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Hacking a Satellite is Surprisingly Easy (theoutline.com)
Caroline Haskins, writing for The Outline: Hundreds of multi-ton liabilities -- soaring faster than the speed of sound, miles above the surface of the earth -- are operating on Windows-95. They're satellites, responsible for everything from GPS positioning, to taking weather measurements, to carrying cell signals, to providing television and internet. For the countries that own these satellites, they're invaluable resources. Even though they're old, it's more expensive to take satellites down than it is to just leave them up. So they stay up. Unfortunately, these outdated systems makes old satellites prime targets for cyber attacks. [...]
A malicious actor could fake their IP address, which gives information about a user's computer and its location. This person could then get access to the satellite's computer system, and manipulate where the satellite goes or what it does. Alternatively, an actor could jam the satellite's radio transmissions with earth, essentially disabling it. The cost of such an attack could be huge. If a satellite doesn't work, life-saving GPS or online information could be withheld to people on earth when they need it most. What's worse, if part of a satellite -- or an entire satellite -- is knocked out of its orbit from an attack, the debris could create a domino effect and cause extreme damage to other satellites.
A malicious actor could fake their IP address, which gives information about a user's computer and its location. This person could then get access to the satellite's computer system, and manipulate where the satellite goes or what it does. Alternatively, an actor could jam the satellite's radio transmissions with earth, essentially disabling it. The cost of such an attack could be huge. If a satellite doesn't work, life-saving GPS or online information could be withheld to people on earth when they need it most. What's worse, if part of a satellite -- or an entire satellite -- is knocked out of its orbit from an attack, the debris could create a domino effect and cause extreme damage to other satellites.
NT I Could See
Back in the day, NT was actually a pretty good OS, and used in a number of mission critical applications. (Including some I worked on.)
But... 95? Really?
That was certainly not MILSPEC approved for that sort of thing. And NASA had even tighter requirements and a higher specification bar.
I really suspect that the author has their facts a bit scrambled.
Check your premises.
One might imagine that there are satellites looking down at the earth for sources of interesting, space-beamed transmissions, and their content. There are a lot of monitoring dishes up there these days, pointing directly at that person with a yagi antenna spewing iterations of hack attempts. Then there's a knock at your door.
I'll imagine if you try and hack GPS and other high-value assets, you're not only being watched but by people that play for keeps.
Go ahead. Make some analyst's day.
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
Everything else in that statement was bullshit clickbait fud as well.
Who cares what the satellite's mass is? "faster than the speed of sound" no fucking kidding. "miles above the surface of the earth", just a bit of an understatement.
Are they trying to suggest that someone hacking a satellite can cause it to crash into someone's house?
I'm a good cook. I'm a fantastic eater. - Steven Brust
First off, the article is pure bullshit. There may be some Windows 95 components, but the satellites don't run off of Windows 95. These are embedded systems running small and tiny operating systems. They need to be light and with low power usage.
If you look at the article, there is one and only one place that says "Windows" or "Windows 95", and that's the intro paragraph. There are not references or annotations supporting this assertion. It's click-bait, and that makes Slashdot a click-bait enabler.
Jamming is as simple as aiming a high power, high duty transmitter using same frequency as the receiver. This is exactly the same whether the OS on board is 5, 20 or 50 years old, running linux, Windows or QNX. msmash, you are a piece of shit for posting intentionally shitty articles. I'm not sure if you're really, really dumb, or a really, really big asshole.