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Security Windows

Hacking a Satellite is Surprisingly Easy (theoutline.com) 199

Posted by msmash from the security-woes dept.
Caroline Haskins, writing for The Outline: Hundreds of multi-ton liabilities -- soaring faster than the speed of sound, miles above the surface of the earth -- are operating on Windows-95. They're satellites, responsible for everything from GPS positioning, to taking weather measurements, to carrying cell signals, to providing television and internet. For the countries that own these satellites, they're invaluable resources. Even though they're old, it's more expensive to take satellites down than it is to just leave them up. So they stay up. Unfortunately, these outdated systems makes old satellites prime targets for cyber attacks. [...]

A malicious actor could fake their IP address, which gives information about a user's computer and its location. This person could then get access to the satellite's computer system, and manipulate where the satellite goes or what it does. Alternatively, an actor could jam the satellite's radio transmissions with earth, essentially disabling it. The cost of such an attack could be huge. If a satellite doesn't work, life-saving GPS or online information could be withheld to people on earth when they need it most. What's worse, if part of a satellite -- or an entire satellite -- is knocked out of its orbit from an attack, the debris could create a domino effect and cause extreme damage to other satellites.
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Hacking a Satellite is Surprisingly Easy More

Hacking a Satellite is Surprisingly Easy

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  • Say what? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Snotnose ( 212196 ) on Monday April 23, 2018 @01:54PM (#56489611)
    I'd think a satellite would want some type of RTOS for it's main system. I used WinCE some 15-20 years ago and it sucked ass, but I'd rather use it to control a satellite than I would Win95 (or a modern Linux for that matter).

    • Re:Say what? (Score:4)

      by GameboyRMH ( 1153867 ) <`gameboyrmh' `at' `gmail.com'> on Monday April 23, 2018 @01:57PM (#56489643) Journal

      Was thinking the same thing. I am sure there is no satellite (other than perhaps a modern amateur microsat) running anything bearing any resemblance to a desktop operating system. The control system may be running Windows 95, but that's a different problem.

    • Re: Say what? (Score:5, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 23, 2018 @02:18PM (#56489805)

      This whole article is complete bullshit. Of course satellites do not run Windows 95. GPS satellites alone have existed for longer than that.

      Wtf Slashdot?

      • I agree - total BS. Come on Slashdot, your site advertising is becoming intrusive and flaky, and your article selection is getting lame. Failing to 'get' your audience will diminish your future, which I would mourn.

    • Honestly, I question whether any significant numbers satellites are actually running Windows 95, despite the claim of "hundreds." That seems like a terrible choice for a satellite OS, and there are plenty of alternatives. Why in the world would developers skimp like that on projects that may cost tens to hundreds of millions of dollars?

      I saw absolutely no sources or validation of this claim by the author, who, by the way, even got the OS name wrong, calling it Windows-95. So, forgive me, but I'll remain

    • I think they talk of ground segment systems.
      Btw. the biggest actual man-made satellite runs on Linux :
      https://training.linuxfoundati... [linuxfoundation.org]

  • Windows 95? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by b0s0z0ku ( 752509 ) on Monday April 23, 2018 @01:57PM (#56489639)

    Windows 95 is a consumer desktop OS? Does the author means that the control software for the satellites runs on Win 95?

    I'd imagine that the satellites themselves would use a real-time or server OS i.e. QNX, NT, or a Unixoid OS. Running a desktop OS on hardware with no direct display would be stupid, and satellite engineers aren't likely to be stupid.

    • Agreed. But the key here is that once you put a satellite in orbit, you're stuck with that hardware for however many years or decades the satellite continues to operate. I can easily imagine some satellites are 1995-era. Their hardware may not be able to cope with modern encryption algorithms in a timely manner, resulting in it being easier to hack their streams and control channels using modern computers on the ground.

      • Re:Windows 95? (Score:5, Insightful)

        by postbigbang ( 761081 ) on Monday April 23, 2018 @02:22PM (#56489829)

        One might imagine that there are satellites looking down at the earth for sources of interesting, space-beamed transmissions, and their content. There are a lot of monitoring dishes up there these days, pointing directly at that person with a yagi antenna spewing iterations of hack attempts. Then there's a knock at your door.

        I'll imagine if you try and hack GPS and other high-value assets, you're not only being watched but by people that play for keeps.

        Go ahead. Make some analyst's day.

        • You'd be right, except the part that kind of assumes that it is the back yard Yagi pointing enthusiast and not the State sponsored bad actor in places hard to reach by normal "people that play for keeps".

        • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

          by Anonymous Coward
          Didn't you RTFA? They have IP addresses that can be spoofed. That means you don't need an antenna, you just need to connect to the space Internet with your space computer wearing your space pants.

    • Imagine you use something like a mouse to remote control a satellite that you are interfacing with with something like RDP ... oh the jitter!

  • Have real doubts about this. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by forkfail ( 228161 ) on Monday April 23, 2018 @01:58PM (#56489645)

    NT I Could See

    Back in the day, NT was actually a pretty good OS, and used in a number of mission critical applications. (Including some I worked on.)

    But... 95? Really?

    That was certainly not MILSPEC approved for that sort of thing. And NASA had even tighter requirements and a higher specification bar.

    I really suspect that the author has their facts a bit scrambled.

  • As some are having their BSOD

    • Windows 95 didn't really have a BSOD. That was (is) an NT thing.

      • I had to use Norton Crashguard to get my Prodigy shows out in 1999... too many people throwing blue screens around back then.

  • I'd be surprised if modern satellites don't have some sort of protection built into them after the legendary HBO Satellite hack that resulted in the words "HBO Sucks" displayed across North America. Jamming is always a possibility with a high powered transmitter although doing so would be the equivalent of putting a giant bulls-eye on your back since it's hard to hide a massive signal. There's also a huge question of why as well. Some of these hacks require some not so trivial equipment so it's sort of h

    • Re:Security / Jamming (Score:5, Informative)

      by Strider- ( 39683 ) on Monday April 23, 2018 @02:14PM (#56489777)

      Naw, the vast majority of commercial communications satellites are still dumb bent-pipe repeaters. There's no security on them, save for nulling antennas and similar techniques.

      I used to work for a company that built flyaway VSAT systems, so I know this stuff pretty intimately. A number of years ago, SES Americom (one of the big operators in North America) called me up for help in locating a wildcat transmitter that was causing interference with one of their birds. They called us because they knew we built stable, small aperture uplink terminals that could be a useful reference. Basically they had me transmit a known narrow-band signal at high power, then used that and my sidelobes as a reference to find the offender. After a weekend of doing doppler locating, they tracked it down to about a 1 x 2 mile ellipse, east of Detroit. Their suspicion was that it was a HughesNet terminal, probably on a gas station, that had gone bad.

      • Re:Security / Jamming (Score:4, Interesting)

        by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 23, 2018 @04:48PM (#56490783)

        I personally integrated many birds for SES, Hispasat, Hughes, NBNco, Echostar, I even retrofitted Terrestar 2 into Echostar 21. Article is BS. Used mostly BAE rad750 processors. subsystems are controlled by MIL-STD-1553 just like your F14 tomcat was initially designed for developed in 1978. Mostly running scripts in either ADA or tcl from ground stations. All their communication is fully encrypted on launch. You could theoretically jam them by blasting the same frequencies, it wouldn't go long undetected.

    • I'd love to be able to dig into this author's source material. There are some fairly strong (possibly FUD) claims in the article, but it's missing the useful details.

      E.g. It claims that end of life satellites out at GEO could be used for mayhem, but that doesn't seem right. EOL satellites at GEO are, by international convention, moved up to a graveyard orbit, the remaining propellant dumped, and the power subsystems turned off. This is done to reduce the amount of harm a software or hardware glitch (exp

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Strider- ( 39683 )

        and the power subsystems turned off.

        Not just turned off, but permanently disabled, typically by deliberately blowing fuses. There is no coming back from it.

    • Depends what you mean with jamming.
      If you send a strong signal to the satellite, it might be disabled to pick up control commands.
      But to jam e.g. GPS, you need to jam the area where the victims are, sending a "flash of energy" to the satellite does not disable it from sending its GPS signals down to earth ... same for TV etc.

      • But to jam e.g. GPS, you need to jam the area where the victims are,

        To jam a GPS receiver, you need to provide a signal to the receiver.

        You CAN jam the uplink to the GPS satellite so it does not get the relevant ephemeris data (corrections to its and other SV's locations and timing), BUT ... the GPS satellites are LEO and will move out of range of your jammer very quickly, and there are other in the visible constellation that can provide the same data.

        Jamming the uplink just isn't a very productive thing to do. Jamming the downlink, however, can cause issues for regiona

        • . the GPS satellites are LEO

          Aren't they in MEO?

          • MEO, LEO, the point is that they aren't sitting still waiting for people to point an antenna at them to jam them.
            • I'd think that measures to prevent that from happening would be reasonably easy to implement - using a strong transmitter on the "official" site for high S/N ratio, using pseudorandom frequency hopping to to increase it even further etc. At least in theory, they *can* be sitting still and yet be unaffected.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by AHuxley ( 892839 )
        The US and NATO love their space command spending. Advance nations have sent in their spies and now have an understanding of how the West mil systems work.
        The more the US and NATO become totally dependant on systems that need a "strong signal to the satellite" the more other advance nations will study that operational weakness.

    • after the legendary HBO Satellite hack that resulted in the words "HBO Sucks" displayed across North America.

      Hacking uplink content on a video distribution satellite is NOT hacking the satellite control system. Not even close.

      There was a story a few years ago about people "hacking" a military satellite system because they found out that it was acting like an open repeater. That, too, is not hacking the satellite control system.

      This summary is crap, the claims are ridiculous, and /. should never have repeated this nonsense. News for nerds, indeed. Hysteria for morons, more like it. "Oh, those awful hackers could

      • Actually, I was told back then that the HBO Hacks was really an authorized publicity stunt... it was first aimed at censoring movies so kids could watch, then was misinterpreted by CBS News... too bad we don't have the CBS Latenight News to correct CBS Evening News anymore.

    • GOODEVENING HBO
      FROM CAPTAIN MIDNIGHT
      $12.95/MONTH ?
      NO WAY !
        [SHOWTIME/MOVIE CHANNEL BEWARE!]

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AHuxley ( 892839 )
      The money was in sending data. Not in having complex systems to encrypt in space. That was power and complexity that can be done on earth. The sat just gets data and moves it. More data, more profit.

  • There has never been a microsoft flight certified any thing.
    And no intel stuff that i know of.

    those birds were designed in the 60s for GPS and more than likely use some version of the IBM AGC for the apollo missions.

  • LAMENESS FILDER XDDDDD (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward

    What do you want to bet that "Caroline Haskins, writing for The Outline" has no idea what hacking is.

    What a terrible article, and by article, I mean Mail Chimp advertisement.

  • I could find no evidence for the claim about Win95 (Score:5, Informative)

    by UnknowingFool ( 672806 ) on Monday April 23, 2018 @02:06PM (#56489723)

    I read the article and while it makes the claim about Win95, it doesn't go into detail about it or support it with facts. I find that claim somewhat incredulous as most satellites would never use a GUI based desktop OS. Maybe some control systems on the ground use Win95 and have ever been updated.

    I would agree with the basic premise that many satellites especially older ones are not hardened against cyber attacks.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by Strider- ( 39683 )

      The actual command/control of the spacecraft themselves is protected by reasonably heavy Cryptography. When a Long March rocket failed in China while launching Intelsat 708, Intelsat failed to recover the cryptographic equipment from the wreckage, despite significant risks taken by their crew.

      • Modern satellites may be hardened against modern cyber attacks but the ones in orbit for decades might not be.

        • Re: (Score:3)

          by Strider- ( 39683 )

          The Intelsat 708 launch failure occurred in 1996. Typical lifespan for a geostationary satellite is approximately 15 years, before they're moved to a graveyard orbit and rendered inert.

          For the most part, the TT&C (Tracking Telemetry and Control) codes for managing the spacecraft themselves has always been a closely guarded secret, and one fo the things that is subject to ITAR controls, due to the cryptography involved.

          That said, there have been at least one incident where sabotage of the satellite was s

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by AHuxley ( 892839 )
          Re "but the ones in orbit for decades might not be."
          Its the way the NSA thought.
          It was better to collect data in space for the NSA and have the speed of cheaper communications for the USA.
          Why risk communications in space getting crypto that could fail or not work over many years stuck in every sat?
          Thats a lot of extra work for the communications network in space. Encrypt end to end and pass the secure data from via a low cost communications sat network.
          That allowed the US a place many new advanced

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by clovis ( 4684 )

      Maybe someone googled for "what operating system runs on old satellites" and didn't realize that the Satellite made by Toshiba is a laptop, not an actual Earth orbiting device.

      I, too, do not believe that any satellite is running Windows 95. To say the least, Win95 has not been optimized for power efficiency or running on resource-poor radiation hardened microprocessors, memory and support chips. Considering the Win95 is just a gui on top of MSDOS, running just MSDOS would make far more sense than Win95. Who

      • Furthermore, Windows 95 has a timer wraparound bug that causes a crash every 49.7 days, and that bug wasn't found until the early 2000's

        Bullshit. This bug was known in the 1990's.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by clovis ( 4684 )

          That's interesting. I would like to see some evidence.

          • How would you expect to see evidence? Unfortunately, things from the 90's are primarily aged off the internet. I mean, I doubt a major paper (the only things I can think of still stretching back that far) covered it.

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by clovis ( 4684 )

              Found it! Q216641
              On the wayback machine:
              http://support.microsoft.com/s... [microsoft.com]

              It's from May 1999, but I think the bug was found in February.
              That does indeed count as being in the 1990's. I suppose it didn't get into popular press until after y2k because, well y2k.
              I used to do back-end Win95 support for Microsoft (among other things), but had quit before 1999, so that's my excuse for thinking it came out after y2k.

  • The SKY IS FALLING.... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by bobbied ( 2522392 ) on Monday April 23, 2018 @02:10PM (#56489755)

    Literally... Chicken little has confirmed it!

    Um... Yea, a lot of stuff is POSSIBLE, but the question really is about how practical it is. What's the actual level of risk? Pretty low.

    These things are expensive. Older satellites might be vulnerable to exploits launched from the Web, but I've got to believe that such "over the web" control systems are quite well protected and monitored. Disrupting over the AIR (I.E. RF links) are going to require specialized equipment and some specialized knowledge about what you are doing (not all satellites use the same control uplink frequencies), and actually taking CONTROL is like to require insider knowledge of expected modulation techniques, telemetry formats, encryption keys and a lot of other things.

    There are a lot of places that have the uplink equipment, though it's not that long of a list and most of that equipment is already being used for commercial applications. An uplink setup is prohibitively expensive for an individual to build and commercial companies that own them like to keep track of when they are used. You could possibly arrange to use one by stealing a mobile unit or breaking into one and using it, but you will get discovered pretty quick.

    All this to say, Disruption is easy, so doing a denial of service attack is pretty high risk, you just need to access the right equipment. DOS attacks (and uplink mistakes) happen all the time now. Taking control? Not very likely, very low risk. State actors might have the resources, but apart from that, it's not going to be worth the effort and costs.

    • Um... Yea, a lot of stuff is POSSIBLE, but the question really is about how practical it is. What's the actual level of risk? Pretty low.

      I disagree because any nation-states would love to have some free satellites under their control, especially if they can spy on other people who do use it. Russia in particular has been known to use hacked sats to try and mask the origin of their hack attacks.

      An uplink setup is prohibitively expensive for an individual to build...

      but not a nation-state!

      State actors might have the resources, but apart from that, it's not going to be worth the effort and costs.

      Poppycock! A private sat would be awesome!

      • Whoosh.. ... I'm sorry... I think I pretty much *said* that a country might have the resources to do this... But I'd like to point out one pretty important aspect of somebody trying something like this....

        Hijacking another nation state's space assets would be darn close to an act of war. At the very least this would be akin to a navy boarding a foreign flagged ship by force in the open ocean or running a blockade if you do an DOS attack. You might not start a war, but you are taking the risk and will s

        • LOL @ starting a war.

          They hack commercial satellites and there are lots of them, nimrod.

          • LOL @ starting a war.

            They hack commercial satellites and there are lots of them, nimrod.

            Nation states hijack commercial satellites? Citation please?

            Such activity by a foreign power would be generally the same as hijacking a commercial vessel on the open sea. You might get away with it, but do it enough and the originating country is going to get upset with you..

    • Regardless of if they run win95 (they don't) and anything else said in this article, not like many of these things would be dangerous if deorbited anyway. What % of the sats up there could survive reentry and hit a target? Gonna bet it's near zero.

      Probably are gonna have to start worrying about such things now that launches are getting cheaper and faster cadence. Get some heavy tungsten rods into orbit and you would basically have a weapon in the nuclear class of power without any of the downsides of nuc

  • Probably just ground control stations use Win95 (Score:5, Informative)

    by bigmacx ( 135216 ) on Monday April 23, 2018 @02:20PM (#56489819)

    There's noo way some satellite up there is actually running Windows 95 for anything on the the satellite hardware itself. I'm not believing that.

    But I will believe there might be ground control workstations running Windows 95 for some function due to having custom software developed on it or a hardware device/card that cannot be moved to a newer version of Windows.

    I know of all kinds of customer sites with Win95 workstations still in use. These are for specialized applications like manufacturing machine control or scientific test tools. They either keep them completely off the network and block all USB ports, etc, OR they use a very discrete localized network.

    • Of course, youâ(TM)re right. The satellites we are talking of are not running on x86, and are certainly not using Windows 95. In fact, on a lot of them, there isnâ(TM)t any ÂÂoperating systemÂÂ layer. And on the others, youâ(TM)re more likely to find an RTOS running on PPC or SPARC. As you said, the article writer probably mistook the operating systems running on the ground support equipement and command/control stations rather than the satellite itself. Nevertheless, if t

    • . They either keep them completely off the network and block all USB ports, etc, OR they use a very discrete localized network.

      That's overkill. Windows 95 doesn't support USB.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by labnet ( 457441 )

      Yup. We have SMD robots still running Windows NT and 95 and indeed they sit on their own subnet with only access one firewall route to a file share.

  • Sounds like an arsonist's wet dream.

    Sad consequence of the Get It Up / Get It Out / Get It Sold NOW mentality, with no foresight about security.

  • And here I thought forks were just a wonderful modern invention.

  • Really? (Score:3)

    by FaxeTheCat ( 1394763 ) on Monday April 23, 2018 @02:37PM (#56489919)
    I browsed the article, and there are no actual facts to support the claim that hacking a satelite is surprisingly easy. None.

    The claim that they run Windows 95 is not supported at all. A quick google revealed that most of the older satelites did not have a traditional operating system at all.

    The whole article looks mostlly like clickbait, written by somebody with little knowledge of computers and even less about satelites.

  • "If a satellite doesn't work, life-saving GPS or online information could be withheld to people on earth when they need it most."

    If our GPS satellites are that easily hacked (to say nothing of them running on Win95 - seriously?) then we'd deserve that.

    To say which: no, I think a big chunk of the OP is a) wrong, b) getting into histrionics over what they IMAGINE might happen in their wildest dreams.

    • If our GPS satellites are that easily hacked (to say nothing of them running on Win95 - seriously?) then we'd deserve that.

      If ours are that easily hacked, then you can bet that the Russian's GLONASS and China's BDS are not, nor will the EU Galileo (here [wikipedia.org]) be so easy. Modern GPSs compare results and know when to throw out an SV when it gives stupid answers. If you have a GPS, then update to GNSS and be safe. It costs more than a tinfoil hat, but you can sleep peacefully knowing that your location will be well known.

      Breaking news: give hackers unlimited access to 25 voting machines and they will hack into all of them. Bruce Schen

      • GPS already is known to have government confusers installed... it'll lie to you or give no answer when instructed to by the military. This was deployed in Massachusetts during the ABC News' Bob Woodruff bomb scares.

        • GPS already is known to have government confusers installed...

          Paranoia is strong in this one. Selective availability was turned off a very long time ago (May, 2000), because so many services had come to depend on GPS. It doesn't lie to you, it provides an answer with reduced accuracy.

          This was deployed in Massachusetts during the ABC News' Bob Woodruff bomb scares.

          Bob Woodruff was injured by a roadside bomb in Iraq in 2006, not Massachusetts, which had nothing to do with GPS at all. SA is not applied to a state, it is a system-wide (global) effect of a small dithering of the data stream.

          The reason SA was turned off is because it is very easy to

          • Haha. Until I read your reply, I thought he was making a joke, and government confusers were dumb and misinformed government employees dispersing highly dumb things verbally (like msmash). I didn't realize what was meant until your reply and was talking about precision.
  • So the idea of uploading a virus to the satellite as the climax of a movie came from a real life satellite operator! Is that true?
  • Satellite control systems are meant to be able to reload the entire program memory of the satellite, bypassing any ROM that might be in the satellite if necessary, because things tend to fail under radiation. This means relatively small-scale logic to load ROM from an all-hardware modem and reset the CPU. This is done using a radio command with relatively simple encryption - cubesats often use EOR with a constant. The processors are silicon-on-insulator (because it is resistant to radiation-induced latch-up

  • "A malicious actor could fake their IP address, which gives information about a user's computer and its location."

    Nope. Not even remotely accurate.

  • I can't imagine in my wildest shitty dreams that any satellite is running Windows 95.
    One could argue that satellite are running operating systems that were developed in the same era as W95.
    So exactly what radiation hardened CPU would be running W95?

    Satellites are running realtime hardened operating systems (such as vxworks or rodos) that have very well defined modes of operation. Literally nothing I said in that last sentence would apply to windows 95.

    Now granted, could some of these operating systems harbo

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by kenh ( 9056 )

      Why can't satellites be running Windows? Wall-E the robot ran Mac OS? /LOL

  • A malicious actor could fake their IP address, which gives information about a user's computer and its location.

    What? IP Spoofing is something new to be afraid of, and somehow opens mystical doors into satellite control systems? No. I can set my computer's IP address to the same IP address as the workstation controlling a satellite, but that doesn't in any way afford me the ability to tap into the control stream for sattelites.

    This person could then get access to the satellite's computer system, and manipulate where the satellite goes or what it does.

    How? It doesn't just "happen", it's not like when the robbers go into a bathroom with a palmtop computer and a cord with two alligator clips and by carefully peel back the outer cover on CCTV c

    • IP spoofing will get you exactly fucking nowhere, because the command/TLM link doesn't use IP protocols, or anything like them, even for commercial satellites.

            TFS is the biggest pile of bullshit I have seen in a very long time, and the TFA is even worse. It is far beyond merely ridiculous.

                Brett

  • No, no it isn't, any you have proven you have No Earthly Idea what you are talking about, put your pencil down and go home.

  • ... hacked into the Slashdot uplink and injected a stream of bullshit.

  • Meh (Score:2)

    by Greyfox ( 87712 )
    All the ones I looked at used some form of encryption (I saw a lot of One Time Pad ones) for their control channels. I don't think someone's going to drop $100M on getting a satellite to orbit without putting decent security on it.

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