Satellites can bring a digital signal to places where the Internet seems like
a miracle: off-the-grid desert solar farms, the Arctic or an aircraft carrier at
sea. But in beaming data to and from the world's most remote places, satellite
Internet may also offer its signal to a less benign recipient: any digital
miscreant within thousands of miles.
In a presentation at the Black Hat security conference in Arlington, Va.,
Tuesday, Spanish cybersecurity researcher Leonardo Nve presented a variety of
tricks for gaining access to and exploiting satellite Internet connections.
Using less than $75 in tools, Nve, a researcher with security firm S21Sec, says
that he can intercept Digital Video Broadcast (DVB) signals to get free
high-speed Internet. And while that's not a particularly new trick--hackers have
long been able to intercept satellite TV or other sky-borne signals--Nve also
went a step further, describing how he was able to use satellite signals to
anonymize his Internet connection, gain access to private networks and even
intercept satellite Internet users' requests for Web pages and replace them with
spoofed sites.
