If satellite warfare will be like chess, this could be a preparatory move.
Man, whoever did it back in the 70s must have been really forward thinking.
Supra et Ultra!
Somebody moved the UK's oldest satellite in the mid 1970s, but no one knows who
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Re: Somebody moved the UK's oldest satellite in the mid 1970s, but no one knows who
#12[deleted]
Re: Somebody moved the UK's oldest satellite in the mid 1970s, but no one knows who
#13There was remarkably little in the way of security for early satellites (or space probes). I recently encountered here on HN the suggestion that, the main reason you can't find particularly in-depth details on the Voyager space probes, is project security. Security through obscurity, mostly. If amateurs can detect the signal from the Voyager probes with a small dish antenna, it's at least conceivable someone might ho…
Voyagers are so far away that possibility of owning necessary antenna is probably limited to nation-states or mad billionaires. Also DSN-sized antenna is not exactly easy to hide. If you are hell-bent on breaking Voyager and have such resources I think you could acquire necessary information anyway (I guess you could get uplink data for reverse-engineer framing format by standing near DSN antenna with SDR?).
>would be able to hack Apollo midflight via its radio link. It was the equivalent of a root prompt with no password on an exposed port.
Indeed, but in that case it would be port opened with a switch: https://youtu.be/2Jt0PsxLM7k?t=1732
Re: Somebody moved the UK's oldest satellite in the mid 1970s, but no one knows who
#14- "We need to avoid what I call super-spreader events. When these things explode or something collides with them, it generates thousands of pieces of debris that then become a hazard to something else that we care about." There was one of these just a couple weeks ago (and that was not the first), https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41904346 ( "Intelsat 33e breaks up in geostationary orbit" )
....is this really a problem in a geostationary orbit?
Re: Somebody moved the UK's oldest satellite in the mid 1970s, but no one knows who
#15There was remarkably little in the way of security for early satellites (or space probes). I recently encountered here on HN the suggestion that, the main reason you can't find particularly in-depth details on the Voyager space probes, is project security. Security through obscurity, mostly. If amateurs can detect the signal from the Voyager probes with a small dish antenna, it's at least conceivable someone might ho…
> There was remarkably little in the way of security for early satellites (or space probes).
Compared to what? What was (or is) worth securing? From what? Talking about security in abstract is nonsensical
Re: Somebody moved the UK's oldest satellite in the mid 1970s, but no one knows who
#16There was remarkably little in the way of security for early satellites (or space probes). I recently encountered here on HN the suggestion that, the main reason you can't find particularly in-depth details on the Voyager space probes, is project security. Security through obscurity, mostly. If amateurs can detect the signal from the Voyager probes with a small dish antenna, it's at least conceivable someone might ho…
> There was remarkably little in the way of security for early satellites (or space probes). Compared to what? What was (or is) worth securing? From what? Talking about security in abstract is nonsensical
You are aware of the historical fact that there was a cold war when these things were designed?
Re: Somebody moved the UK's oldest satellite in the mid 1970s, but no one knows who
#17Was the command a wow-signal from a random source?
Re: Somebody moved the UK's oldest satellite in the mid 1970s, but no one knows who
#18Earlier quoted context omitted.
> There was remarkably little in the way of security for early satellites (or space probes). Compared to what? What was (or is) worth securing? From what? Talking about security in abstract is nonsensical
You are aware of the historical fact that there was a cold war when these things were designed?
Sure but that was so propaganda heavy nothing can be trusted from that era. What do people actually think today and why? Surely we live in such a free society now people are actually free to explain their viewpoints and reasoning.
Besides, invoking the cold war explains little (aside from invoking the propaganda of the time). The soviets live-streamed the moon landing. The idea that they were necessarily antagonistic is simply inaccurate. Not to mention what they would gain from fucking with satellites remains unexplained.
Re: Somebody moved the UK's oldest satellite in the mid 1970s, but no one knows who
#19There was remarkably little in the way of security for early satellites (or space probes). I recently encountered here on HN the suggestion that, the main reason you can't find particularly in-depth details on the Voyager space probes, is project security. Security through obscurity, mostly. If amateurs can detect the signal from the Voyager probes with a small dish antenna, it's at least conceivable someone might ho…
Define early. And it does not include this vehicle. I can't personally speak for Skynet 1A, but the DSCS II satellites, first launched in 1971 (so developed at roughly the same time), most definitely had an encrypted command uplink.
Re: Somebody moved the UK's oldest satellite in the mid 1970s, but no one knows who
#20A simple malfunction is not considered in the article. Is that so unlikely, e.g. a sticky relais or some-such?