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Can someone explain how are these types of devices safe from hackers? I mean, it talks back to the space agency, right? Just curious is all. Haven't seen anythi

Can someone explain how are these types of devices safe from hackers? I mean, it talks back to the space agency, right? Just curious is all. Haven't seen anything related to this question.

abhishekjha 8y ago
Wouldn’t the spread spectrum help in preventing any kind of interception?
ggm 8y ago
Feels like a state actor risk in the main. I can't think of a state actor without significant volumes of more attackable assets in earth orbit, and that's without considering their options for eg A one time cipher stream or other serious protection of the uplink signal. I doubt it's using open comms and a diginotarencrypt certificate.
Rebelgecko 8y ago
A lot of satellites and probes "back in the day" more or less depended on security through obscurity. You would need to know what frequency (or frequencies) to use, and how to encode the commands. Your ground station also needs a bigass antenna, and a good idea of where to point it. Now most if not all satellites use encryption and/or authentication for command and control, but I wouldn't be surprised if some space programs don't bother. With something like the New Horizons, why waste precious CPU cycles with encryption/decryption when it takes such a tremendous effort to communicate with it. The Deep Space Network costs something upwards of $1,000/hour, and requires huge dishes and lots of land.
- skilled 8y ago
  Awesome, great to know. Didn't know about the DSN so going to read upon that.
  - ohitsdom 8y ago
    For others that might not have seen it, there's a cool live dashboard of the DSN so you can see which spacecraft are currently transmitting: https://eyes.nasa.gov/dsn/dsn.html https://eyes.nasa.gov/dsn/dsn.html
    - stallmanite 8y ago
      Thanks for this link, never heard of this and it’s been fun for my son and I.
- kerng 8y ago
  Probably passwords in clear text in the source code. Like you can find it in most other places too...

Can someone explain how are these types of devices safe from hackers? I mean, it talks back to the space agency, right? Just curious is all. Haven't seen anything related to this question.

abhishekjha 8y ago

Wouldn’t the spread spectrum help in preventing any kind of interception?

ggm 8y ago

Feels like a state actor risk in the main. I can't think of a state actor without significant volumes of more attackable assets in earth orbit, and that's without considering their options for eg A one time cipher stream or other serious protection of the uplink signal. I doubt it's using open comms and a diginotarencrypt certificate.

Rebelgecko 8y ago

A lot of satellites and probes "back in the day" more or less depended on security through obscurity. You would need to know what frequency (or frequencies) to use, and how to encode the commands. Your ground station also needs a bigass antenna, and a good idea of where to point it. Now most if not all satellites use encryption and/or authentication for command and control, but I wouldn't be surprised if some space programs don't bother. With something like the New Horizons, why waste precious CPU cycles with encryption/decryption when it takes such a tremendous effort to communicate with it. The Deep Space Network costs something upwards of $1,000/hour, and requires huge dishes and lots of land.

skilled 8y ago
Awesome, great to know. Didn't know about the DSN so going to read upon that.
- ohitsdom 8y ago
  For others that might not have seen it, there's a cool live dashboard of the DSN so you can see which spacecraft are currently transmitting: https://eyes.nasa.gov/dsn/dsn.html https://eyes.nasa.gov/dsn/dsn.html
  - stallmanite 8y ago
    Thanks for this link, never heard of this and it’s been fun for my son and I.
kerng 8y ago
Probably passwords in clear text in the source code. Like you can find it in most other places too...