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The hacking of Starlink terminals has begun

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Re: The hacking of Starlink terminals has begun

#61

Post by Denvercoder9 »

colechristensen wrote: post #47
jandrese wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For the satellites this is true, but it's not necessary for the clients to be geolocated when the satellite is operating as a bent pipe. Starlink will know which clients are in which footprint and can locate anybody if they want to, but it's not fundamental to the functionality of the system.

Both the client and the satellite use beam forming. The signal is pointed at you in a relatively narrow beam not broadcast spherically. They have to know where you are to point at you (phased array antennas so electronic not physical pointing)

I'm not too familar with the low-level details of the Starlink network, but in the slides of the talk it's shown that the dish contains a GPS receiver, so isn't it possible that the client tells the satellite its location on first contact?

Re: The hacking of Starlink terminals has begun

#62

Post by nine_k »

bdcravens wrote: post #32
josephcsible wrote: post #26

It shouldn't count as a vulnerability that you can get root of a device that you have physical possession of. If there's any real vulnerability here, it's that having root of your terminal gives you any extra privileges to the rest of the network.

If a system is designed to not allow that access, and you can compromise that design, it is most definitely a vulnerability.

If a system is not resilient against rooting a terminal which is in user's physical possession, it's a design flaw. Or, rather, the more resilient the system as a whole is to compromises of individual terminals, the better the design is. Assuming such compromise never happens would be outright incompetent.

Re: The hacking of Starlink terminals has begun

#63

Post by xaduha »

josephcsible wrote: post #26

It shouldn't count as a vulnerability that you can get root of a device that you have physical possession of. If there's any real vulnerability here, it's that having root of your terminal gives you any extra privileges to the rest of the network.

Microsoft and Sony appear to have solved it for their gaming consoles. Satellite TV providers definitely solved it by now after learning from their mistakes.

All in all there are plenty of devices in the world that are protected against physical access, so if Starlink tried doing that and failed, then that's definitely through an exploited vulnerability.

Re: The hacking of Starlink terminals has begun

#65

Post by gpm »

Clent wrote: post #33
jandrese wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It might allow them to do things like connect to the Starlink network outside of their geofence. Or hacking a stationary antenna to work on a moving vehicle.

Would this negatively affect the network? My understanding is that it would make your device less reliable. This is simply a warranty voiding event.

It would in the same sense as illegally attaching a wire to the power cables and drawing electricity out of them does. You're stealing a limited resource (in this case radio bandwidth in an region for which you haven't purchased it, in the analogy power), but you're not doing so any more than a legitimate user would be assuming it's done "properly".

If too many people do this, things stop working, because you exhaust the limited resource.

Re: The hacking of Starlink terminals has begun

#66

Post by nine_k »

29athrowaway wrote: post #51

Certainly it did not cost $25 to develop the modchip. If you put in the labor and software related cost it's not $25.

It may cost $25 to deploy the hack after it has been developed. It's mere $25k to deploy 1000 instances of it, or even cheaper due to the economies of scale.

Re: The hacking of Starlink terminals has begun

#67

Post by dang »

notpushkin wrote: post #3
notpushkin wrote: post #2

Previously, previously, previously, previously: https://hn.algolia.com/?query=The%20hacking%20of%20Starlink%...

On a side note: wondering why the Starlink maritime coverage link [1] has made it to the homepage, but the hacking stuff never did. [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32426281

Randomness.

Re: The hacking of Starlink terminals has begun

#68

Post by dang »

notpushkin wrote: post #2

Previously, previously, previously, previously: https://hn.algolia.com/?query=The%20hacking%20of%20Starlink%...

Reposts are fine if a story hasn't had significant attention yet! In fact, if the story is a good one, they're helpful, because they mitigate the randomness of what gets noticed on /newest.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html

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