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Comment by kgeist | Hacker News Reader

>After the team relocated the code to a new location in the FDS,

I wonder what the protocol for sending update requests is. It sure must be encrypted? If so, what if the encryption algoritm is weak by modern standards, given Voyager 1 is 46 years old, and can be reverse engineered somehow? I.e. can someone outside of NASA send requests to Voyager to change its code?

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> can someone outside of NASA send requests to Voyager to change its code?

Unless you've got your own very-very high power transmitters and large dishes, you're not communicating with either Voyager satellite

"Newer" science & research satellites from the late 2000s onward do support a variety of encryption in transit and authentication from the ground stations

Perhaps it’s theoretically possible. But honestly, it’s likely no one would.

Most people hacking into systems are doing so for financial gain or reputational gain. Neither exists here - there’s especially no positive reputation to be had in hacking something 46 years old that likely can’t be fixed again after you do.

There are plenty of vandals out there who don’t care about anything, but the probability one of them would have the skills and hardware necessary to do this is nil.

> Perhaps it’s theoretically possible. But honestly, it’s likely no one would.

> Neither exists here - there’s especially no positive reputation to be had in hacking something 46 years old that likely can’t be fixed again after you do.

This is perhaps the most plainly wrong thing I have read in a long time. Being able to claim "I hacked Voyager" is one of the most ultimate hacker flexes one could possibly perform.

A long long time ago I read an account (which may have been fiction, but had too many details to be casually dismissed) on a very private BBS of someone hacking a NASA space probe over many months. I think it is ridiculous to assume that nobody would try to do this.

In any hacker community I’m aware of, I think you would be significantly ostracized for damaging a purely scientific effort that simply could not be repaired or replaced.

There will always be sabetours. But The effort to hack a sattelite farther from Earth than any spacecraft isn't the same as hijacking some wifi. Those lower effort trolls will be limited by skill and hardware, as the GP said.

The effort to acquire both basically means you become an engineer at NASA and then go rouge one night. But why would you ruin your professional career, reputation, and livelihood for "the ultimate hacker flex"?

And is it even hacking at that point? You already had the keys. You're just performing the ultimate social engineering experiment that has nothing but downsides for humanity.

> It sure must be encrypted?

I very much doubt it. There are hard physics limitations at play. Nasa's Deep Space Network [0] is the only system on Earth capable of communicating with the Voyager probes. If an attacker managed to secretly construct a 70-meter dish and reverse-engineer a poorly-documented 50 year old protocol I would only be impressed.

[0]https://www.nasa.gov/directorates/somd/space-communications-...

Considering people have hacked other space probes, I would guarantee there is no encryption on the communications. See, e.g.:

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

Apparently this says no encryption, though I've not read the whole thing:

https://descanso.jpl.nasa.gov/DPSummary/Descanso4--Voyager_n...

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