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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."
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
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
Our centrifuge controllers aren't on the internet, they couldn't possibly be affected by an e-mail worm.
--Iran
Since you seem to know things, I'll ask here. Why are they using a dish antenna to communicate with the rover. Would it be more effective to use lasers? Or is the precision needed to hit a reasonable size target at those distances just too much?
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
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...
If Iran/China/etc did it, they'd be disliked, but by no means universally.
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
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.
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.
What has this ever stopped hackers? They don't need gains they just want the lulz.
Is there some benefit to pubkey over simpler symmetric encryption systems, given that NASA was in a position to do a secure key exchange before the rover left?
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.
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!"
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
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.
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