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Crackers Reportedly take Brit Mil Satellite 158

Posted by Hemos from the isn't-this-goldeneye dept.
Xmas writes "Early breaking news? British officials report the seizing of a "military" satellite and a subsequent demand for money. At least the British government can admit to being cracked... and blackmailed...even if it took them two weeks to release the story. " The news story has no comment from the British Ministry of Defense, while Police refused to comment because of the sensitivty at this stage of the game. What is known is that the Brits have 4 such satellites, and the crackers reportedly "altered its course". I'll be watching to see if anything more develops with this-like more then an anonymous cow...er-source is cited.
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Crackers Reportedly take Brit Mil Satellite More

Crackers Reportedly take Brit Mil Satellite

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  • I bet it was some renegade Iraq cracker. Sadam probably is paying people per satalite cracked
  • So I see M$ has reassigned people from inserting backdoors in code on Linux FTP sites..

    :P

  • Let me guess, you work for the British military?
  • Uhh, check up on your facts a bit. The American Revolution did not consist of a tea-dumping party and a quick peace treaty. Americans shot and killed many British soldiers, whose lives could not be replaced.
  • There has been some documented examples of people who "hacked" sattelites since the 80s, but usually they were folks who figured out how to use them to retransmit their signals - kind of an over-the-top ham radio operator. These guys would tune to the edge of an uplink channel and send morse code, which would then get retransmitted back down. That sort of thing wouldn't obviously involve taking control of the satellite, but just using it's intended operation to their advantage.


    I was under the impression that the control channels for satellites was heavily encrypted, and the gvmnt/military satellites would be the most heavily encrypted of all. If it turns out that some independent individual did take control of a gvmnt satellite, without inside knowledge, then this speaks very poorly to the designers and the gvmnt officals who let this design go through.


    Note: I presume that since Great Britain and the US are such great good friends, Britain would have access to at least mid-level U.S. encryption technology, possibly with a back door for the US spy agencies.

  • 1) Where is the high-powered uplink facility?
    and
    3) How did you afford your own high-powered uplink facility?

    It's not that hard to do. There's a ham in Texas who has an amazingly high-powered system in his back yard, used primarily for moon-bounce communications. NASA occasionally comes over to hook up to it to communicate with satellites if the satellite's antenna has lost track (the system is so high-powered that the satellite can receive it even if the antenna is not pointed at the earth). This ham built his rig entirely privately. If he can do it, others can. And, it wouldn't have to be as big.

    4) With your fancy new high-powered uplink facility, how did you break the encryption and the access codes required to repurpose the satellite? How did you find the coordinates of is current location?

    The coordinates are easy - the vast majority are published. The encryption is tougher - thus my note relatively early on in this topic.

    The rest of your note is ad hominem attack, and not worthy of response.

  • Very few satellites "move on their own" (outside of their normal orbital motion), due to limited fuel on board. Once in orbit, they pretty much stay in the same orbits they start in.

    And, there are published orbits for nearly every satellite, not just the geosynchronous ones. Take a look here [nasa.gov] and click on the OIG Main Page link at the bottom of the page.

    Yes, it's reasonable to expect that secret satellites would not have their orbits published, certainly by the launching government and those friendly to them. However, there are other governments capable of figuring out the orbits and publishing them.

  • Actually, the girl's crypto thing was/is valid (though it needs more time for proper peer review).
  • So... I didn't see anything about Wasseignar in the mainstream media. Does that mean it didn't happen?

    Okay, maybe that wasn't the best of examples -- nonetheless, tons of stuff goes on that the mainstream media just never picks up on.

  • Not OK! (Score:1)

    by Matts ( 1628 )
    You've got me totally wrong (and I don't know how - I re-read what I wrote) - I think this is totally totally wrong. Terrorism is evil - I've lived right in it - I used to do a lot of living on army camps - and believe me, that can be very scary.

    Matt.
    --
  • Nah. Their deaths will be faked and they will be forced to work as slaves for the British spooks until their minds are little better than mush. Then they will be paraded before the world as an example of what happens to those who mess with the big bad UK.
  • And without a trial...how do you know they're a terrorist? (heck, how do you know that with a trial?) Barring exceptional circumstances (like if they wanted to be caught..)

    Daniel

  • For some time now, U.S. mass-media, politicians and intelligence agencies have been crying wolf about "cyber-terrorism", even though no real-world examples existed. Now we have one. Expect our "electronic freedoms" to be even more serverely curtailed very soon.

    This inane security blunder will be bad for all of us. Likely these comm-satellites have lower security than other military systems, but that won't make it to press.

    Expect "Cyber-Space-Terrorism" on 60 Minutes and all of the other "edu-tainment" shows. The question of the month will be:

    "What if this happened to a weapons platform? I'm scared!"
    And the answer will likely be:

    "We must crack down on these computer nerd types. There is too much freedom on the internet. Encryption is a powerful weapon used (by evil men) to elude (warm-n-fuzzy) officials. We need sniffers everywhere."

    Hold on to your seats, we're in for a rough ride.

  • Aren't most of the Caribbean anonymous banking havens British colonies?
  • Russia has a LOT of ex-KGB types, crypto specialists, crackers, &c., who haven't been paid for ages. It also has ruthless organised criminals with lots of ambition, the kind of bare-faced audacity that comes from thriving in anarchy and enough money to hire said spooks. This could be some Russian mafia group's idea of a "nice little earner".
  • Britain is not the US. I very much doubt that Britain could hypothetically get away with lobbing cruise missiles at, say, Libya, if Tony Blair was caught in a sex scandal. China is probably the only other nation that would have that amount of clout right now.
  • The American Revolution wasn't about "high taxes", it was about taxation without representation. Taxes weren't the only grievence, either. Basically, the colonists were fighting for their right of self-determination. The colonies were considered by the Brits to be under the authority of King George, and the colonists, who were supposedly British citizens, were not given any representation in Parliment. Yet this same Parliment passed many a law about the colonies.

    Let's get our facts straight, please.
  • The mere fact that none of you ever heard anything about the World Trade Center bombing or the Oklahoma City federal building bombing or the embassy bombings in Africa should be sufficient evidence of how successfully the U.S. disinformation campaign keeps us in the dark.
    But seriously folks, I suspect the ones you don't hear about are where the authorities find out about in advance and prevent terrorist activities and don't publicize it to prevent revealing techniques and sources as well as avoid giving the bad guys free publicity or giving anybody else any ideas.

  • Oh man, this fscking killed me, now I just wonder what the hell the command does... =)
  • First of all there are many 'grades' of military communications from secure to not so secure. It's not clear what kind of communications grade they're talking about here. Could be a satellite that supports the movement of pencils from one warehouse to another. Second - gov'ts do not go public with this stuff unless it is in their interest to do so. For example if it is already known that some communications are not secure and/or then eventually it behooves them to announce that fact in lieu of having to explain which coomunications are still secure and why. By analogy in the US, stealth aviation projects were black until it became obvious that a)there was political gain in going public and, b)they probably were not the latest generation.

  • No, I didn't do it. How dare CmdrTaco disgrace the name of the Anonymous Cow?!?
  • I wonder if it was SPECTRE?
  • I think that's *KAOS*.....and I always had the hots for Agent 99.
  • I prefer to believe that someone in the British government will have the sand to try them in public, although I am enjoying wondering just how smart the cracker-dudes will feen when a commando team blows the door and hauls them away to possibly face a firing squad if convicted.

    If handled right, this case could have a salutary chilling effect on such shenanigans worldwide even if the perp.s only get prison time. I think I'm glad that someone finally pulled a stunt big enough to get slapped down HARD.
  • /bin/laden

    Bwa-hahaha. =:) That was great.

    Now just what the heck would that program do? Oh, the possibilities!
  • Most media reports today quote the British military as saying that this kind of "taking over" of a satellite just can't be done. Just like the girl who "invented" a new form of cryptography, the facts in this case are missing once more. If you were the "crackers" in this case, answer these questions for us.

    1) Where is the high-powered uplink facility?

    2) How did you "break into" an air gap-protected uplink facility?

    3) How did you afford your own high-powered uplink facility?

    4) With your fancy new high-powered uplink facility, how did you break the encryption and the access codes required to repurpose the satellite? How did you find the coordinates of is current location?

    5) Do you really think the British military is this stupid?

    6) Have you been watching Superman and James Bond films too many times?

    7) Do your friends call you "Captain Midnight?"

    We're waiting.

    Kris

    Kriston J. Rehberg
    http://kriston.net/ [kriston.net]

  • ... what an 3L33T Beowulf cluster -

    - "Sir, beowulf spoof detected. Setting coordinates. Reentry of bird at coordinates in two minutes."
  • a little more palatable. Imagine someone seizing
    control of a rail gun equipped warbird? *shudder*

    As far as the whole "Hacker vs Spy" argument, who says it couldn't be a team effort? Ever read 'The Snowman & the Falcon'?

    This should be an interesting story to watch, and if true, a really good argument for stronger crypto.

    ~Grell

    "Most armies are in fact run by their sergeants -- the officers are there
    just to give things a bit of tone and prevent warfare becoming a mere lower-class
    brawl." -- Terry Pratchett
  • Does too exist.

    Try your local bookstore. Publisher is O'Reilly

  • Excuse me, but last time I looked, blackmail, extorition, kidnapping, and murder are a piss-poor substituted for a political revolution. Killing/injuring people to make a "statement" is inane (and immoral), not to mention highly hypocritical.

    There is a huge difference between those willing to stand up for their ideals, speak up, and put themselves at personal risk while attempting to change a political system, and those who advocate violence in the name of "progress" (ie, if you don't agree with me, well, Death To You).

    If you can't see the difference between the students of Tiannamin Square and the IRA, or the American Revolution and the Reign of Terror, I feel sorry for you. But I won't feel sympathy when a grinning "freedom fighter" parks a U-Haul full of chemicals outside your place of employ.

    -------------

    and lest we forget, the last moron to do the above in these parts was an "american". :-/

    -------------

    "How do you have patience for people who claim they love America, but clearly can't stand Americans?" - Annette Bening in The American President

    -Erik

  • This remind me of some stuff that cDc (www.cultdeadcow.com) pulled during the 80's. I've heard numverous stories of them moving sats around in orbit. Although the coolest hack they'e pulled is seizing control of NASA's climate control and playing with the temperature controls at mission control.

    Hey! The space shuttle had linux on board once. But it runs some version of DOS for itself I think.

    I would not be surprised if there have been earlier incidents like this but between legitimate govs. I mean you can bet the USSR and the US tried this during the Cold War. It would be cool if hackers used their skills to take out military equipment of repressive governments as political protest.

    xm@GeekMafia.dynip.com [http://GeekMafia.dynip.com/]
  • Beg pardon? The UK's not politically stable you say! What planet are you living on exactly? I've been living in the UK for 36 years and I can tell you _nothing_ ever changes here. It's one of the most conservative, backward-looking nations on the planet, even more so than the US in many respects.
    Heaven knows what your definition of stability is.
  • Blowfish is american
    http://www.counterpane.com/
  • There are a large number of non-military satellites that do not have encrypted command links.

    Sending a command to a satellite requires an expensive transmitter and antenna, knowledge of the frequency, modulation and encoding used for the command uplink, and a list of the commands for that satellite.

    Commands are usually sent in the form of binary numbers. For example, 1101000110101111 could mean "switch on transponder #2". Without a list of the command codes and their associated actions, it would be difficult to harm the satellite.

    I would expect any military satellites to use encrypted commands. Their designers are paid to be paranoid about well-funded and technically sophisticated "bad guys" who may try to shutdown or destroy the satellite.
  • There are two reasons for not using encryption.

    One, it adds additional hardware to the command decoder, increasing its complexity and the probability that it will fail. Satellite engineers like to keep things as simple as possible.

    Two, there may be diplomatic/political reasons that encryption can't be used if you use ground stations in other countries to uplink commands. Some countries will not allow encryption to be used for uplinked commands.

    In all of the cases that I have heard of where a satellite was disabled by external commanding, it was due to mistakes made by the engineers and controllers in the satellite control center, not by "hackers".

  • hackers and other assorted freedom folks??

    Since when has cracking had anything to do with freedom? Your freedom to transmit packets stops at my firewall. My freedom to throw a punch stops at your nose. Cracking is illegal, antisocial, childish, and in this case dangerous.

    If this is actually true, God help those responsible. British security forces may not be as ruthless as their US or Israeli counterparts, but they are efficient enough. This is an act of war, and Britain hasn't lost a war for a very long time.

  • Yeah, it wasn't me either. (Not that I could anyway)

    :-)

  • Yeah, it's seriously silly that their nuclear defense depends on a satellite that 'a bunch of hackers' can hi-jack.. Blame the hackers? 'Oh mommy them evil people took my nukes, can I please have them back?'.. Reminds me of the Swedish armed forces and their oh so great IT projects, they used Microsoft Excel as a database for the USD 50 M strategic control system!!

    Any army that wants to hire a fire-breathing self-proclaimed security and IT specialist (hacker)? I'm also well skilled in the military prerequisites (shoe polishing and other such activities) and I know how to roll a beret...

    If they had hi-jacked one of the British subs that actually carry nukes I'd be afraid, but this just makes it a bit harder for them to retaliate (or start) nuclear attacks.

    Them being British, will it be shown that they got some secret codes by blackmailing the right guy with inappropriate pictures? ;-)

    Has it ever occurred to you that God might be a committee?
  • I can assure you that the project was not using Excel, but MS Access. But that project isn't ready or in use right now. (Well neither is acceptable but.. )

    And it was supposed to be ready '96 if memory serves, when will it be... And wasn't there another wonderful project that came to nothing after about as much money and as bad components?! I remember laughing and crying at the same time when I read "My honour as a consultant forbids me to stay on this project".... I'm a taxpayer and they're squandering MY money!!

    Anyhow the swedes have quite cool military systems, but I can't speek about that here =)

    Oh, JAS is actually good. It crashes less than other models, but at the most inappropriate times ;-) And we all know that they write the best manuals available!

    However, the Swedish military's IT strategy is the worst fsckup I've ever witnessed, makes me want to puke.. Like when Major "lets keep the schmeghead anonymous" boasts about having paid USD 50 M or so for access to MS Win NT 4 source... GAHH!!

    They kept bwz as a slave for ten months, He's got bones to pick ;-) ;-)


    Has it ever occurred to you that God might be a committee?

  • SORRY!!! (Score:1)

    by bwz ( 13374 )
    I'M AN IDIOT WHOM DOESN'T 'Preview'!!!

    This link is hopefully better :-/

    at amazon [amazon.com]
    Has it ever occurred to you that God might be a committee?
  • As much as I hate to say it. I agree with you. While I'm very opposed to the death penalty, I think some people just have no right to breath the same air as the rest of us. Not to mention Terrorism almost never works. More often than not it just pisses more people off than promoting your cause. Now when your cause is a purely selfish one, like demanding money, it really doesn't hurt the cause any, but I still think these people should have a nice big old bullet in their heads. Now if it was some kid in his bedroom and just did it to prove it could be done, I think that he should be hired to help them fix the problem.
  • Throwing tea into a harbour is one thing. Blowing up buildings with people inside is 100% different. You can replace the tea. Try replacing a human life.
  • Using access as a military database, that's good. "I'm sorry sir, we can't launch the missiles. Why not? Well it seems MS Access corrupted the launch codes. We can still throw rocks at the enemy." Makes you feel secure.
  • Easily broken encryption has never been a benefit for law enforcement agencies, it has only been a benefit for criminals. Now we have direct evidence of this slapping us in the face. I hope legislative bodies are paying attention to this and are intelligent enough to make the right connection. It's not about government versus computer experts, it's about security versus public access to anyone.
  • Well, it would have been much more easier.

    Why? Simply because the coordinates of those sats
    are well known, and I guess that the control
    channel of those babies are a lot less encrypted than their military counterparts.

    And there's a lot of money to gain there too, for the one who controls the information owns the truth !
  • "After all, the only terrorist attack within the United States I can remember hearing about is the Unabomber. Considering how unpopular America is in some parts of the world, that seems a bit suspect."

    I guess you slept right through the Oklahoma Federal building and the World Trade center bombings?
  • The US aren't alone in having strong crypto. Blowfish, for starters are Swiss as far as I know.
    (though it's still illegal to export American products using blowfish to switzerland - go figure)

  • I really hope this is a joke. Why do we need satellites? Why do *you* need satellites? Why does anyone need em. And anyway, you yanks have to rent space in the Russian Mir.

    Avoiding a flame sesh, every country when given the option whether to have a satellite or not is going to choose to have it, plus, the takeover isn't exactly headlining around the world, leading to the thought that perhaps this story is a little exaggerated.
    --Remove SPAM from my address to mail me
  • The best new/used bookstore on the planet, Powell's Books [powells.com] has 9 copies in stock. Just search on the home page for "Cracking DES".
    Here's the info.

    Cracking Des Secrets Of Encryption Resea
    by GILMORE, JOHN
    Published by OREILLY & ASSOC INC (1565925203, 1998)
    Section: Networking-Computer Security [powells.com]
    In Stock: 9 at 29.95
    Trade paper; New - Standard Condition; Location: Technical
    Bibliographic Information [powells.com]

  • the American revolutionaries published succint statements (eg, Declaration of Indep) of their grievences. may I see a succint stmt of the IRA's grievences with current British practices?
  • okay. someone call me when you're all done blowing yourselves up for no apparent reason.


    ElecMoHwk

  • Trust me, I'm British, the "Brit disinformation society" could find it's arse with both hands and a map.

  • Anyone got a spare tin helmet?

    Those things way upwards of a ton and WONT burn up entirely on re-entry...

    Oh, and the power source is often nuclear :-(
  • Having looked around on the major news networks, I can't see any mention of spy satellites being hijacked.

    This is all a load of bollocks, and it says more about /. readers than anything else.

    * /. readers are all a load of loopy, paranoid Americans who think they know all there is to know about any other country's business.

    Why on Earth would anyone bother to hijack a UK spy sat, when US ones are much better? Hell, I didn't even know we had any spy satellites and I bloody live here!

    Oh, and mind your own bloody business about Northern Ireland. That's nobody's business but ours and the Irish (and the people who live in Ulster, of course).

    Sodding Americans are useless at foreign policy. Look at Vietnam, current problems in China, Iraq, Israel, etc. You're not even any good at shooting people, and you've got more guns than anyone else - you always end up shooting yourselves in 'friendly fire' incidents.

    Come and have a go if you think you're hard enough.
  • The BBC has run an article [bbc.co.uk] on this. Basically they're saying it's very unlikely that the story's true. The Ministry of Defense are also denying it for what that's worth

    Interestingly they confirm that the blackmail attempts did happen and are being investigated - but by the Fraud Squad.

    Personally I never found it terribly convincing. If it did happen it would probably have to be an inside job, and certainly not the evil-hackers-on-the-internet story that was implied.

  • The leaked story is patently untrue. This could be a complete hoax based on an old James Bond novel or it could be something else, but it is not a story about greedy hackers. Breaking into a military satellite's "command and control" functionality would involve by necessity confidential information residing with government or contractors. This is a case of stolen intelligence if it is a case at all.

    Would a hacker be able to hack his way into a sophisticated military satellite without the aid of inside information of any sort, I doubt it. Even a small organization of hackers working on the various problem would most likely never succeed. If they were to succeed they would have to possess intelligence in excess of that which would be necessary to believe they could publicly blackmail the British Government and get away with it.

    If not hackers, then whom to suspect. Foreign intelligence services if in possession of such information would be better served by selling or trading in such matters or keeping quiet until such time as it was in their vital national interest to use the information such as thwarting an important British operation or in an attack on Britain.

    The most likely, aside from hoax, perpetrators are Britons and/or Americans interested in destabilizing the British government. MI5 and MI6 like the FBI, NSA, and CIA as well as the respective intelligence agencies of military organizations all posses divisions with the capability of involving themselves in this kind of operation. We still do not know who produced the "Squid gee" tapes which exposed "degraded" Royal behavior.

    The Blair administration like the Clinton administration in this country seems to lead a "charmed" existence. What, where, and how that "charm" exists is unclear to the public, and the public does not focus on that "charm". It is quite likely that in some agency their are those with some knowledge of the charm and some who are willing to act.

    Example - US And British Forces are now prepared to actively invade Serbia. We have announced plans to bomb that independent country and occupy a portion of its territory on behalf of a minority which wishes to secede and join another state. Exactly the reverse of our stand in Bosnia. What is our position in Turkey or the Congo. Such a position directly in opposition to the Russian (and to a lesser extent Chinese) would seem outlandish on a risk reward basis. What are the Governments doing. Are they deliberately trying to destabilize Russia which will be humiliated or forced to act? Some people may have a better insight into what really is happening than those of us on the outside and perhaps we are seeing a shadow cast by a battle we do not fully understand.

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