DEF CON Safe Mode - James Pavur - Whispers Among the Stars

Space is changing. The number of satellites in orbit will increase from around 2,000 today to more than 15,000 by 2030. This briefing provides a practical look at the considerations an attacker may take when targeting satellite broadband communications networks. Using $300 of widely available home television equipment I show that it is possible to intercept deeply sensitive data transmitted on satellite links by some of the world's largest organizations.

The talk follows a series of case studies looking at satellite communications affecting three domains: air, land, and sea. From home satellite broadband customers, to wind farms, to oil tankers and aircraft, I show how satellite eavesdroppers can threaten privacy and communications security. Beyond eavesdropping, I also discuss how, under certain conditions, this inexpensive hardware can be used to hijack active sessions over the satellite link.

The talk concludes by presenting new open source tools we have developed to help researchers seeking to improve satellite communications security and individual satellite customers looking to encrypt their traffic.

The talk assumes no background in satellite communications or cryptography but will be most interesting to researchers interested in tackling further unsolved security challenges in outer space.

[zvnavvw]

Shout out to the DEFCON media team for adding that super-cool interlaced effect, making it super easy to read smaller font and graphs...

[spicybaguette]

"So we were listening to the traffic of this Greek billionaire's megayacht"
That has to be one of the most badass things said at defcon

[eklypzn]

Didn't think I was gonna last the full 45min, but that was extremely interesting

[artiem]

applause -- good presentation backed by very good research!

[AntiProtonBoy]

Pretty good talk. Cheers for putting this together.

[waqs]

What a great presentation. Fascinating!

[LievenHollevoet]

Great content and very clear way of presenting it. Kudo's!

[UBG_Marine]

And the next talk will be titled, "How did the FBI get my paper before I gave it to anyone?"

[NoBug]

Unbelievable.
"Hey your system is really insecure. Here's some proof."
"I'm gonna sue you."

[WalterMelonhead]

Thanks you for the great talk! Very clear!

[sashaecg]

This is great. The low SNR is due to the size of his RX antenna... As you go to higher modulation conditions you need to have a larger dish. 32APSK at 53 Mhz is gonna need a larger dish!

[MCtheMD]

Worth mentioning that the attack at 34:00 has already been done, and indeed found out, by the Epic Turla group.

[Spacefish]

Expected nothing less :). Thanks for the great research!
I also wonder if orbital control commands to the satellite are encrypted / signed.. I guess especially for older satellites, there is only some sort of FEC but no real encryption / signing.. So if you know the protocol, you can potentially de-orbit a satellite / cause some serious trouble, by shutting down systems / power and so on.

[ldstyle]

Bro you are a genius!! Really cool video honestly didn’t know all that was possible

[ZodMagus]

Love how he's using wsl. Pretty dope and easy

[tbbw]

It would have been fun to get a reference time for page load ( 41:29 ) with the encrypted demo so you could tell how many seconds these guys tried to save vs no encryption.

[chetranqui]

Incredible work. Thank you for sharing it with us. :-)

[ctged]

Super low audio. Had to crank volume up to max to hear it from loudspeakers.

[ikedacripps]

Ghana with the advantage for tcp hijacking

[cedricvillani]

just used a simple "Spring Method" instead of a Fast Fourier Transform, and got amazing results