Anyone have a link to read without hitting the paywall?
The hacking of Starlink terminals has begun
151–160 of 267 posts
Re: The hacking of Starlink terminals has begun
#152Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you root your Android, are you one step closer to hacking the 5G network?
Yes, for some definition of the word hacking, because one of the underlying assumptions of the 5G network is that all of the devices operating on it are subject to local regulatory rules (won't behave badly on that spectral region) and rooting your Android phone could potentially give you access to do unacceptable things with the radio, up to and including interfering with other devices using the network.
I guess my point is that this is trivially easy to do but 5G networks in practice have no problem chugging along supporting a bunch of user-controlled devices.
Re: The hacking of Starlink terminals has begun
#153Earlier quoted context omitted.
Isn't the literal name of this website using the same definition, as in tinkering with something?
IIRC this website was born of a novel use of the term 'hacking' in the startup space- hacking business growth. Here, hacking is a more well established term- hacking networking hardware is something I suspect most people would associate with black-hat type hacking.
No, Hacker News was named after the people who enjoy doing clever things with computers.
At the time, using "hacker" to mean a black-hat was popular in the press, but not among actual hackers. And "growth hacking" was a metaphor for doing clever things to get growth, but not the primary association with "hacker".
Re: The hacking of Starlink terminals has begun
#154Earlier quoted context omitted.
Complaining about hacking being used correctly on Hacker News? Now I've seen everything.
They switch between "hacking" and "attacking". So, yes.
These days, you pretty much have to "attack" some systems just to be able to "hack" them due to the modern propensity to put intentional road blocks in the way of anyone who wants to modify something they own.
Re: The hacking of Starlink terminals has begun
#155Relevant presentation on DEFCON Media server: https://media.defcon.org/DEF%20CON%2030/DEF%20CON%2030%20pre... https://media.defcon.org/DEF%20CON%2030/DEF%20CON%2030%20pre...
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Do you write a comment like that every time someone roots a cable modem too? That seems a little over the top.
This is an exploit of the base station device. It seems that it might be used to grant access for which the owner hadn't paid, but that's also something that can be trivially patched around at the routing level ("sure, it's a valid base station, but if it's not on the list of paying customers it doesn't get packets"). It doesn't seem like there's a broader exploit against the network at all, beyond allowing the thing to attempt a DoS attack (something that is also always possible with jamming hardware, but very difficult in practice given the number of satellits).
Re: The hacking of Starlink terminals has begun
#156Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes, for some definition of the word hacking, because one of the underlying assumptions of the 5G network is that all of the devices operating on it are subject to local regulatory rules (won't behave badly on that spectral region) and rooting your Android phone could potentially give you access to do unacceptable things with the radio, up to and including interfering with other devices using the network.
I guess my point is that this is trivially easy to do but 5G networks in practice have no problem chugging along supporting a bunch of user-controlled devices.
Practically speaking, roughly 100% of those devices are fully regulator-approved and compliant with standards, because roughly 100% are running firmware from vendors who rely on regulatory approval.
Essentially 0% of those devices are user-controlled in the "I can make the radio do whatever I want" sense.
Re: The hacking of Starlink terminals has begun
#157It 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.
I think we have left this level a long time ago where one could answer:
The system is in a physically secured location. As long as there is no physical access it should be safe.
See mobiles like iPhones, gaming devices like XBox, Playstation etc. authenticators like chipcards or security token and HSM. All have to asume that the attacker has physical access to the device.
Security Engineering Ch. 16 "Physical Tamper Resistance" is a good read for some special classes of devices. But I would recommend all topics from this book even unrelated to this thread. ;)
Re: The hacking of Starlink terminals has begun
#158Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm convinced that it's impossible to prevent anyone that can physically tamper with a system from having full privileges on that system, as a result of physics. The only way to truly protect information is to make use of quantum effects, and we've only just started doing that in labs. Everything else is just making it harder. So, if you make things harder and someone comes along that invests more effort to overcome,…
> So, if you make things harder and someone comes along that invests more effort to overcome, can you really call that a vulnerability? Yes? This is defense in depth. Anything that bypasses a defense is still a vulnerability, even if your backup defenses protect you. Defending physical hardware is indeed a theoretical impossibility as on paper, it will always be possible to make a perfect electrical clone of the orig…
Absolutely, defence in depth is how real systems are designed, dont know why you're being downvoted.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defense_in_depth_(computing)
For the same reason, security-by-obscurity is also a valid (though not sufficient) tactic for one of those layers (which also surprises people).
Its about delay and demotivation to slow down your attackers.
Re: The hacking of Starlink terminals has begun
#159Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes, for some definition of the word hacking, because one of the underlying assumptions of the 5G network is that all of the devices operating on it are subject to local regulatory rules (won't behave badly on that spectral region) and rooting your Android phone could potentially give you access to do unacceptable things with the radio, up to and including interfering with other devices using the network.
I guess my point is that this is trivially easy to do but 5G networks in practice have no problem chugging along supporting a bunch of user-controlled devices.
I suppose that depends how you define “chugging along.” They might be relatively stable and safe from DDOS, but malicious devices can certainly do damage to other users of a network, in some cases without even connecting to it.
For example, an IMSI catcher isn’t technically _connected to_ any cell network, but it does exploit the assumptions of clients who attempt and expect to connect to one.