China hacked two US satellites in '07 and '08 | Hacker News Reader

China hacked two US satellites in '07 and '08

itworld.com

81 pointsjfruh23 comments

Nothing stays secret forever, so it's probably time to create new satellites with upgraded interfaces. Them's the breaks.

Off-shoring most electronics manufacture in the US is probably a "Battlestar Galactica" size mistake, though. Even if our super-military grade electronics are home grown, where will we get the expertise to continue to make such without a domestic industry?

What country do you think most of the advanced microprocessors are made in? The US has a lot of experience building super-expensive fabs and mass-producing amazingly complex microprocessors, which is why if you look into your computer, you'll notice that your processor was made in the US, not China.

For those that care:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_semiconductor_fabricati...

Nvidia uses TSMC/UMC, AMD uses GlobalFoundries

Thanks for the list. I'm a bit surprised to learn most of these are still in the US. There are quite a few in various Asian countries, though, including China.

I live in Phoenix...

Within biking distance of my house there are fabs for:

ON Semiconductor

Freescale

and

Intel

We make a lot of glass here.

Phoenix and Hillsboro probably do the most volume in the US. I wonder what happened to TI's fabs, though.

The reason that they are so centralised is that it costs a shockingly /huge/ amount of money to build and run a new fab. It makes all sorts of business sense to outsource fabrication, particularly when your own chip production volumes are nowhere near enough to keep fab utilisation at close to full.

As for the super-complex chip argument, I'm not sure I buy it. Sure, Intel (and I hope, IBM) still run their own fabs - they almost have to, given the amount of control they require over the processes. However, all fabless semiconductor companies (by definition :) outsource - and that does include a majority of the chips you encounter in your daily life. Most smartphone processors are made in Taiwan, or somewhere close by.

"In 2007 the Chinese military launched a ballistic missile into orbit to destroy an obsolete Chinese weather satellite. It scared the hell out of NASA because of the sudden cloud of new debris in orbit (which at one point forced astronauts to leave the International Space Station to during one dangerous pass by the debris."

This was by far the more onerous problem. What many folks don't internalize is that there is an interesting balance between being able to be in orbit, and the junk there. Once it exceeds a certain density the existing satellites will become victims to collisions, their debris will add to the junk which will take out all of the rest. One computer model has all of 'low earth' orbit from 100 - 150 miles out being destroyed (including the ISS) with the destruction of as few as 5 satellites. Actually deploying a debris field could render earth orbit unusable with 2 launches. What is worse is once you have this mass of junk up there you can't relaunch new satellites to recover, they won't survive. And you can't launch to Geo because you can't get through the swamp, game over for space assets.

Pretty much the space activity for the next decade after that event is cleanup strategies.

That's not really true in LEO or above geosynchronous orbit. Small objects can't stay in LEO for vary long because of atmospheric drag. And above geosynchronous orbit most existing satellites don't have enough energy for pieces of them to reach that orbit. Realistically, you can also design redundant systems that can withstand a lot of impacts without failing. So, while you could destroy a lot of what's up there after a few years people could start putting things back into orbit.

PS: I would look at a lot of this stuff as a combination of misinformation and requests for a larger budget. The single most important hacking indecent involved a few small group of teenagers that exploited some mail servers and caused enough havoc that nuking the city that the attacks seemed to be originating from was on the table. Read up on "Solar Sunrise" and don't fuck with NORAD they don't feel the need to play nice.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kessler_Syndrome

"Bockris further advises that interface with Ono-Sendai Cyberspace 7 is entirely compatible and yields optimal penetration capabilities, particularly with regard to existing military systems...."

"How about an AI?"

"Existing military systems and artificial intelligences."

"Jesus Christ. What did you call it?"

"Kuang Grade Mark Eleven."

"It's Chinese?"

"Yes."

Wiliam Gibson, Neuromancer, 1984

The fact that nobody has succeeded in translating Neuromancer to the big screen is a testament to Gibson's ability to make something that's usually so dry and technical truly come to life.

I would think that'd make it easier to bring to the big screen. <shrug>

The military and diplomatic communications of the preceding fifty years showed before the light of their minds. At the same time as they surveyed the satellite data, Mr. Slippery and Erythrina swept through these bureaucratic communications, looking carefully but with flickering speed at every requisition for toilet paper, every "declaration" of secret war, every travel voucher, everyone of the trillions of pieces of "'paper" that made it possible for the machinery of state to creak forward. And here the signs were much clearer; large sections were subtly changed, giving the same feeling the eye's blind spot gives, the feeling that nothing is really obscured but that some things are simply gone. Some of the distortions were immense. Under their microscopic yet global scrutiny, it was obvious that all of Venezuela, large parts of Alaska, and most of the economic base for the low satellite net were all controlled by some single interest that had little Connection with the proper owners. Who their enemy was still a mystery, but his works loomed larger and larger around them.

Vernor Vinge, True Names, 1981

Vinge makes any other writer look like they lack vision.

It is important to note, these were not intelligence satellites. This is more like the Chinese government doing what some of the hacker sub culture has done for a long time: rattle the lock and see how easy it is to open. Presumably security was not a big concern, because how many jerks would have the means to hack into these? And what could you accomplish other than vandalism? As it turns out, now we know. Live and learn.

Wow, and almost a month after AmericaSpace.org broke this story.

http://www.americaspace.org/?p=9946

This is from the "2011 REPORT TO CONGRESS of the U.S.-CHINA ECONOMIC AND SECURITY REVIEW COMMISSION" report. Just giving a breakdown of the current state. This was not a flash message or a breaking news report. The time for the breaking news was in '07 and '08 not in 2011 ;)

There was an earlier draft that was made public (or semi-public) a month or so ago. This was the final draft, with some less-confrontational, less hyperbolic language, that was sent to Congress this past week.

The report didn't pin it on China. What kinda moronic title is this?

Because of language and the Chinese govt's lack of openness, we don't hear of Chinese satellites or companies pwned by American hackers. I wonder how much US-initiated cyberwhatevorrism takes place.

i worry... i worry...

it's really a joke ,i think.

comforting, not.

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