Hacker Cracks Satellite Communications Network

A researcher says he can eavesdrop on -- and even alter -- data flowing through a satellite network operated by Globalstar, which provides communications services and equipment to militaries, oil companies, and many other organizations. “I can say with 100-percent confidence I did inject data back into the network,” Colby Moore, who works for a network security company called Synack, said at the Black Hat cybersecurity conference. Many organizations use Globalstar products to monitor assets in remote locations -- say, equipping a fleet of trucks deep in the wilderness with satellite modems that periodically send their locations and operating conditions back to headquarters.

The modems use the STX3 transmitter chip to send the data up to Globalstar’s orbiting Simplex constellation, where it is sent around the globe and back down to the proper ground station. The STX3 doesn’t encrypt the data before it sends it. For less than $1000, Moore bought a simple software-defined radio system and a few other components to assemble a transceiver that allowed him to sniff the data as it headed into space. He discovered that not only could he read the GPS coordinates that told him exactly where the GlobalStar-equipped assets were, but he was able to add his own fake information to the stream. So far, he’s only been able to hack the uplink, not the downlink, but the data is the same, so stealing from the downlink doesn’t present a particularly tough challenge, he says.