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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
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.
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?
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.
The mars orbiters are already basically space wireless routers. If MRO weren't so broken, they'd have a high bandwidth relay link to earth through it.
The short range link between the lander and the orbiters is Proximity-1 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proximity-1_Space_Link_Protocol
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
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.
Good thing they're not provisioned by AT&T or Comcast, otherwise NASA would have to contend with artificial bandwidth caps. ;)
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
Silly AC. All you have to do is: ssh root@curiosity.marsrover.jpl.nasa.gov The password is hunter2
I really wanted to change my sig to something witty, but all I could come up with is this.
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...
This "firmware upgrade" really isn't that big of a deal. Obviously NASA doesn't want to screw it up but they do have experience in the past. One of the first upgrades they did was in the early 90s when they reprogrammed the Voyager 2 spacecraft to take photos of poorly-lit Uranus.
That craft had never been designed to last beyond Saturn, so they had to do some new ideas like leaving the camera shutter open for several minutes AND rotating the spacecraft at the same time to avoid image blur. They also upgraded the resolution & introduced image compression so they could store all the photos during the rapid flyby.
Plus wait a full workday (9 hours) to get a response from Voyager that said "success" or "fail" on the updates. This rover upgrade is likely easy in comparson.
My AC stalker: " I personally agree with your posts most of the time, but that won't keep me from modding you troll"
If Iran/China/etc did it, they'd be disliked, but by no means universally.
I thought you glued sandpaper to its belly while it was flying through the air, and then used the sandpaper to light a match, which in turn lights a fuse leading to a big explosive, which covers the bull in soot and removes tufts of its fur.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
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.
They will be fine, as long as the Curiosity Rover has the iPhone IOS!
Two reasons:
1 - the bands they're using aren't stopped by clouds. lasers (as in light) are.
2 - A 50-kW laser shooting a drone out of the sky:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2hs9vmlEd-A
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.
.. they reprogrammed the Voyager 2 spacecraft to take photos of poorly-lit Uranus.
Couldn't they have just turned on the lights in the bathroom?
(Face it, you knew an ass joke was imminent.)
"Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery?" - Patrick Henry
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.
-o ConnectTimeout=1860
What has this ever stopped hackers? They don't need gains they just want the lulz.
I think NASA has already has enough issues with managers second-guessing the engineers.
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!"
You're all wrong. It's "Bull sigh" because that's the sound a bull makes when you get pedantic on the internet.
Ceci n'est pas un sig.
The password is hunter2
You need to use the /cleartext command. All I see is *******.
Ceci n'est pas un sig.
I bricked my routeeeeeeer, but I did not brick curiosity!
Funnyhacks - Wierd, unusual, and fun hacks
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! :)
But please don't permanently damage it. Just do a few donuts, draw Guy Fawkes in the sand, make the clock flash 12:00, grind some rocks to resemble dog poop, and leave the left blinker on along with some geriatric jokes in the flash memory.
Table-ized A.I.
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.
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