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There 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 reas

by retrac 2y ago

There 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 hook up a really powerful transmitter, aim it in the probe's direction, and start issuing commands. There's no cryptography, of course. The resources required to hijack like that in the 1970s would have been much greater, and I doubt being hacked was much on the designer's minds. The Apollo Program was the same; today anyone with the documentation, a small dish antenna, a software radio, and some nerd dedication, 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. A bit closer to home, there's a tremendous amount of semi-functional orbital junk with a similar lack of security, decades-old computers still waiting for telecommands.

garaetjjte 2y ago
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 https://youtu.be/2Jt0PsxLM7k?t=1732
- Andrex 2y ago
  > mad billionaires. If one of them in particular were to happen upon this HN post, I honestly wouldn't put it past him to try messing with Voyager.
PittleyDunkin 2y ago
> 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
- atoav 2y ago
  You are aware of the historical fact that there was a cold war when these things were designed?
  - PittleyDunkin 2y ago
    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.
    - JumpCrisscross 2y ago
      > what they would gain from fucking with satellites remains unexplained You don’t see what America might have gained if it could de-orbit the USSR’s early-warning satellites at will?
      - seabass-labrax 2y ago
        You might have chosen a bad example, as both sides had many early warning satellites, and such a catastrophic 'failure' in any tactically significant proportion of them would immediately put both sides on high alert. It would be much more valuable to target individual reconnaissance or communications satellites in order to make a 'blind spot' to support a particularly important secret project, but even this scenario would be scarcely credible.
    - 2y ago
cfraenkel 2y ago
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.
Denvercoder9 2y ago
> If amateurs can detect the signal from the Voyager probes with a small dish antenna They can't, at least not for any reasonable definition of small. As I'm writing this, NASA is listening to Voyager using the DSS-14 antenna of the Deep Space Network, a dish with a 70 meter diameter, and the signal it receives is 10^-19 Watt. That's only 15000 photons per second. Coincidentally the area of that 70 meter dish is also roughly 15000 m^2, so a small dish of 1 m^2 will catch roughly 1 photon per second. Given that the datarate is 40 bits/second, it's physically plain impossible to receive the signal with a small dish. Voyager's security is that it's really far away and you need a big, expensive dish to talk with it.
- zamadatix 2y ago
  If 70 m is the diameter, not radius, that area is a factor of 4 too high. Should be more like ~3850 m^2. Still physically impossible at that size but it does make the required size a bit more tenable.
  - dgfitz 2y ago
    For those using freedom units that is about 200ft diameter, or about 31,000 square feet. This works out to roughly 0.7 acres.
    - vdvsvwvwvwvwv 2y ago
      Funny enough the foot was restandardized to .3048m in 1959. So it is a metric-derived unit. Before that it was a feifdom unit, set by kings.
      - dgfitz 2y ago
        Was a tongue-in-check turn-of-phrase. This place is wound tight apparently.
        Brian_K_White 2y ago
        Your tangential remark is ok but anyone else's is wound up too tight. OK.
OJFord 2y ago
It hasn't been suddenly moved in 2024 and nobody knows why, it was left in an inconvenient place (now) decades ago and there's no (found) record of who/why.
emchammer 2y ago
Documentation and logs of the Voyager and Apollo projects are public, comprehensive, and fascinating reading. They do use authentication and keep the keys secret. They are literally rocket scientists.
- dgfitz 2y ago
  I think it’s even more amusing that that, these folks invented rocket science.
- gloflo 2y ago
  Was there authentication right from the beginning or was it patched in later?
  - Kon-Peki 2y ago
    The space communication network was ~15 years old by the time of the Apollo program and under constant expansion to meet needs. For the moon landing, it was a few dozen ground stations all over the world and 2 million miles of cable linking them together. "from the beginning" doesn't really mean much of anything, and the system would need to be pretty sophisticated just to work, even if 100% of the users were operating in good faith 100% of the time.
    - gertop 2y ago
      "from the beginning" means exactly that; did Voyager launch with authentication support or was the authentication added later on?
      - Kon-Peki 2y ago
        Oh man, I thought this was in reference to Apollo, not Voyager! I'd say that it almost certain that by the time Voyager was launched, there would have been robust authentication just out of necessity. By that time they'd have decades of experience dealing with software bugs, to say nothing of bad actors.
- 2y ago
qingcharles 2y ago
These guys "hacked" an entire space probe: https://www.theregister.com/2014/07/07/space_hackers_fire_up_engines_of_long_defunct_isee_spacecraft/ https://www.theregister.com/2014/07/07/space_hackers_fire_up...
mulmen 2y ago
> The Apollo Program was the same; today anyone with the documentation, a small dish antenna, a software radio, and some nerd dedication, 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. Is this right? In a recent curiosmarc video I got the impression the astronauts on board had to enable remote commands. This was frequently done but they did have a cutoff.
- CableNinja 2y ago
  Yeah that was basically the only thing the apollo astronauts had to prevent remote control by anyone. Comms wasnt encrypted or anything, just a simple switch that completed the command circuit. Strangely from that series, iirc, ground commands were "king", meaning if that switch was enabled, whatever ground wanted the ship to do, it did, no matter the input from astronauts
CableNinja 2y ago
CuriousMarc on Youtube has a very large playlist of him and a few others restoring the apollo systems they have been able to get their hands on, and youre absolutely correct on the hacky possibilities. There was no authentication, just lock on and issue commands. They were not only able to restore pretty much everything to a working apollo comms and control system, they were even able to use lab equipment to communicate with apollo outright. I linked the first part of the series. Its a long one but very worth the watch even if you arent into everything they cover. Many sats were and are similar, theres not much security. Newer ones with specific uses are most definitely encrypted. The only real saving grace is that the size of dish/antenna and power you need to do anything with stuff actually in space at long distances is beyond what most people could do (not saying a very dedicated nerd couldnt, look at SaveItForParts for example). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2KSahAoOLdU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2KSahAoOLdU
treflop 2y ago
The US Navy has has a problem with people hijacking their old FLTSATCOM comm satellites as a walkie-talkie. https://www.wired.com/2009/04/fleetcom/ https://www.wired.com/2009/04/fleetcom/

by retrac 2y ago

garaetjjte 2y ago

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 https://youtu.be/2Jt0PsxLM7k?t=1732

Andrex 2y ago
> mad billionaires. If one of them in particular were to happen upon this HN post, I honestly wouldn't put it past him to try messing with Voyager.

PittleyDunkin 2y ago

> 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

atoav 2y ago
You are aware of the historical fact that there was a cold war when these things were designed?
- PittleyDunkin 2y ago
  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.
  - JumpCrisscross 2y ago
    > what they would gain from fucking with satellites remains unexplained You don’t see what America might have gained if it could de-orbit the USSR’s early-warning satellites at will?
    - seabass-labrax 2y ago
      You might have chosen a bad example, as both sides had many early warning satellites, and such a catastrophic 'failure' in any tactically significant proportion of them would immediately put both sides on high alert. It would be much more valuable to target individual reconnaissance or communications satellites in order to make a 'blind spot' to support a particularly important secret project, but even this scenario would be scarcely credible.
  - 2y ago

cfraenkel 2y ago

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.

Denvercoder9 2y ago

> If amateurs can detect the signal from the Voyager probes with a small dish antenna They can't, at least not for any reasonable definition of small. As I'm writing this, NASA is listening to Voyager using the DSS-14 antenna of the Deep Space Network, a dish with a 70 meter diameter, and the signal it receives is 10^-19 Watt. That's only 15000 photons per second. Coincidentally the area of that 70 meter dish is also roughly 15000 m^2, so a small dish of 1 m^2 will catch roughly 1 photon per second. Given that the datarate is 40 bits/second, it's physically plain impossible to receive the signal with a small dish. Voyager's security is that it's really far away and you need a big, expensive dish to talk with it.

zamadatix 2y ago
If 70 m is the diameter, not radius, that area is a factor of 4 too high. Should be more like ~3850 m^2. Still physically impossible at that size but it does make the required size a bit more tenable.
- dgfitz 2y ago
  For those using freedom units that is about 200ft diameter, or about 31,000 square feet. This works out to roughly 0.7 acres.
  - vdvsvwvwvwvwv 2y ago
    Funny enough the foot was restandardized to .3048m in 1959. So it is a metric-derived unit. Before that it was a feifdom unit, set by kings.
    - dgfitz 2y ago
      Was a tongue-in-check turn-of-phrase. This place is wound tight apparently.
      - Brian_K_White 2y ago
        Your tangential remark is ok but anyone else's is wound up too tight. OK.

OJFord 2y ago

It hasn't been suddenly moved in 2024 and nobody knows why, it was left in an inconvenient place (now) decades ago and there's no (found) record of who/why.

emchammer 2y ago

Documentation and logs of the Voyager and Apollo projects are public, comprehensive, and fascinating reading. They do use authentication and keep the keys secret. They are literally rocket scientists.

dgfitz 2y ago
I think it’s even more amusing that that, these folks invented rocket science.
gloflo 2y ago
Was there authentication right from the beginning or was it patched in later?
- Kon-Peki 2y ago
  The space communication network was ~15 years old by the time of the Apollo program and under constant expansion to meet needs. For the moon landing, it was a few dozen ground stations all over the world and 2 million miles of cable linking them together. "from the beginning" doesn't really mean much of anything, and the system would need to be pretty sophisticated just to work, even if 100% of the users were operating in good faith 100% of the time.
  - gertop 2y ago
    "from the beginning" means exactly that; did Voyager launch with authentication support or was the authentication added later on?
    - Kon-Peki 2y ago
      Oh man, I thought this was in reference to Apollo, not Voyager! I'd say that it almost certain that by the time Voyager was launched, there would have been robust authentication just out of necessity. By that time they'd have decades of experience dealing with software bugs, to say nothing of bad actors.
2y ago

qingcharles 2y ago

These guys "hacked" an entire space probe: https://www.theregister.com/2014/07/07/space_hackers_fire_up_engines_of_long_defunct_isee_spacecraft/ https://www.theregister.com/2014/07/07/space_hackers_fire_up...

mulmen 2y ago

> The Apollo Program was the same; today anyone with the documentation, a small dish antenna, a software radio, and some nerd dedication, 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. Is this right? In a recent curiosmarc video I got the impression the astronauts on board had to enable remote commands. This was frequently done but they did have a cutoff.

CableNinja 2y ago
Yeah that was basically the only thing the apollo astronauts had to prevent remote control by anyone. Comms wasnt encrypted or anything, just a simple switch that completed the command circuit. Strangely from that series, iirc, ground commands were "king", meaning if that switch was enabled, whatever ground wanted the ship to do, it did, no matter the input from astronauts

CableNinja 2y ago

CuriousMarc on Youtube has a very large playlist of him and a few others restoring the apollo systems they have been able to get their hands on, and youre absolutely correct on the hacky possibilities. There was no authentication, just lock on and issue commands. They were not only able to restore pretty much everything to a working apollo comms and control system, they were even able to use lab equipment to communicate with apollo outright. I linked the first part of the series. Its a long one but very worth the watch even if you arent into everything they cover. Many sats were and are similar, theres not much security. Newer ones with specific uses are most definitely encrypted. The only real saving grace is that the size of dish/antenna and power you need to do anything with stuff actually in space at long distances is beyond what most people could do (not saying a very dedicated nerd couldnt, look at SaveItForParts for example). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2KSahAoOLdU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2KSahAoOLdU

treflop 2y ago

The US Navy has has a problem with people hijacking their old FLTSATCOM comm satellites as a walkie-talkie. https://www.wired.com/2009/04/fleetcom/ https://www.wired.com/2009/04/fleetcom/