A security researcher hacks SpaceX’s Starlink with the help of a homade device
Image courtesy:preemptive.com
On Monday, A Belgian security researcher hacked Elon Musk-owned SpaceX’s Starlink satellite dishes with the help of a homemade circuit board that cost about $25 to create, various media reports.
On August 10, Lennert Wouters has given a presentation titled “Glitched on Earth by humans” at the annual Black Hat Security Conference, where he describes the vulnerabilities that allowed him to break into Starlink satellite terminals and write his custom code.
Wouters in a press release said that the widespread availability of Starlink User Terminals (UT) exposes them to hardware hackers and opens the door for a hacker to freely explore the network.
During the Conference, he demonstrates a modchip, also known as a homemade circuit board, to attendees, Wired reports. The modchip would directly connect to a Starlink dish and was built using components that can easily be purchased off-the-shelf for about $25.
Wouters first analyzes the Starlink dish to build a layout for the modchip which would fit over the existing Starlink board.
He connects the modchip, which included a Raspberry Pi microcontroller, flash storage, electronic switches, and a voltage regulator, to the existing Starlink printed circuit board (PCB) and wired it together, Eurasian Times reports.
