Houston, We Could Have a Problem

Zardon

Oct. 11 — A new report from the General Accounting Office cites commercial satellites as possible targets for terrorism and hacking.

The report, presented to a congressional subcommittee, cites computer network intrusion, transmission jamming, and the use of unencrypted data for satellite control and communication as vulnerabilities. The threat of physical attack on a commercial satellite facility also is a possibility.
Now the GAO is suggesting standards and regulations to keep commercial satellites safe.

Commercial satellites are more than tools for entertainment and newsgathering. But the workload of satellites is diverse and growing.

John Pike, director of GlobalSecurity.org says satellites are a serious part of our national well being.

"Cable TV, broadcast TV, inventory control, cellphones, pagers. Just about every facet of the modern information society at some time or another is being transmitted by satellite," Pike says. "They are essential to the modern economy."

And these satellites don't service just the private sector. During Operation Desert Storm, commercial satellites accounted for 45 percent of military communication traffic. More recently, they have helped transmit surveillance data in the war against terror.

Pike says, "Drones used satellites a lot for those unmanned air vehicles flying over Afghanistan. They had to use commercial satellites to get that imagery back to the United States."

The GAO report explains why commercial satellite security needs to be reviewed and upgraded. One of the biggest issues is that control of satellites is performed through unencrypted channels.

Called TT&C (Telemetry Tracking and Control), these commands can be spoofed by an attacker uplinking commands.

The GAO report suggests commercial satellite companies scramble their control signals or spread them across different spectrums to make uplinking a spoofed instruction set more difficult.

The overall recommendation from the GAO is to put the control of commercial satellites under the regulatory control of the U.S. government. By Becky Worley, Tech Live

XSwiftX

Doesn't seem rather odd that they would recommend the government take full control of all space based communication? Would that not fall under the "big brother" conspiracy thing rather neatly?

I would rather not have the government in total control of, and therefore total access to, all of our communication devices. Would make it rather easy for them to listen to everything, or censor everything that passes through those satellites. Not to mention tracking where they originated from.

Remember the movie Enemy Of The State? This would make large parts of that a reality....