Starlink, satellites hacked with a 25 euro device

At the Black Hat Security Conference di Las Vegas, where the brightest members of the cybersecurity community in the world hang out, a spatial event has happened. The Belgian researcher Lennert Wouters has shown that he can hit Starlink: i satellites of SpaceX They were to hack. And all with a simple device that costs only 25 dollarsto be attached to the parables.

Starlink satellites hacked with a 25 euro device

Starlink, the constellation of small satellites operated by SpaceX’s Elon Musk, has been providing the internet for some time now. The satellite connection could make it possible to reach open areas, connect ships in the ocean and planes in flight. But the thirty thousand satellites have to work on safety.

Indeed Wouterswith a device from 25 dollars he built, he was able to hack the dish that receives the signal and had access to the system. She wrote: “Our attack leads to an unsolvable compromise of the Starlink user terminal and allows us to perform a code arbitrarily“. The attack therefore did not directly attack the satellites, but rather the parables on the ground.

The researcher warned Starlink of the vulnerability, which is particularly sensitive given the use of the satellite connection in Ukraine at the moment. Starlink then updated the systems prior to the conference.

But the researcher warns that a software change is not enough. A new version of the main chip of the dishes should be created and replaced. Starlink instead he has published a document in which he explains how the protections put in place can make connections and the entire system safe.

However, he reiterated that he listened with interest to the feedback from the cybersecurity community, which allows them to find vulnerabilities and solve them before some attacker exploits them.