moved an inch after landing, instead focusing on orienting itself (and NASA's scientists) by taking instrument readings and snapping images of its surroundings. The first beautiful full-color images of Gale Crater are starting to trickle in, and NASA has already picked out some interesting rock formations that it will investigate further in the next few days. Over the weekend and continuing throughout today, however, Curiosity is attempting something very risky indeed: A firmware upgrade. This got me thinking: If NASA can transmit new software to a Mars rover that's hundreds of millions of miles away... why can't a hacker do the same thing? In short, there's no reason a hacker couldn't take control of Curiosity, or lock NASA out. All you would need is your own massive 230-foot dish antenna and a 400-kilowatt transmitter — or, perhaps more realistically, you could hack into NASA's computer systems, which is exactly what Chinese hackers did 13 times in 2011."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Don't_stuff_beans_up_your_nose
It would be epic if the Chinese pull a dd-wrt firmware onto Curiosity. lol
They'll create the first intra-space wireless router
"Follow that rover" It would be like a steamroller race.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
In short, there's no reason a hacker couldn't take control of Google, or lock Sergey Brin and Larry Page out. All you would need is your own internet connection -- or perhaps more realistically...I think you see where this is going.
This is a great way to paint a Bull's Eye on your back while every other geek on the planet gets some type of firearm ready.
Surely the OP doesn't think the DSN is on the Internet ? It sure wasn't when I worked with it, and that was at a time when that sort of protection might have seemed paranoid.
> All you would need is your own massive 230-foot dish antenna and a 400-kilowatt transmitter — or, perhaps more realistically, you could hack into NASA's computer systems
So now Slashdot posts Hollywood plots instead of technology news?
Even if I have "230-foot dish antenna and a 400-kilowatt transmitter", how would I know how and what to talk to the rover? Also, "you could hack into NASA's computer systems" probably involves "ssh nasa_rover_server"?
We've got plenty of satellites around here that can be updated remotely, and which don't required massive, high-gain antennas to reach.
the growth in cynicism and rebellion has not been without cause
Hackers hate challenges.
What political party do you join when you don't like Bible-thumpers *or* hippies?
yeah, if you could build 1:1 repllica of nasa's antenna and control operation, including encoding and possible crypt, you could hack into curiosity.
and yeah, if you could enter nasa's facilities to upload the data from there you could hack into curiosity.
somehow you should maybe be more worried about hacking into nuclear subs since the methods would essentially be the same.. and pretty much "just as easy"(I would expect curiosity control channel to have some signing system for the code it accepts..).
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
Does anyone know A)where Curiosity was born B)Curiosity's childhood pet C)Curiosity's mother's maiden name?
People are assuming that NASA folks didn't think of this. If I had to guess, I'd say they're doing some sort of code signing. Nation-states are obviously on a different playing field but I'm not too worried about average people.
Also, I stopped reading the article as soon as I saw the still for Hackers: The Movie at the top. Let's hope they don't hack NASA's Gibson and give it a Pac-Man virus!
It's better to vote for what you want and not get it than to vote for what you don't want and get it.
- E. Debs
Perhaps the piece of code responsible for replacing the firmware is heavily reviewed by a group of smart mathematicians.
Security protocols requiring multiple round-trips are probably not used extensively, but perhaps they are used for setting up a session efficiently.
Possibly the thing uses one-time passwords to control access.
Etc. etc.
If Pandora's box is destined to be opened, *I* want to be the one to open it.
...no problem... I am -so- sure they didn't secure the thing with a passcode or some other sort of sophisticated two-factor method to prevent unauthorized access. Special channels set up only for certain kinds of communication, byte-code written specifically to talk to other highly specialized machinery running custom software... I mean, it's not like they are rocket scientists....oh...wait...
1. Hack NASA 2. Command Curiosity 3. Produce Horde of Alien Robots 4. Invade Earth 5. Profit!!
I couldn't. Someone else might be able to though...
Free Martian Whores!
Is this a troll? If security was as simple as a CRC or MD5, you just generate the CRC of MD5 of the hacked image you are uploading and then send that with it.
Because if not, even the biggest antenna won't help you hack it.
I see no reason why the control system of the mars rover should be linked to anything else than the rover itself.
On the other hand, if something go badly wrong, an insulated system cannot put the blame on damn russian/chinese/iranian hackers, saving ass and injecting FUD for further "regulating" the net, in one swift move.
Therefore I am not amazed anymore to hear the rover is potentially at risk. What the risk is in practice, I dunno: let's face it, the NASA probably uses Logo to drive the rover around and nobody among black hats remembers about Logo :D
---- MISSING MISCELLANEOUS DATA SEGMENT --- [sigdash] trolololol
It's bad enough when I have a few seconds of internet lag, let alone the amount of time it would take to send instructions to Rover and wait for a return.
plan large pauses before timing out
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Curiosity no longer responds after firmware update
Using Hubble Telescope the only image they can see on top of the Rover is this image: http://agilemobility.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/stuck_on_activate_my_iphone_screen21.jpg
All you would need is your own massive 230-foot dish antenna and a 400-kilowatt transmitter
In that case, yes. Yes, I could.
I assume a signal strong enough to reach Mars could be sampled on Earth at many points to find where its origin is. Then what?
CRC can be cracked on the fly, MD5 in a few hours. Use something like SHA-512 if you just want a checksum, or sign it using a private key kept on removable media in a restricted-access safe if you want to be able to possibly run other code in the future.
Help I am stuck in a signature factory!
I think it would be more interesting to set up a dish to receive data from curiosity and all the other Mars projects
Warning: The Surgeon General Has Determined that Sigs are Dangerous to Your Health
The answer is no.
if blizzard can get hacked nasa can get hacked i guess
I've already configured my system to use Curiosity as anonymous proxy. They will never find me.
(obviously this message was posted 14 minutes ago)
Privacy is terrorism.
Could You Hack Into Mars Curiosity Rover?
No!
Ta da! Instant impenetrability. Congratulations NASA for creating perfect security.
I can't even begin to imagine the kind of fuckhead that would want to hack into the rover.
Doing mischief on a corporate network is one thing. I could imagine hosts of reasons for doing so. You might be looking for stuff to sell; or to make a point that lavish CEO salaries and dividends are outrageous; spying for a foreign State; whatever.
Doing mischief on a rover that boasts a round-trip delay measured in minutes is another. You stand to gain absolutely nothing that you won't find on the NASA's web site, scientific literature, or by simply getting in touch with NASA. Except, perhaps, for the fame of getting in; if you do, I'd wager NASA will know quickly, and every three-letter acronym organization in the US would be on your ass until you're dead or in jail.
Plus as another poster suggested, hacking into a satellite requires less equipment. It additionally boasts a much shorter round-trip and a much greater potential for profit. I'd be surprised if it hasn't already been done, too.
Who are they going to send to re-flash it through the JTAG header?
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
Can't imagine this would be a fun thing to hack or that the connection is steller. Imagine typing in a command just to find out minutes later you had a typo.. I could be wrong though. I just can't imagine the connection is very good.
Ending headlines with question marks screams amateur. Hey editors... why don't you, you know, EDIT ?!
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
Curiosity is doing more science per second ON ANOTHER PLANET just sitting there checking its systems than the entire human race has achieved to date. Decades from now, scientists will still be pulling interesting information out of the data that was missed on the first pass. This is a genuine GOOD for the human race as a whole - don't screw it up to do the equivalent of spray-painting "l33tme w0z ere" on the side. Unless you're willing to pay the cost to send up a replacement robot, find something else to amuse yourself with.
A hacker would need 4 things:
1. Technical knowledge of the project.
2. Secret codes or even live, dynamic password changes.
3. A way to transmit.
4. Incredible balls because you are looking at decades in prison for destroying billions of dollars of equipment, and you will get caught.
And if you are a state-sponsored terrorist, you can expect to get caught and your bosses can expect a bombing run or three.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
Just as a note of correction... Mars is about 35 million miles away at its closest point... which is pretty much now. It will go as far as 250 million miles away, though. When they do launches to Mars, they want it to be at its closest point, for obvious reasons.
"Never give up, for that is just the time and place when the tide will change." -Harriet Beecher Stowe ^_^
Same way you upgrade a Cisco router 3000 miles away. Upload the firmware to flash, verify the hash of the file, reboot telling the router to use the new firmware. All across an encrypted channel.
Actually I think every /. reader already thought about the ideas of the summary least I did. Briefly, then thinking "it's probably encrypted" and not bothering further.
I would find it a huge shame if someone managed to ruin this project, by the way, and that person will be quite universally disliked...
Most hacks would be stopped by public key cryptography, just sign the code with a secret key known only to a scientist (use a split key so it takes more than one person to sign a file), and then it's impossible to corrupt the image after it's been signed, and impossible to upload your own image even if you have your own transmitter (or can take over NASA's transmitter).
Of course, if your hackers break into the computers used to compile the new firmware image, then they can have all sorts of back doors that insert their nefarious code into the firmware, like maybe code to make the rover drive around to spell out "All your Mars base are belong to us" in the martian dust.
But I think any hacking group sophisticated enough to pull off that kind of hack is going to spend their time on more profitable pursuits since this kind of hack will likely not even make the news if NASA decides to cover it up, they may just say "Oops, system malfunction, we lost contact with the Rover, no further data will arrive from Mars." Then they send up a Roomba to vacuum up the evidence of the hack.
If Iran/China/etc did it, they'd be disliked, but by no means universally.
Yeah, OK, I'll put that 230 foot dish on my 60 foot by 120 foot property, somewhere in the back yard perhaps, and transmit with 400kW into the skyline. Oh, I'm only 15 miles from a major naval base and around 6 miles from an Air Force base. I'm sure no one will notice...
I think I'd have better luck hacking the Chinese who hack NASA's system.
It is my understanding that the reason for uploading new software is to replace the EDL (entry, descent, and landing) software with the software to drive the rover, maneuver the instruments, etc. That is the reason it hasn't driven anywhere yet. It doesn't know how. So the upload isn't really an upgrade, so much, as it is a software replacement. Correct me if I am wrong.
They are switching OS from DOS to handle the landing to BSD to handle the roving. They were too cheap to buy extra storage to have both at the same time.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
...I would have one command that couldn't be overridden, which resets the firmware to the known state that the Rover launched with. So even if a well-meaning NASA engineer bricks it, it could be made operational again and re-flashed with corrected firmware.
NASA has some pretty smart folks on staff: I imagine this feature already exists.
Koans and fables for the software engineer
"No keyboard! Continue? (Y/N/Retry)"
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
What gets into the real reason nobody did it yet (and NASA didn't protect against it). What gain can there be in hacking Curiosity?
It will ceratainly expose your high profile hackers (that could be stealing rocket technology instead) and instantly turn the entire world against you. As a reward you'll get a low capacity computer 14 light minutes away, and some sensors that will be more usefull to you in the hands they are now.
You'll also get some news exposition, of course. But if you are willing to turn the entire world against you, there are plenty of easier ways that'll get way more exposition.
Rethinking email
Curiosity has 2GB of onboard radiation-hardened Flash storage - not enough to fit both the Flight software and the Rover software at the same time. So they devised a system where they would fly the rover to Mars with the Flight software, and considering they wouldn't be performing a return trip, decided that they could remote-wipe the flight data and install rover software in its place.
Due to Curiosity's nature, the onboard electronic systems need to be radiation-hardened. Not jjust "tin-foil cover" hardened. I'm talking engineered from the ground-up to resist data corruption from external radiation sources. This comes at extreme cost, both financially and physically. Every little bit of extra RAM or Flash storage adds weight to the rover unit, and by extent, tons (literally) of extra fuel to carry it that full 225,000,000km. It's not as easy as plugging in a thumb drive or popping an extra disk in there. If it really were, do you think the rocket scientists at NASA would have thought about that before they shot a billion-dollar robot into the sky?
I know you think you're being all geeky and clever, but seriously. If you aspire to second-guess every engineering decision that NASA makes, perhaps you should apply for a management position there.
Hopefully they've changed the admin password, "12345" just isn't as secure as it used to be.
All you need to do is hack the antenna arrays receiving signals from the rover, and send a fake signal to make them think it was hacked.
With the amount of delay between commands and responses, I can't image that hacking the rover could easily be done unless NASA has no security whatsoever. Security aside, does the rover even use standard communication protocols and technologies? I would assume they built custom protocols in order to deal with the lag.
They will be fine, as long as the Curiosity Rover has the iPhone IOS!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Don't_stuff_beans_up_your_nose
You sir, are a hero.
Because they were able to add all sorts of cool code after the launch. The problem is that after they added that cool code the flight and surface code no longer fit into RAM so they placed a shim for the surface code into RAM which can be used to bootstrap the more feature rich code from flash. The code is well tested and the fallback is to reload the original codeset from the other flash. There's really not a lot of risk beyond the kind of random stuff that can happen any time you change state in a working system.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
Standard operating procedure for space missions.
In the case of Curiosity, it launched in November 2011. They've had month of just sitting around, waiting for it to get into place ... which gives them time to go over the code (which was previously tested before launch), and optimize it.
It's possible that they might make some changes ... eg, send back uncompressed images initially, but then figure out which compression scheme gives them the best compression without introducing problematic noise (and operates within the hardware limits)
Or, you could have a bunch of scientists and programmers twiddle their thumbs for the better part of a year, as they wait for the launch, then wait for it to get into position.
Build it, and they will come^Hplain.
Why they didn't upgrade the gosh darn firmware *before* the launch?
...ask a question, doesn't mean you should. I'd like to thank the submitter for putting this idea into the minds of every ill-meaning... Stop giving bad people bad ideas!
Not only that, but the ground software likely wasn't even finished when the rover launched. It's standard practice to spend the eight months of transit testing and refining the rover AI and upload it either in flight or after landing. Heck, they might have even patched the flight software at some point before it got near the planet.
While I'd love the chance to try, I doubt my skills are sufficient...but take a country with literal armies of penetration experts (giggity), and they could probably take it down if they have a dish and transmitter available.
I hate to admit it but this is true. In Kindergarten we were told not to make fun of people based on race. This was a totally new idea to me. I thought, "you can do that, and there's actually a whole bunch of words that do that?". Yes, it was yet another outlet for the shit that flowed down hill in school. Yes, I grew out of it and eventually understood why that's offf limits. Would I have hit upon that as a way to vent my rage independantly? Perhaps; but the teachers' admonition not to do that clearly gave me ideas. Ditto for "drug education". Some of use took notes, and the lies never help; but that's another topic...
Political motivations. Plenty of hackers around the world would love to make the US government look incompetent - destroying a very expensive scientific mission like Curiosity, especially one for which there is such a high level of public awareness, would achieve that aim. No need to even hack it with precision (Amusing as it would be if the next image returned was Goatse), just fill the firmware with garbage and brick it.
Not bloated.
Kernel tested for nearly three decades.
The do add new drivers for the new equipment all the time. Those are the more likely areas for bugs and weaknesses.
Mainly urban legends on how how Iran caught one with minimal damage. Some say it was GPS jamming. Some people say they can view the unencrypted video feeds. Other say it was more sophisticated than this.
I was trying to find the distance between Gale Crater and the "Face on Mars" hill, but couldnt. Suppose you could drive a kilometer a week and the nuke source was good for a couple decades. that would give you a thousand kilometers of range. (I think the speed record for the earlier rovers was about 1/4 kilometer a day. But they slowed them after get stuck in sand a couple times.)
why only 2gb? is NASA that poor they couldn't just buy something bigger so they could fit both in and go from there?
This is a Mac, what you have there is an embarrassment to your fellow computer users.
So... the rover was responsible for the flight systems of its own delivery mechanism?
And this is bad, why? Better to have one very rigorously tested and radiation-hardened system than two separate ones, especially if regardless of where you put the "brain" you need the same back-and-forth connections to sensors, actuators, etc.
Fun Fact: The airplane was invented by a couple of hillbillies, in a bike shed. Education can be overrated.
Hillbillies whose parents at one point were going to send at least one of them to Yale, and who at various times ran their own printing-presses and manufactured their own line of bicycles. Not exactly playin' the washtub bass...
Curiosity has 2GB of onboard radiation-hardened Flash storage - not enough to fit both the Flight
software and the Rover software at the same time. So they devised a system where they would fly the rover to Mars with the Flight software, and considering they wouldn't be performing a return trip, decided that they could remote-wipe the flight data and install rover software in its place.
The rover software was uploaded to the rover on its merry little way to Mars when it was still running the flight software. I would ask how both could exist at the same time if that were true but I'll refrain from asking it.
Due to Curiosity's nature, the onboard electronic systems need to be radiation-hardened. I'm talking engineered from the ground-up to resist data corruption from external radiation sources. This comes at extreme cost, both financially and physically.
Yea from the ground up...like before curiosity nobody ever flew anything into space with the same hardware or investment in R&D or built anything for earthly purposes with the same goal?
Every little bit of extra RAM or Flash storage adds weight to the rover unit, and by extent, tons (literally) of extra fuel to carry it that full 225,000,000km.
I know right that distance seems very very far and as everyone with a car knows you need MORE fuel the further you go.
It's not as easy as plugging in a thumb drive or popping an extra disk in there. If it really were, do you think the rocket scientists at NASA would have thought about that before they shot a billion-dollar robot into the sky?
Rocket scientists build rockets not electronics.
I know you think you're being all geeky and clever, but seriously. If you aspire to second-guess every engineering decision that NASA makes, perhaps you should apply for a management position there.
If I nit pick them chances are they will come back and make me look like an idiot.
Whereas if I nitpick you I'm much more comfortable betting no such thing would occur.
It's not as easy as plugging in a thumb drive or popping an extra disk in there. If it really were, do you think the rocket scientists at NASA would have thought about that before they shot a billion-dollar robot into the sky?
You're forgetting that scientists have this insuppressible itch to try to find increasingly complicated methods to do everyday-life things.
If Pandora's box is destined to be opened, *I* want to be the one to open it.
Which makes one wonder, how much silicon could they actually spare for code signing? We're all assuming that these updates are signed, but if space for code is at such a premium is it actually so?
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
What has this ever stopped hackers? They don't need gains they just want the lulz.
Well, except that the recent close approach in (in March) was about 100 million km (~60 million miles) -- and was 5 months ago, or about 1/5 the period between close approaches (so we're "close" to the most recent close approach in roughly the same way the ides of March is close to New Year's Day.)
The minimum distance of a close approach is roughly 35 million miles, but not every close approach is that close (it requires opposition to occur when Earth is near aphelion and Mars near perihelion.)
No, they generally don't. The most efficient path for a journey between two planets isn't a straight-line path from the location of the starting planet to the location the target planet is located at the time the voyage starts. You'd need ludicrous thrust for it to even be possible (much less efficient) to have a transit for which that was even a reasonable approximation.
(It's possible for two planets to be at a distance where coincidentally you'd have an efficient transfer orbit available at the time the two were closest together, but its not true either in the general case, or in the Earth-to-Mars case specifically.)
Updating software on space probes / rovers / etc. that are already on their mission is something NASA's been doing for decades. Obviously, they test them before they launch, but like any other software system, sometimes either bugs or opportunities for improvement are identified after they are launched, and its a lot cheaper to send new code to a space probe or rover than it is to put the new code in a new space probe or rover and launch it from Earth.
One of the things they test, of course, is the ability to do the remote upgrades.
If I was NASA, I'd be paranoid primarily about errors in transmitted data and especially firmware updates. God only knows how many types of cosmic, solar, and martian radiation and interference are between us and the rover, just waiting to throw a few bit errors into your new firmware. I'd sign the whole thing with a private key at NASA, corresponding to a public key pre-loaded into the rover and verified about 5 times, and have the rover master controller verify the signature multiple times before writing it just to make sure that it couldn't possibly have been corrupted in any way in transit to the rover. That alone would make it pretty close to impossible to hack. Split up the private key among a few different people in NASA just to make sure it can't be stolen, accidentally leaked, or have some rouge fool/spy try to load some firmware that hasn't gone through NASA's full verification process, and it's also about as secure as you could possibly make it against any kind of hacking.
I don't reply to ACs
I think NASA has already has enough issues with managers second-guessing the engineers.
All I need is local access.
I'm going to take a wild guess that the rover OS is not exactly open source, or easy to understand, or even documented well. Hacking a firmware upgrade... even if you had a connection would not be practical. Since I know the guy that did the firmware upgrade, from his level of confidence, even JPL was scared shitless about pulling it off perfectly. Some hacker would have a very very low chance of success.
Hmm, you must be some sort of imbecile. Hardened ICs have extra circuitry indeed. You add several protection diodes to _every_ _single_ _gate_, the MOS circuit components (gates, lanes, etc) are somewhat different on a hardened IC as well. The I/O gates are redesigned to be a lot more robust to interference, and that takes a lot more silicon space. And you have to use bigger topologies that have far less leakage current and far more passive resistance against state change caused by hard radiation.
Hardened flash has bigger SLC cells than the standard enterprise SLC flash, on top of the usual hardening of the decoders, etc that make up the rest of the flash chip. It is easily 2000x more expensive than the surplus MLC crap you have on your desk, and that's *before* you factor in the costs of actually testing it against hard-radiation sources.
No, NASA engineers are not infallible, and NASA management is really not up to snuff nowadays. But they are much better at it than YOU.
You remind me of someone who walked around near my university who proclaimed the moon landing and many other things (including the pill and faster-than-sound speed) was a hoax. He also managed to find all kinds of symbolism and connections with numbers in current events. And he gave around these pamphlets with lots of bold and underlined text and semi-coherent ramblings.
"or, perhaps more realistically, you could hack into NASA's computer systems, which is exactly what Chinese hackers did 13 times in 2011.
Hacking into some NASA secretary's computer via email phishing is many orders of magnitude easier than hacking into actual NASA mission control systems. They maintain physically separate systems, and the TS/SCI systems that perform control work are not connected to the internet. You need a clearance to even enter the parking lot, and special access to enter the facility. You have to pass through security measures like guards and metal detectors. Cell phones are not permitted inside the building. The TS/SCI network is monitored and since no unapproved software is allowed to be installed, any anomaly in the network's traffic stands out. Even a simple ping can cause the network security team to call your desk and ask you what you are doing. Any unapproved disconnections of a machine are grounds for termination. Bottom line: Some places have the funding and backing to take network security seriously.
Curiosity has 2GB of onboard radiation-hardened Flash storage - not enough to fit both the Flight software and the Rover software at the same time. So they devised a system where they would fly the rover to Mars with the Flight software, and considering they wouldn't be performing a return trip, decided that they could remote-wipe the flight data and install rover software in its place.
So... the rover was responsible for the flight systems of its own delivery mechanism?
If that's the case (which I cannot confirm nor deny, lacking NASA's rover specs), then it's stupid. Having the inter-planetary firmware update ability as a fallback is a good idea, but making it your default, especially knowing all the shit that could very easily go wrong and turn Curiosity into a multi-billion dollar brick? Stupid.
So in a system where every ounce counts they should have a whole second computer, when there is a plan where they can use just one? Between your opinion and the rocket scientists, I'm siding with the rocket scientists.
Due to Curiosity's nature, the onboard electronic systems need to be radiation-hardened. Not jjust "tin-foil cover" hardened. I'm talking engineered from the ground-up to resist data corruption from external radiation sources.
No shit, thanks Captain Obvious. Hard to recognize you without the mask and cape.
And of course, the people working at NASA are incapable of making mistakes or poor decisions, right?
They have made some pretty huge mistakes. Still, I side with the rocket scientists over obnoxious immature guy on the internet.
This comes at extreme cost, both financially and physically. Every little bit of extra RAM or Flash storage adds weight to the rover unit, and by extent, tons (literally) of extra fuel to carry it that full 225,000,000km.
looks at identical 2GB and 8GB flash drives sitting on desk ...
Citation needed.
I suspect that NASA didn't order the radiation-hardened RAM off of Newegg. They may only manufacture this in 2 GB modules, per spec. Surely the fact that 4 != 1 can get past your wall of smarminess.
It's not as easy as plugging in a thumb drive or popping an extra disk in there. If it really were, do you think the rocket scientists at NASA would have thought about that before they shot a billion-dollar robot into the sky?
"rocket scientist" != infallible, omniscient deity. I know this is probably a tough pill to swallow, but just because someone has a particular title next to their name, does not, in any way, indicate their ability to complete every task sans mistakes and oversights.
But "Rocket scientist" > "obnoxious big mouth on the internet". You still haven't provided any evidence to support your claim that you know more about designing Mars rovers than the team at NASA. You haven't provided any evidence to support your claim that the amount of RAM was chosen in error. You have provided much irrelevant bleating.
I know you think you're being all geeky and clever, but seriously.
Actually, I was making a joke (figured the PS3 reference was a dead giveaway). You know, one of those little sentences or short stories that are made with the intent of causing the audience's corner mouth muscles to pull up slightly, and encourage a repetitive "ha ha" sound to be emitted from the throat?
Of course, you may be one of those poor, sad, creatures who are apparently incapable of anything resembling happiness or humor. If so, please disregard (and get a damn sense of humor)
I thought the PS3 reference was funny. You should have stopped there.
If you aspire to second-guess every engineering decision that NASA makes, per
Irony.
Lemmie just telnet into NASA real quick. ..Nope. They said everything has been configured correctly this time. The IT guy came out of his coma.
- Gary M.
Forward! -- Emperor Norton, 2012
u mad?
There is nothing wrong with making fun of people because of their race. Every race has its idiosyncrasies, faults, stereotypes and mannerisms. People need to stop being so overly sensitive.
Lets hope NASA read the research by HDMoore back in 2010, where he identified security mis-configurations with the VxWorks software.
http://www.metasploit.com/modules/auxiliary/admin/vxworks/wdbrpc_memory_dump/
http://www.darkreading.com/vulnerability-management/167901026/security/application-security/226100011/researcher-pinpoints-widespread-common-flaw-among-vxworks-devices.html
Unless you're Chinese.
It's specially dangerous for people of UK or NZ.
It seems American lawyers cannot enter China, maybe because China is like Heaven, full of clouds (which can be seen from satellite).
Sorry - script kiddies want lulz - hackers do it because it is there, or for the money.
'...if only "Jumping to a Conclusion" was an event in the Olympics.'
This is along the lines of some small business saying "Why would someone want to hack my useless forum?" and then a week later it's full of malware and porn ads.
There's a huge amount of money in this project. It would be a huge risk to leave it wide open on the pretense that no one wants to, simply because you believe that you have both imagined every possible scenario and also believe the potential hacker will come to the same "not worth it" conclusion you did in each scenario. Those are two very big assumptions.
-- for two reasons:
1) They landed it in a crater, far away from the water. Just stupid. They should be exploring where it's wet, even though it's frozen. Someone should move it. :-P
2) There is zero excuse in this day and age why all the telemetry from Curiosity is not broadcast on the internet 24/7. The cameras, at the very least, should be live streamed. Unless NASA has something to hide.
That I'm right, and you don't like it, doesn't mean I'm a troll.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge's_Law_of_Headlines
There are plenty of deeply flawed people out there who would break it just to break something that was important, damn the consequences.
"Mommy and Daddy didn't love me, so fuck everyone!"
looks at identical 2GB and 8GB flash drives sitting on desk
Why do you have NASA's radiation-hardened flash drives sitting on your desk?
What gets into the real reason nobody did it yet (and NASA didn't protect against it).
Who's to say nobody did it? There are many probes that NASA have lost contact with, and can only speculate at causes. I would think that some of the older models didn't have all that high security, both because they were launched before the time of BBSes and network break-ins becoming common enough that every engineer would think about it, but also because the locks back then weren't like they are now.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hundred_Flowers_Campaign
I often don't like the choices people make, but I like the fact that people make choices. That's why I'm a conservative.
Yes.
Nasa: That's not fair /., what if I challenge hackers to hack you instead, giving over a job position and the opportunity to go to space as the prize?
Slashdot: Oh crap....
For those interested, this is the memory used to store the flight software images on the rover, so you can get an idea of the size/density compared to commercial products: http://www.3d-plus.com/product.php?type=1&fm=19
Lol... 'CRC can be cracked on the fly'... You sir owe me a new keyboard...
CRC - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyclic_redundancy_check
MD5 - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Md5
SHA-512 - Probably a bit paranoid here... Usually SHA-1 is quite ok to use.. Sure there are some collision attacks that exists for this but 2^51 instructions for one collision and still keeping a valid file-header and internal data-structures etc valid will probably take quite some time..
Fun Fact: The airplane was invented by a couple of hillbillies, in a bike shed. Education can be overrated.
Hillbillies whose parents at one point were going to send at least one of them to Yale [...]
See? Even the Wright Parents realized that education can be overrated.
Thank you, Edward Snowden.
"Arguments from authority are worthless." —Carl Sagan
What gets into the real reason nobody did it yet (and NASA didn't protect against it). What gain can there be in hacking Curiosity?
1 million dollars!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cKKHSAE1gIs
Ask Slashdot: Could You Hack Into Mars Curiosity Rover if it was running Personal Tape Drive NAS?
It is what it is.
Well... Lets say with a 4096bit RSA key in the flash... 512 bytes... RSA implementation can probably be done in less than 1k..
So 1.5Kb for signing stuff out of 2Gb... Think they will go for the signing/encryption... or maybe both... encrypted and signed image with some extra checksums here and there...
I was thinking the same thing.
Starting with you.
HI O WISE PRINCE. WHT TOOK U SO DAM LONG?
Of course not. Rocket scientists, are, after all, experts at computer/software engineering. I mean, its not like they specialize in rockets or anything.
Rocket scientists (not rocket engineers, mind you, but scientists) are expert at absolutely everything.
Of course, they actually DID think of all that before launching. Since the thing launched nearly a decade after the design specifications were solidified. They knew that modern technology was far superior in many aspects, yet you can't just go changing things last minute. It most certainly is as simple as plugging in new/more ram. It is special purpose flash memory, and expensive, but could have been upgraded. However you can't do that last minute.
I don't think it had much to do with their knowledge of rocket technology.
Can you show us a single thing you've ever done besides run your mouth on the internet? Just one thing.
Who says, that it hasn't?
The mind conceives, the body achieves, the spirit manifests.
I bricked my routeeeeeeer, but I did not brick curiosity!
Funnyhacks - Wierd, unusual, and fun hacks
You're way off. It's not individuals that would want to do it, but many nations indirectly, and they would piss themselves seeing a massive NASA project fail. The USA is the most hated country on the planet. Perhaps you need to think why.
True hackers would hijack control and use the laser spectroscope to burn the Hacker Emblem onto a Martian rock.
Ezekiel 23:20
Often there's a separate piece of hardware with an hours-to-days timer that is reset periodically by a heartbeat task in the main control code.
If that timer is ever allowed to expire, it smacks the main control processor over the head, makes it reset everything and then wait for ground commands, in what's called "safe mode". This makes it very unlikely that the probe will go completely out to lunch, short of both the main control processors failing.
At least, that is typically how near-earth science probes work.
To a Lisp hacker, XML is S-expressions in drag.
CRC and MD5 collisions can be found.
There is a *huge* jump in difficulty between finding a collision and *creating functional/executable code* that matches the hash you're trying to collide with.
CRC/MD5 are perfectly good technology if you know when/how to use them.
I may be wrong about this, but I hope I'm not.
Hacking corporate servers and maybe even a corporate satellite one day are widely seen by hackers as "sticking it to the man".
Hacking a scientific research satellite on Mars is basically "sticking it to all of humanity" (which includes the hacker himself).
I don't pretend to know the motivations behind every single hacker, be they organized criminals, spying governments or script kiddies -- but I think (or at least I hope) there's a common understanding that what's going on on Mars right now is "important" for everyone.
When someone hacks a bank, Facebook, a government system, a bitcoin server or a politician's website -- I don't lose much sleep (and in some cases, the thirteen-year-old inside me might even get a chuckle). But hacking a scientific research mission to another planet?
I know there are some assholes in the world. But I don't believe they're considering shitting on every man, woman and child on Earth.
Or maybe I'm just being optimistic...
------ The best brain training is now totally free : )
Nonsense, even skilled hackers are amoral childish assholes.
I say we send them there in person to fix it...
Visit the Arcade Restoration Workshop @ http://www.arcaderestoration.com
hacking is a bitch with 7 min lag plus you'd have to pwn mars communications undetected . Gl noobs
---Up Up Down Down Left Right Left Right B A START
Revenge for (admittedly) sabotaging their nuclear manufacturing equipment.
Do you think if Bin Laden had a rover on Mars, we'd leave it be after 9/11?
Table-ized A.I.
It was running android, but all the crapware couldnt be uninstalled and it was hard to see much with the ad banners on the top and bottom of each camera shot. Not to mention, battery life is important on Mars! :)
Again, hackers would do i because it is there,
also note that what you are revering to "Hacker Emblem" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hacker_Emblem has little to do with computer hacking
'...if only "Jumping to a Conclusion" was an event in the Olympics.'
While Iran and China would delight in our failure, I think the likelihood of either doing much about it is less than a rogue individual. Governments are more pragmatic, they're less likely to put time and resources into merely embarrassing NASA when those same resources could be used to actually get something. China for example, is more interested in military industrial espionage. Why break our toy rather than trying to steal our guns or money? Iran is a bit more likely, but again, the money could be used for better purposes. Instead of Iran using that money to fund a crack team of hackers, why wouldn't they simply buy guns with it to give to Hamas?
"I'm truly sorry that I accidentally loaded Zune on it. These little flash-drives look all the same."
Table-ized A.I.
Unless they are coffee beans with white powder on them......
The JPL Curiosity Rover, NOT NASA in any way, has nothing to do with the original question asked, I.E. nonsense.
In Truth the mission was killed by NASA GOLDEN BOYS (Presidential Appointees, i.e. unelected bureaucrats) HAND PICKED by the President of the United States of America during the FYs in DC years ago.
What a JOKE! Obama Congratulating the JPL CIT Team! He, Obama, has no shame! And He Obama WILL send every citizen of U.S.A. to HELL in order to quench his thrust for POWER and satisfy his sexual desires that his 'Wife' nor 'Children' can or will not fulfill.
Pray thee and think thee of these monsters in Washington DC, America. What they have done and what they want to do ... to YOU.
you should brick it before it goooooes.
A buddy of mine had a type of shoe he loved to wear. He would wear them all the way out before getting another pair. He had actually worn a hole through the bottom of one pair and was on his way to the mall and decided to stop at the Winnipeg library first; which was on his way and right across the street from the mall. He'd been up all night gambling at bacgammon (that was his job, no shit... that and poker and various Chinese games like pi gaou, sap sam jung, etc... he was a gambler). He picked up a book he wanted to look at, and sat down on a couch and kicked off his shoes for a bit. He knew he was at risk of having an inadvertant nap but figured, what the hell, my shoes are beat to shit, who's going to steal them? He ended up nodding off while reading, woke up and found someone had stolen his beat up to shit shoes with the hole in one. I happened to run into just after it happened and just looked and said, why the fuck are you walking around downtown in your socks? Then he told me the story.
Bottom line: People will steal anything. Even beat up shoes with a hole in them. If someone decides to try to hack curioslity, it doesn't have to be for money. In fact that kind of person might be the more dangerous. They're the ones who will come completely out of left field.
-- I ignore anonymous replies to my comments and postings.
The words you're looking for are "mentally ill," specifically "schizophrenic."
The human mind is very, incredibly, unbelievably good at finding correlations and explanations for things. In schizophrenics, the part that rejects 99.99% of "proposed" correlations and explanations as bullshit is broken.
...well, it is there.
...you would have to know some ancient language like COBOL and once you took a look at the code you would die of boredom.
B A R T
> massive 230-foot dish antenna and a 400-kilowatt transmitter
That's a nice big target considering home satellite dishes became targets in the gulf war.
Can't see this would enamor the rest of the world to your mad cause whatever it is,
Honkies have small dicks!
It will ceratainly expose your high profile hackers (that could be stealing rocket technology instead) and instantly turn the entire world against you. As a reward you'll get a low capacity computer 14 light minutes away, and some sensors that will be more usefull to you in the hands they are now.
Best K()rea doesn't read /.
In the distance you hear an ominous moo.
Not to mention the fact that it would instantly burn any chances China might have of cooperating with the US & Russia on any international space ventures going forward, something they want to do quite badly.
Yes, we know that "Chinese Hacker" != "Chinese Government", but it would set back the cause of Chinese-US-Russian space relations by decades if it were "merely" independent hackers, and really WOULD set it back forever and for all eternity if it were proven to have been in any way, shape, or form an official program of China's government. This brings us to one logical conclusion:
If you're Chinese, and you humiliate China & harm its reputation with NASA & Russia's space program, you'll be ruthlessly hunted down and executed at the first possible opportunity on live TV in a grand public relations exercise ordered by the highest ranks of the CCP. NASA will probably be horrified, and Russia will probably be unimpressed & see right through it, but the end result is that you'd have to be completely suicidal to be Chinese and even *try* hacking American or Russian space hardware. It's one thing to deface the National Parks Service website for Kennedy Space Center (or whomever runs it as a tourist attraction). It's another matter entirely to brick a piece of hardware that cost 1.000 times as much as you and your ancestors going all the way back to your oldest homo sapiens ancestor have collectively earned since the dawn of human history.
Would Al Qaeda (or someone influenced/inspired by it) try to do it if they could? Maybe. China? No.
Naw let's make a geek comparison here. You and the other guy and whoever modded me down on this, you are human playstations as they comes fresh
out of the box with the original firmware. Everything locked down and all you can do is playback authorized content. Me on the other hand, I'm jailbroken.
You got it wrong btw. Schizophrenia is when they hear voices and talk to people that aren't there,
Oh, come on. Who said anything about breaking it? If you wouldn't jump at the chance to "flip some bits" and scribble your name in the dirt ON MARS, then you can turn in your geek card, sir.
Fanboy Status: Apache Flex, C#, Eclipse, KDE, Pirate Party, Ron Paul, Slackware, Windows 7
Has Slashdot really devolved to the point where nobody even bothers correcting misuse of the word "hacker" anymore?
While I might love hacking a mars rover. That has no relation to breaking anyone's security.
Actually he is referring to computer hacking, you are referring to computer cracking or penetration.
Extremely doubtful... perhaps the American government makes their citizens think that Iran/China/etc are purely evil countries hellbent on destroying the "homeland" (LMAO at a country of immigrants calling themselves the homeland), but that's not at all the case. Furthermore, Iran/China/etc aren't stupid, they realize that US and its partners (because NASA didn't do this alone), invested a huge amount of resources to perform this research for the world. Basically Iran/China/etc are getting research done for them for free. Whyever would they try to sabotage free research?!
No... if it gets hacked it's by some demented individual or small group of demented people.
Political motivations. Plenty of hackers around the world would love to make the US government look incompetent - destroying a very expensive scientific mission like Curiosity, especially one for which there is such a high level of public awareness, would achieve that aim. No need to even hack it with precision (Amusing as it would be if the next image returned was Goatse), just fill the firmware with garbage and brick it.
No - I'd argue very few hackers would want to destroy a mission like Curiosity. Many would love to try and take it over, but very very few would want to destroy it.
This looks to me almost like the stereotypical attitude many people have of the US : They're either for us, or against us. The world doesn't work like that. Basically, everyone in the world is supportive of exploratory missions to mars. Even people who hate US international politics. Because it's a good thing. Anyone who fucks it up is a pariah, gets outed, and looks like a moron.
That doesn't mean that someone won't be willing to try and fuck it up (there will be some), but there will be few with the knowledge to be able to fuck it up. If anyone does fuck it up, their cause will be hurt. Deliberate sabotage of scientific projects goes down really badly with most people, unless there is a good reason.
Having worked on several satellites myself - design, build, test and later operations, I can tell you that almost all spacecraft are pretty much one offs (even the 'copies' are not exact copies). I'm willing to bet that running MSL is orders of magnitude more difficult than anything I ever worked on. There are often issues on a spacecraft that you can't really fix and have to work around. We used to joke that we'd be happy for a hacker to get in if he/she can fix some of the problems and tell us how they did it :). You really have to know A LOT about that specific spacecraft, its issues and protocols to be able to effectively hack it - and that is if you have unlimited access to it. This is not the case with MSL.
Think of the kittens! Curiosity killed the cat!
Love many, trust a few, do harm to none.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Don't_stuff_beans_up_your_nose
And further down there is http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Do_not_disrupt_Wikipedia_to_illustrate_a_point... i'd never thought of doing that before.
What gets into the real reason nobody did it yet (and NASA didn't protect against it). What gain can there be in hacking Curiosity?
You're kidding right? There are various loony factions that strongly believe that NASA is in talks with the Martians and is deliberately withholding information. Taking control of the Curiosity rover would allow them to find the Martians themselves and really stick it to The Man.
Of course us sane people know that the best way to hack the Curiosity rover is to break into Area 51 and load it into a truck.
What gets into the real reason nobody did it yet (and NASA didn't protect against it). What gain can there be in hacking Curiosity?
Another thing of course is to sell it to the Russians or the Chinese. Why take the risk of spending billions on a rocket and a rover that might not make it when you can just pay some to steal it for you once it's there. In fact if any of the parts are made in China then the hacking was probably done before it even launched ;)
No, not the entire world. The Iranians would cackle with glee.
The Chinese would probably smirk.
A lot others would probably just shrug.
To satisfy your curiosity.
(LMAO at a country of immigrants calling themselves the homeland)
Then LYAO at every country on the planet. Everybody migrated from somewhere, and before they started migrating the concept of "country" and "border" didn't exist.
And just FYI, I'm a Native American, so no matter how you want to slice it yes, it's my homeland.
Whyever would they try to sabotage free research?!
Why do you assume hacking must result in sabotage? Any person with a lick of common sense can see that a State's interest would most likely be Espionage related.
Do you get excited when you see unset concrete too? Do you like to deface websites and 'scribble your name' on them too? From an ethical point of view, it's just juvenile vandalism. From a criminal point of view, it's just stupid unless your name is John Smith or you go the 'anonymous coward' route, in which case you won't get the recognition your ego probably wants since you not only want access, but you want to 'scribble your name'(seems ego driven to me). Not ALL geeks are ego driven. ;)
All these moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain..
Giving my mod points away just to respond to this.
Where exactly were you on 9/11/2001 ?
I guess you're not hanging out with the right people. Or rather, you're not hanging out with the wrong people.
I've never personally witnessed a murder, but there are a lot of murders every year and a lot of them are for terrible reasons. Like the Aurora shooting.
It only takes one bad egg to ruin things for everyone. Let's be glad that there aren't that many truly rotten eggs out there.
> when did you see someone break something important just for the sake of it?
There are regular news stories about vandalism, ranging from things like memorials that are important symbolically through to things like railway where vandalism could result in a very dangerous situation.
Haven't you ever seen coverage of riots? Usually any big riot is a mix of looting where the motive is theft and just pure mindless destruction of property (e.g. cars being rolled over or torched)
On an electronic level, there are plenty of DOS and DDOS attacks that are motivated by mischief rather than any other motive.
For a lot of people (maybe all of us to some extent) destroying things can be enjoyable.
Dude, I don't think whoever it was who blew up those important buildings was doing it just for the sake of breaking something important. Not even the Bushists claim something that implausible.
... is one that is powered off, cast in a block of concrete and sealed in a lead-lined room with armed guards - and even then I have my doubts."
The most obvious motivation I see would be to plant fake interesting information to make NASA consider a manned mission quicker than their current agenda.
The Wise adapts himself to the world. The Fool adapts the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the Fool.
All I can say is: Stop Watching FOX News.
China, Iran and some other countries are only your enemy because you yourselves declared them the enemy. They have no interest to sabotage a peaceful scientific mission.
For kids, sure. For the real world (TM), the only way to secure against an unknown attack vector, is to invent one. Hey, anything is possible with a contrived example.
when did you see someone break something important just for the sake of it?
You're going to have to define "important" and "for the sake of it". I'm no cynic but still for any reasonable definition of those two terms I find it hard to believe you are that sheltered and naive. All I can say is, I'm envious of someone who has never had to deal with troubled, hateful, antisocial, misanthropist and/or disenfranchised people ever in their life, because the world has more than it's fair share.
(1.21 gigawatts) / (88 miles per hour) = 30 757 874 newtons
but only if you know the last four digits of Curiosity's credit card number.
... just fill the firmware with garbage and brick it.
If not encrypting the comms, I would hope they at least sign the firmware. EUFI for rovers anyone?
I have never, ever, once in my life seen someone break something that was important deliberately.
Wow. You're not from Earth then?
I suppose it depends on your definition of "important" but in my country, so called mindless vandalism has been a problem for many years.
All I want is a secure system where it's easy to do anything I want. Is that too much to ask ~~ Randall Munroe
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Don't_stuff_beans_up_your_nose
The mother from that link: "Don't eat all the cabbage".
WTF?! What mom needs to tell its kid to stay away from the cabbage? Cabbage isn't naturally tasty... And cooked? Well then it smells.
Weird.
"What gain can there be in hacking Curiosity?"
What a question to ask! Bitconining, of course!
Defining Statistics and Social Research
My crack team of ex-Soviet hackers, having taken control of Curiosity Rover's MastCam, shall blit Marxist-Leninist slogans into the video output, thereby claiming this planet for the Proletariat!
Of course us sane people know that the best way to hack the Curiosity rover is to break into Area 51 and load it into a truck.
Wow, they moved Area 51 to Mars? That's one hell of a conspiracy.
Ezekiel 23:20
See? Even the Wright Parents realized that education can be overrated.
Wilbur didn't go to Yale because of depression over a disfiguring injury, and to care for his sick mother. I don't see how this supports your argument.
And just because you're paranoid, doesn't mean they're not after you.
You can still be crazy even if you still have all your marbles.
-
The Chinese only successfully accessed NASA systems that were connected to the Internet. I'd bet dollars to donuts the system communicating with Curiosity is air-gapped. If that's the case, the Chinese, LulzSec, Anonymous, or any other d-bag hackers out there will have to build their own system that can transmit all the way to Mars, intercept the frequency NASA is using to communicate with Curiosity, crack the encryption they are likely using, and reverse engineer the custom communications protocol.
I think we can all agree that this would take a while, even for well funded nation state hackers. So saying "Why doesn't someone hack Curiosity?" is sort of like looking at the Grand Cayon and saying "Why doesn't someone fill that in?" Impossible? No. Likely beyond anyone's capabilities within a reasonable cost and timeframe? Yes.
There are plenty of deeply flawed people out there who would break it just to break something that was important, damn the consequences.
"Mommy and Daddy didn't love me, so fuck everyone!"
Yes, we call them politicians.
Be seeing you...
Has Slashdot really devolved to the point where nobody even bothers correcting misuse of the word "hacker" anymore?
While I might love hacking a mars rover. That has no relation to breaking anyone's security.
What is the point? Even Unlimited means limited now.
Be seeing you...
Actually I think every /. reader already thought about the ideas of the summary least I did. Briefly, then thinking "it's probably encrypted" and not bothering further.
Yup! I can confirm I did exactly this! :D
So... is it encrypted? I mean, it has to be, right? Russia or China could try to screw with us otherwise.
GCS/MU/P d- s:- a-- C++++$ UL++ P+ L++ E+ W++ N o K- w--- O M+ V- PS+++ PE Y+ PGP t+ 5- X R++ tv+ b++ DI++ D++ G+ e++ h-
It may not SOLELY have been to break something important, but it was directly to break something important, so as to cause the consequences of having lost something important.
And for the exact same reason, it might be profitable for Russia or China or somebody to brick the rover. To break something important to us. Not PURELY to break something important, just "mwahahaha we destroyed the US's rover, they're going to cry!" but rather to see that US advancement is slowed so their countries can catch up.
That's like saying "Why do people go to war? Just for the sake of shooting people and capturing land?" Well, YES, actually, but there's more to it.
GCS/MU/P d- s:- a-- C++++$ UL++ P+ L++ E+ W++ N o K- w--- O M+ V- PS+++ PE Y+ PGP t+ 5- X R++ tv+ b++ DI++ D++ G+ e++ h-
I have never, ever, once in my life seen someone break something that was important deliberately. when did you see someone break something important just for the sake of it?
Have you never heard of a DDOS attack? Do you have any concept of how many people try to hack websites "for the lulz" ??
O_O
GCS/MU/P d- s:- a-- C++++$ UL++ P+ L++ E+ W++ N o K- w--- O M+ V- PS+++ PE Y+ PGP t+ 5- X R++ tv+ b++ DI++ D++ G+ e++ h-
The Hacker Emblem, the glider, has as much to do with computer hacking as anything else. What the hell? Get off your high horse. Who made you grand poobah of hacking?
There is no more elegant representation of the complexities and the elegance of hacking than the glider.
GCS/MU/P d- s:- a-- C++++$ UL++ P+ L++ E+ W++ N o K- w--- O M+ V- PS+++ PE Y+ PGP t+ 5- X R++ tv+ b++ DI++ D++ G+ e++ h-
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herostratus
It's a behavior as old as recorded history. Well, almost as old.
Anyway, yes, there are such people out there and there always will be.
I would think a project of this magnitude with have much more security than just simple encryption, which would likely be pretty uncrackable anyway.
The easiest solution is the simplest. As the post mentions, you need "your own massive 230-foot dish antenna and a 400-kilowatt transmitter", but it insinuates that chinese or other hackers could hack in and take over.
Here is a fix. When not in use, turn the dish somewhere other than Mars, and put a physical break on it. When you want to actually communicate, have someone drive over and physically remove the break, so you can manually turn the dish. Simmilary have a big ass knife switch on your transmitter. When not transmitting turn it the hell off. When you need to communicate again, have someone physically walk over and throw the switch.
Short of somehow social engineering their way in (I assume protocalls against that, checks, etc...) any hacker is going to find a physical system to which they have no access to pretty daunding (on top of encryption and the rest when it is actually functioning).
oh wait.. i think they stopped using that after the W.O.P.R. incident.
Arggh! They found a Black Hole on Mars!
...
I work at a school. In my two years working there I have seen the following:
Over one hundred keyboard and mice destroyed (we kept a tally sheet) - in a single term.
A switch defenestrated.
A power cable severed with scissors, while the power was on.
A power cable with a staple stapled through it.
Drive bay covers removed, so the computers could be used as litter-bins
Holes kicked in walls
A door wrenched off it's hinges.
Door soft-close mechanisms pulled down in such a way that the door jams when half-opened.
The opening-bar from a fire exit torn off.
Several computers rigged to explode by switching the voltage select from 230 to 110 volts.
Smashed glass screens.
Wall-mounted amplifier smashed.
That's an interesting story, and one I hadn't heard before. However, I can't help but wonder how the hell you burn down a marble building?
I feel sorry for people that don't drink, because when they get up in the morning, that's as good as they're gonna feel
Scribbling your name was just an example, and has nothing to do with the motivations I had in mind behind such a feat . Even just being able to tap into the live video feed would really get my rocks off. Some people just enjoy the interesting challenge technology presents us. It has nothing to do with ego or "stealing rocket technology." For those people, overcoming that challenge is an itch that simply must be scratched. I would even say that curiosity about technology and the world we live in is the very thing that makes one a geek. You don't need to be a super villain or ego maniac to be interested in the idea of controlling a robot on another planet. Simply being a geek will do.
Fanboy Status: Apache Flex, C#, Eclipse, KDE, Pirate Party, Ron Paul, Slackware, Windows 7
almost anything is possible. I could either choose to build the hardware to try and hack into it, or I could become Batman. With enough cash, I could do both.
If you were called Catherine, then you could do it (with a bad firmware) for the headline: "Cat killed the Curiosity"...
You might as well ask why anyone would bother sending a robot to Mars in the first place. We are human beings - hacking is what we do. Reasons are an afterthought.
I know... most people don't realize that "hacking" actually means that you are modifying something so it has a new purpose as opposed to the one it was originally assembled for.
The types of people that this article is talking about are known as "LAMERS"...
Some one has to hack it!
A firmware upgrade
Not easy to use the touchscreen from Mars!
Does the rover have live video stream? I have an idea that involves images of an oasis and some palms.
well proposed in 2003, so short lived in the world of "computer hacking" and to quote wiki "This does not refer to the hackers breaking into computers, but to the hacker culture around BSD, MIT, GNU, Linux, Perl, etc.; that is, the community around free software and open source."
I understand what you are saying and i understand the sub cultures, but in reality anyone who first calls them self a hacker, before others label them, more than likely isn't.
'...if only "Jumping to a Conclusion" was an event in the Olympics.'
Sooo.. you don't think that it has redundant computers and a minimal hardwired, thouroughly tested circuit to toggle between them to prevent problems with uploaded firmware when doing an upgrade? and people watching the RF communications 24x7?
maybe you should go back to watching 'real' movies like HACKERS and SWORDFISH instead of pretending to know what you are talking about here.
in reality anyone who first calls them self a hacker, before others label them, more than likely isn't.
Oh absolutely, I said myself elsewhere that nobody calls themselves hackers except script kiddies.
The rest of us are software engineers or security consultants now.
GCS/MU/P d- s:- a-- C++++$ UL++ P+ L++ E+ W++ N o K- w--- O M+ V- PS+++ PE Y+ PGP t+ 5- X R++ tv+ b++ DI++ D++ G+ e++ h-
Jr High/Middle School? That was when kids are most destructive from what I remember (myself included). In elementary school we had access to an unguarded computer lab and even the crappy machines were revered. In High School and College I couldn't touch a computer without a teacher of some kind being in the room, and nobody would think about doing something destructive on them (haxx0ring sure, but not tearing things apart).
And by that logic (in the realm of computer hacking), only script kiddies would think to use this logo. Meaning it isn't a logo for hackers as a hacker would never use it.
The reality is that the term hacker over the last 20 years has changed a lot, and now people modify and re-purpose things are being called hackers, while i'm not completely opposed do this, i do have the same stance that a real hacker doesn't call him self one. But current culture doesn't seem to agree with me so i will go sit on my porch now.
'...if only "Jumping to a Conclusion" was an event in the Olympics.'
I dunno, I think software engineers and security consultants can find solace and joy in the glider. Its not inherently showy or dumb, its just elegant. In fact, the glider should appeal more to the "real hackers" we're discussing and less to the script kiddies. The script kiddie hacker symbol would be something like "01010101" or "1337H4X"
GCS/MU/P d- s:- a-- C++++$ UL++ P+ L++ E+ W++ N o K- w--- O M+ V- PS+++ PE Y+ PGP t+ 5- X R++ tv+ b++ DI++ D++ G+ e++ h-
What is the cost and time to break it? But the fact is that images are trickling, we are not swarmed with them. More than hacking it worries the back signal be garbled beyond usage.
Secondary school. Our schools are not like your schools, so I'm not sure what that corresponds to in your system.
I understand what your saying, but in reality while they might find solace and joy in the glider they would not be inclined to use it to label them selves.
A script kiddie who is not but thinks they are a hacker would be inclined to use it, and that alone would also detract from any legitimate use.
'...if only "Jumping to a Conclusion" was an event in the Olympics.'
I am, now. As this article makes clear, even the expert drivers of the Mars Rover are afraid of breaking it. If some idiot sends control signals with barely a clue what they do, nothing good will happen.
On the other hand, "just being able to tap into the live video feed" as you said in a later comment seems harmless enough. If all you want to do is listen to the transmission, have fun.
Fair enough.
GCS/MU/P d- s:- a-- C++++$ UL++ P+ L++ E+ W++ N o K- w--- O M+ V- PS+++ PE Y+ PGP t+ 5- X R++ tv+ b++ DI++ D++ G+ e++ h-
unfortunately apple doesn't support multiple platforms.
have curiosity carve-graffiti-paint a nice large "nuclear symbol" onto the mars surface?
...but seriously, when did you see someone break something important just for the sake of it?
It's called vandalism.
Script kiddies had setup IRC bots and proxies on it - and it was being used as a spam relay for a while (open relaying). Hopefully NASA learned some lessons from that event. Thankfully the skiddies had no idea what the server did and never tried anything dangerous to the mission.
Just for the record, I have mouths to feed, and have absolutely no intentions of going anywhere near a high powered transmitter in the near future. I just took issue with the characterization the original commenter made of those interested in such a thing. He gave option a) villain, or option b) egomaniac. I was merely pointing out option C) being a through and through geek with an insatiable curiosity for technology (a far more likely characterization of someone who actually has the chops to pull it off, I might add).
drkstr1 gets back to writing enterprisey if statements for the man...
Fanboy Status: Apache Flex, C#, Eclipse, KDE, Pirate Party, Ron Paul, Slackware, Windows 7
hmm, fame?
And what could Russia or China do with the curiosity that NASA won't tell them the results? If they have some great idea for it, they can just tell NASA, and get some colaboration.
About your other comment about people that think NASA is taling with martians... Well, I'm afraid the intersection between this set of people and the set of people capable of hacking Curiosity is empty.
Rethinking email
There, FIFY.
Rethinking email
There, FIFY.
What?? It's a flippin' robot ON MARS! That's the whole point, that's what makes it so intriguing. Otherwise it's just a god damn robot. I seriously don't understand what the debate is here. Maybe I am just a freak.
Fanboy Status: Apache Flex, C#, Eclipse, KDE, Pirate Party, Ron Paul, Slackware, Windows 7
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/explainer/2007/08/are_ancient_ruins_flammable.html
tl;dr: heat
-- MarkusQ
> Do you get excited when you see unset concrete too?
Unset concrete on Mars!
I think it's a play on words "Curiosity"
OR
He could mean, that someone attempting to sabotage the rover would not have much curiosity about what it may find - since he was willing to break it, and now will never know what it could have found.
For my 2 bits, there are lots of people that would possibly want to wreck the thing - I think though that nobody with the motivations to want to, could do it - infiltrating mission control at NASA, while possible, may be a little more difficult than cracking someone's forum passwords.
Plus, if anyone did, they could expect a large portion of the geek-nation to vilify them, hunt them down, and will leave it to your imagination what a suitable punishment for destroying the coolest robot ever made (so far). I'm voting on good-old-fashioned hanging. On tha intarwebs.
Sure.. there's a LOT of things that 'geeks' want to do. But we have to balance it with ethics/morals etc, otherwise what makes us any different from those scientists/geeks that do live vivisections of people in the name of research etc? So your justification is 'curiosity', and perhaps even 'helping human understanding from a medical point of view', and you might think that 1 person dying or being tortured is worth it for the information that we get out of it because it will save 100,000+ people(from doing that live vivisection etc).
But yeah. You have to tell your motivations, and even then, just saying "i was curious" imo is not enough to justify doing ANYTHING. So yeah.. if you said scribble on dirt and you don't hurt anyone and it's for everyones benefit and not just your own ego as you claim and as i expected, then ok. But if you're hurting someone and it also clearly benefits you(and looks like an act of vandalism, looks egotistical and non altruistic), you had better have DAMN good justification for breaking the law(ie ethical/moral justification).. because you know that there are people who will use that shit to further their own political goals. Ie gov using anonymous so called ddossing to crack down on net rights and to further their own malicious goals which usually involve the ever popular motivator for 'evil'/apathy/not listening to your 'conscience'.. if you're slow, i'm talking mainly about "Financial/Material gain" , and/or just simply they want POWER/CONTROL if you want to simplify things even more.
All these moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain..
So if i get your motivations right, you would hack the Rover just so you can have POWER and be in CONTROL of it? Or just so you know that you COULD 'root' the rover and all it's communication systems etc?
We already have video etc, and they are releasing it etc. What would everyone else get out of it if it's not purely for your own ego? Sounds like it's motivated purely by ego to me. Why not go root something else and do something 'useful' if it's not ego driven?
That's just my assumptions though. I'd be curious on hearing what your real motivations are, if they are not ego driven as you say. What did you actually want to do(i'm assuming it's to 'root the rover' and all it's control/data systems and have 100% control, basically make it your own toy), and why?
All these moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain..