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Communications

Russia Launched Ukraine Invasion With Hack of Thousands of Satellite Modems (thehill.com) 43

Posted by BeauHD from the how-it-started dept.
"The Washington Post reports that at the outset of Russia's invasion of Ukraine, Ukrainian military communications, as well as that of customers across Europe, was accomplished by the compromise of tens of thousands of satellite modems provided by Viasat's KA-SAT service," writes longtime Slashdot reader An Ominous Cow Erred. "Viasat is now having to replace the insecure modems for all affected customers. This raises questions about the vulnerability of other broadband services with poorly-maintained firmware on their customer network infrastructure." From the report: Earlier this month, Zhora described the impact of the sabotage as "a really huge loss in communications in the very beginning of war." Dmitri Alperovitch, a cyber expert and chairman of the Silverado Policy Accelerator think tank, said satellite communications "have been used extensively by Ukrainian military not just for command and control of forces but also for tactical missions such as use of drones against Russian armor." Said Alperovitch: "We can't know for sure, but this KA-SAT attack may have had a serious impact on degrading Ukrainian military capabilities at the outset of the war.'' Elon Musk has responded to Slashdot on Twitter, stating that: "Starlink, at least so far, has resisted all hacking & jamming attempts."
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Russia Launched Ukraine Invasion With Hack of Thousands of Satellite Modems More

Russia Launched Ukraine Invasion With Hack of Thousands of Satellite Modems

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  • ...a serious impact... (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    ...and yet Russia has still failed to complete their invasion, which should have taken no more than 3-4 days. Good job, Putin. You're the equivalent of a tryhard cheater who still gets owned. Bravo!

    • And that is why you should never take serious strategic or foreign-policy advice from yes-men.

  • And I hope he will.

  • Ukranian military communications was accomplished by the compromise?

  • Viasat (Score:3)

    by Kelxin ( 3417093 ) on Friday March 25, 2022 @06:22PM (#62390097)
    Viasats security is abysmal, and they run a large portion of the "secured" US government communication including air force one.

    • Viasats security is abysmal, and they run a large portion of the "secured" US government communication including air force one.

      IIRC they also run remote sensors for the CTBT

    • Do you have any evidence for that?

      The modems that were affected in this attack were maintained by a company called SkyLogic that was still responsible for them, even though the property had been acquired by Viasat.

      The Viasat deployed-and-managed modems were not affected by the attack and actually have been operating continuously in Ukraine since 2014.

      • Why would I need evidence of that? I worked there several years ago and know first hand experience about all of the systems that have scripts with hard coded passwords, network management team that doesn't give two shits and management that just wants to keep the status quo to keep their friends working in the same place for 10+ years. Anything that makes it more secure or better to manage is looked at as making things more difficult for their jobs.
  • ID: admin, Password: password

  • The Russian cyberattack also also took out thousands of satellite terminals in other, many in NATO, countries [wired.com].

    Among them were those in the process control network for many of Germany's wind power generators (though the network also had non-satellite links so the windmills are still operating).

    NATO's article five reads:

    The Parties agree that an armed attack against one or more of them in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack against them all and consequently they agree that, if such an armed

    • If not, why is NATO not ALREADY at war with Russia?

      Well, one could easily argue that NATO is already at war with Russia. NATO countries are providing literally billions of dollars of lethal military ordinance directly to Ukraine, and the Ukrainian military seems to be using it to great effect - to the point where Putin is apparently moving the goalposts and saying "just kidding about all that demilitarization and denazification stuff, we were really only trying to secure the Donbas region".

      I'll be surprised if the little spymaster manages to recover from hi

      • If not, why is NATO not ALREADY at war with Russia?

        Well, one could easily argue that NATO is already at war with Russia. NATO countries are providing literally billions of dollars of lethal military ordinance directly to Ukraine, and the Ukrainian military seems to be using it to great effect - to the point where Putin is apparently moving the goalposts and saying "just kidding about all that demilitarization and denazification stuff, we were really only trying to secure the Donbas region".

        I'll be surprised if the little spymaster manages to recover from his Ukrainian debacle. Don't let the door hit you on the way out, Master Putin!

        Even if he stops at Donbas we should certainly not be removing any sanctions. Probably should never be lifted while he is still in power at all, though if he gives back Crimea maybe the world will give him a pass on his coming soon war crimes indictments.

        • Maybe we should tell the Russians that we'll lift all the sanctions one hour after they hand Putin over to the Hague.

          • Seems reasonable.
          • At this point, they should also pay for reparations. But indeed, no sanctions lifted until they have a different government plus a credible path to change any government if the people so wish, and freedom of the press. Let's not forget the last one, else the next leader will soon be quite the same as the old leader...
            • You are delusional

              Russia is not going to be made to pay reparations, and even if they could it would destabilize relations with China with whomever tried to make them.

              Russia is not some lightweight to be pushed around on the world stage.
              • For sure it will be asked to pay reparations. I'm not saying they will pay. But I do think they should and I do think sanctions shouldn't be lifted until they do. And other than having nuclear weapons, the current show off impotence makes clear they are a lightweight on the world stage. They have nukes, oil, gas and minerals, and a GDP that barely surpasses that of Italy. Nukes are the only reason they aren't yet crushed...

  • Let's hope that SpaceX's active measure for security on their Starlink service pans out. They seem to be paying much closer attention than most broadband providers.

  • It was the time Toyota Prius had all those unintended acceleration.

    He did a cool demo, set the car on cruise, at 75 mph. Then used short pushes on the stalk to bump the speed up by 1 mph increments. 76, 77, 78, ... , after 82 mph something crashed, throttle opened wide and the car started accelerating. He knew somehow to cancel and get manual control back. Posted in slashdot why and how.

    Elon responds on twitter. He should post here and try to get +1 insightful

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