Hack the Sky: Exploring Satellite Vulnerabilities and Cyber Threats
summary
Demonstrates that with cheap gear—an RTL‑SDR (Bf‑888 or similar), a whip antenna and a $20 Baofeng style radio—an attacker can harvest TLE/NORAD ID data (Starlink 31046), compute passes via orbitalmechanics.info or satintel, record baseband wavefiles, demodulate with absolute value and decode live imagery using WXtoIMG or satdump. Claims 60–70% of links sit in L‑band (1–2 GHz), shows decoded NOAA‑18 weather frames (low‑res but buildings visible), and outlines spoofing, jamming and hijack scenarios.
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chapters (18)
- 0:00Introduction and speaker intro
- 1:10What is satellite hacking
- 3:28Simple tools for attacks
- 5:56How satellites work
- 8:49Why satellites are vulnerable
- 10:20Focus on L-band vulnerabilities
- 13:17Satellite threat model breakdown
- 16:15Four satellite attack scenarios
- 18:01Public satellite data risks
- 19:23Tracking Starlink satellites
- 23:17Two-line element set explained
- 24:24Orbit tracking with tools
- 27:57Free tools for satellite tracking
- 28:39Harvesting NOAA satellite images
- 31:34Hacking weather satellites with phone
- 33:21Advanced real-time satellite imaging
- 36:24Live demo of satellite image decoding
- 37:51Q&A on Starlink Wi-Fi security
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