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The hacking of Starlink terminals has begun

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Re: The hacking of Starlink terminals has begun

#221

Post by GuB-42 »

sneak wrote: post #211
yarg wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The terminal is used to contact the constellation as well as Starlink's backend servers. If the remote machines have the assumption of trustworthy terminals baked in, then this isn't a low threat hack.

> If the remote machines have the assumption of trustworthy terminals baked in, Given the general competence level of the engineering at SpaceX, I would not put any money on this being true. Maybe if the system were designed by Sony...

Even Sony doesn't considers its terminals trustworthy.

They really don't want you to root your PlayStation, but that's mostly because it allows you to hack offline games. Hacked consoles are usually banned pretty quickly from online services.

It doesn't mean Sony has the best track record when it comes to security just that they are not completely clueless.

Re: The hacking of Starlink terminals has begun

#222

Post by hunterb123 »

nine_k wrote: post #66
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.

Since you need physical access, it's plus the cost of the dish and one month of service, either by stealing or buying them.

The former would be quite illegal and difficult to scale, the latter would be quite expensive.

Re: The hacking of Starlink terminals has begun

#223

Post by Scoundreller »

xaduha wrote: post #203
Scoundreller wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not saying the modern CAMs have been compromised, just saying the profit incentive has dwindled. For a while, entirely non-OEM receivers were being used with key distribution over the internet. But at that point, just get a black market IPTV subscription. Compromising the cards has a fraction of the value it used to, and there's more 'locked down' targets in other devices to focus one's skills at.

Handwave all you want, but the topic at hand is a possibility of securing devices against physical access attacks. And it's not only possible, it's pretty straightforward if you don't suffer from NIH syndrome. And as an example satellite TV providers did it (or acquired a license for it). If you're saying that incentives to hack them aren't there anymore, then that's just wrong because the foundation on which such se…

ok

Re: The hacking of Starlink terminals has begun

#224

Post by Aeolun »

panick21_ wrote: post #114
ck2 wrote: post #60

Pretty sure Russia has physical satellite killer missiles just like US does? Would a nuke in space even work to take out a group of them, maybe even via an EMP surge or are they hardened? Sometimes I wonder if the world would be more peaceful if cellphone networks couldn't work anymore but there would be so much other chaos so guess not.

Russia does not have the capability of destroying Starlink because the amount of upmass required to destroy them is larger then what the Russians can actually do. SpaceX replacement rate would be higher then Russia destroy rate.

Presumably micro missiles would be smaller than micro sats, so the only thing you’d need is to launch one large missile full of micro missiles that then each take out one satalite.

After that… I imagine it’d become impossible to launch anything ever again. So much debris in LEO would be depressing (though maybe the satellites could be given a deorbit burn order before being exploded, if it ever became clear they’d gotten targeted in this way)

Re: The hacking of Starlink terminals has begun

#225

Post by Aeolun »

bpodgursky wrote: post #110
upupandup wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quoted post unavailable.

> The PLA has literally robots that can obscure and destroy US satellites without launching missiles at it This is 100% speculation. The only thing that China has demonstrably done is blow up satellites. It would be unsurprising if this tech was in development, but nobody has any clue whether there are non-kinetic satellite neutralization weapons deployed.

I imagine a high powered laser would work pretty well against something the size of a Starlink sat?

Not sure if we can focus them well enough to be worth the power expenditure though.

Re: The hacking of Starlink terminals has begun

#226

Post by sounds »

roy9240356 wrote: post #207

I read the article as well as the DEFCON presentation. I still don't know how they used voltage fault injection to bypass the secure boot. Anyone care to explain?

This is what I found at the top of an internet search:

Under voltage fault injection - "In general, single instruction skips are easily achievable, though skips of multiple nearby instructions are more difficult to induce and control."

https://research.nccgroup.com/2021/07/07/an-introduction-to-...

Re: The hacking of Starlink terminals has begun

#227

Post by sounds »

Aeolun wrote: post #224
panick21_ wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Russia does not have the capability of destroying Starlink because the amount of upmass required to destroy them is larger then what the Russians can actually do. SpaceX replacement rate would be higher then Russia destroy rate.

Presumably micro missiles would be smaller than micro sats, so the only thing you’d need is to launch one large missile full of micro missiles that then each take out one satalite. After that… I imagine it’d become impossible to launch anything ever again. So much debris in LEO would be depressing (though maybe the satellites could be given a deorbit burn order before being exploded, if it ever became clear they’d go…

At 40km to 100km altitude the debris will fall out of the sky in short order (under a year).

Re: The hacking of Starlink terminals has begun

#228

Post by bogomipz »

marvin wrote: post #199
bogomipz wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except Russia already proved they can shoot satellites out of space as they did almost a year ago with their Nudol ASAT weapon test: https://archive.ph/1tdHl

Excellent. Now repeat that feat 2500 times to destroy all existing Starlink satellites, and keep doing it 1300 times each year to destroy all the new Starlink satellites that are being launched. Assuming of course that SpaceX will not increase its launch cadence, and that this act of war will not provoke a response that stops is. The concept is laughable. It is intractable at every level of execution.

Except you don't need one ASAT launch per satellite it's completely asymmetric. The debris in low Earth orbit travels 10,000-15,000 miles an hour. The high energy debris in LEO does all the work. A 1cm piece of debris would render other satellites useless.

Your idea that space will somehow not be militarized is quite laughable. There's an actual history that proves you wrong:

https://hir.harvard.edu/anti-satellite-weapons-and-the-emerg...

Re: The hacking of Starlink terminals has begun

#230

Post by c7DJTLrn »

TrueDuality wrote: post #204
gtvwill wrote: post #188

Eh low threat hack. Requires physical access to dish and installs piece of easily identifiable hardware. Tbh give unfettered access to most hardware and you can hack it.

The value of this attack isn't breaking into the terminal itself, but that it allows the end user to modify the control channel to the satellite. It allows internal inspection of the protocols, authentication, data formats, etc between the terminal and the satellite itself. I assume that the actual received and transmitted packets from the terminal are encrypted so "outside in" inspection is very very difficult.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kerckhoffs%27s_principle
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