"Researchers Used a Decommissioned Satellite to Broadcast Hacker TV"

Security researcher Karl Koscher and his colleagues explored what happens when an old satellite has been decommissioned and transitioned into a graveyard orbit. They were given permission to access and broadcast from a Canadian satellite called Anik F1R, which was set up to support Canadian broadcasters in 2005 and was designed to be used for about 15 years. As the satellite will soon move to its graveyard orbit, nearly all services that use it have already moved to a new satellite. However, the researchers were still able to communicate with the satellite using special access to an uplink license and transponder slot lease. Koscher took over the satellite and broadcasted to the northern hemisphere. He and his colleagues from the Shadytel telecommunications and embedded device hacking group broadcasted a livestream from another security conference. They turned an unidentified commercial uplink facility, which is a station consisting of a special powered dish to communicate with satellites, into a command center in order to broadcast from the satellite. Although the researchers were permitted to access both the uplink facility and the satellite, the experiment highlighted the gray area in which a defunct satellite is no longer being used but has not yet moved to its final resting orbit. Besides independent hacking, the researchers pointed out that the lack of authentication and controls on satellites could allow countries to take over each others' equipment. For example, a state could broadcast propaganda without launching their own satellite as they could hijack another state's satellite if they have the ground equipment. This article continues to discuss the potential use of decommissioned satellites by hackers for their own malicious purposes. 

Wired reports "Researchers Used a Decommissioned Satellite to Broadcast Hacker TV"