How to Hack a Satellite

April 20, 2015

How To Hack A Satellite

On April 8th a major French TV network (TV5) was hijacked by hackers working for ISIL (Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant . Calling themselves the CyberCaliphate the group had apparently spent weeks getting past the formidable network security and did some major damage. TV5 satellite feeds send programming to over 250 million customers (households and businesses) worldwide. All eleven TV5 channels were dark for three hours before a temporary data feed was established to put something on customer TV screens. It took over a week to clean the network of all the hacker malware and begin work on improving security. Other French media companies were informed of the threat and joint efforts were underway to improve security. Whatever enthusiasm there is for better security will probably not last because this was not the first time something like this has happened. 

It’s not that the threat was ignored or underestimated. Officially the hacker threat is taken very seriously by media companies, especially those who broadcast. Starting in the late 1990s growing reliance on data networks and satellite distribution of programming resulted in more and more attacks on these networks by groups seeking to get some attention by briefly seizing control of or shutting down these systems. 

These attacks reached something of a crescendo in 2007 when a Chinese satellite television channel was taken over by hackers. For about 90 minutes, the government had no control over the feed, which was replaced by anti-government material. The Chinese government tried to keep details of how this happened out of the news but because over 130 million Chinese had access to the Internet and even more have cell phones it was impossible to completely black out details of what happened. Senior officials were quite upset about this incident. Especially because since 2002 there have been over a dozen incidents worldwide of hijacking satellite television signals. Several of these took place in China, but until 2007 the government assured everyone that the “problem” was fixed.