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The hacking of Starlink terminals has begun

wired.com

251–260 of 267 posts

Re: The hacking of Starlink terminals has begun

#251
post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

:-) Might be better to encourage placeholder repository to avoid concerns from the public such as this but as long as the presenter ultimately controls the namespace it is not really at issue.

Microsoft and the US military ultimately controls the namespace on GitHub.com.

What's the relationship between the US military and github?

Re: The hacking of Starlink terminals has begun

#252
post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Microsoft and the US military ultimately controls the namespace on GitHub.com.

What's the relationship between the US military and github?

They get to dictate to Microsoft what is and isn’t allowed on github.com. Microsoft will not fight a 1A battle against one of their biggest and oldest partners.

Not only are they one of their largest customers, they have physical control over the place where Microsoft and GitHub staff live and work.

Re: The hacking of Starlink terminals has begun

#253
post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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...

When I worked at SpaceX, lots of software folk used an internal IRC server. One time I created a chatbot that would execute arbitrary python commands on my workstation. Knowing that coworkers would maliciously try to pwn my computer, I ran it in a chroot with very restricted permissions. It took about 20 minutes for someone to figure out how to fork bomb it hard enough to lock up my system. Another time as a team bui…

Kobayashi Maru

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kobayashi_Maru

Re: The hacking of Starlink terminals has begun

#254
post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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...

I was a big fan of modded playstation portables back in the day, to do it you would take a particular model of battery and remove one terminal or something similar which would activate a debug mode that let you flash it. They fixed that with the newer batteries as I recall but was a pretty big hole at release

Ah, the old and beautiful Pandora battery. It was magic, you could recover every bricked PSP with it, i hate that no other device can do something like that.

Re: The hacking of Starlink terminals has begun

#255
post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

While that is potentially true such micro missiles tech currently doesn't exist and modern Russia doesn't exactly have a track record in developing such tech. In addition, its far harder then you would think. Each such missile would still need complex computer system and propulsion hardware and so on. It would be cheaper then a Starlink sat but not by that much. Also, even if you assume 1/10 the weight, SpaceX can ea…

> Each such missile would still need complex computer system and propulsion hardware and so on. It would be cheaper then a Starlink sat but not by that much.

We flew a rocket to the moon with less computing power than a modern pocket calculator. I’m inclined to say we’d manage.

I think I’m confused about your term ‘launch capacity’. If we’re talking average/sustained payload/day, then sure. But I think the capacity of the soyuz and falcon is about the same.

Edit: Never mind, Soyuz has like 2 times less capacity than a default Falcon.

It’s probably not fair to use Starship for that comparison (as much as I want to) because it has yet to successfully launch.

Re: The hacking of Starlink terminals has begun

#256
post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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...

When I worked at SpaceX, lots of software folk used an internal IRC server. One time I created a chatbot that would execute arbitrary python commands on my workstation. Knowing that coworkers would maliciously try to pwn my computer, I ran it in a chroot with very restricted permissions. It took about 20 minutes for someone to figure out how to fork bomb it hard enough to lock up my system. Another time as a team bui…

Sounds like a fun time and good consistent reminder that malicious actors can be everywhere :-)

(That said I'd be pissed)

Re: The hacking of Starlink terminals has begun

#257

This WIRED article[1] references a release of tools and information about the research on GitHub[2] however it 404s. Hope that is not being censored. [1] https://www.wired.com/story/starlink-internet-dish-hack/ [2] https://github.com/KULeuven-COSIC/Starlink-FI

Repository is live now. Commit cbde04c9bc45ea54cc509a65247c62a82f64bca9

From README

> We are not providing exact glitch parameters. The presentation slides contain various hints and the parameters will vary depending on how you patch the firmware.

Some may see this as capitulation towards Starlink business interests but a more benign reason could involve the glitch parameters varying based on various hardware factors and as stated the execution of firmware as well.

Re: The hacking of Starlink terminals has begun

#258
post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While that is potentially true such micro missiles tech currently doesn't exist and modern Russia doesn't exactly have a track record in developing such tech. In addition, its far harder then you would think. Each such missile would still need complex computer system and propulsion hardware and so on. It would be cheaper then a Starlink sat but not by that much. Also, even if you assume 1/10 the weight, SpaceX can ea…

> Each such missile would still need complex computer system and propulsion hardware and so on. It would be cheaper then a Starlink sat but not by that much. We flew a rocket to the moon with less computing power than a modern pocket calculator. I’m inclined to say we’d manage. I think I’m confused about your term ‘launch capacity’. If we’re talking average/sustained payload/day, then sure. But I think the capacity o…

The moon is a pretty big target. A missile needs to hit a sat that is the is 1m² very hard to detact and moving fast with its own propulsion and avoidance system.

> But I think the capacity of the soyuz and falcon is about the same.

Per launch a Falcon 9 lifts about double and in the last couple years Falcon 9 has launched 2-4x as often.

> It’s probably not fair to use Starship for that comparison (as much as I want to) because it has yet to successfully launch.

As of right now Russia likely also doesn't have the missiles you suggest. I would argue that Starship is closer then an advanced anti-sat weapon that can split up in orbit and hit many targets.

Re: The hacking of Starlink terminals has begun

#259

Earlier 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,…

Yes. Vulnerabilities exist with respect to a system's expected functionality and must be understood and weighed against other requirements to determine the system's security model. Even if you think the expected functionality is stupid or impossible, that doesn't change the fact that the system has a particular expectation that it doesn't meet and a mechanism by which that expectation can be violated, i.e. a vulnerab…

No lock is expected to be able to keep an adversary out indefinitely, since that's known to be completely impossible. They're expected to delay an adversary by a given amount of time, e.g., 2 hours for a UL class 3 vault door lock, and a vulnerability is if there's a way for an adversary to bypass one faster than that. The problem with a security model that relies on people never being able to root devices they possess is that it is expecting the impossible.

Re: The hacking of Starlink terminals has begun

#260
post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's the relationship between the US military and github?

They get to dictate to Microsoft what is and isn’t allowed on github.com. Microsoft will not fight a 1A battle against one of their biggest and oldest partners. Not only are they one of their largest customers, they have physical control over the place where Microsoft and GitHub staff live and work.

... you mean the US, possibly allies? Not only is that broad enough to be meaningless, I don't know offhand of any military going to someone's house to require them (by force I assume) to change their GitHub repo name. What are you getting at?
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