On Sat, 5 Jul 1997, Lucky Green wrote:
With the solar system's hottest RC vehicle on Mars, how hard would it for a hacker to take control of the rover? Is NASA using any encryption/authentication of the commands issued to the rover?
Somehow, I don't think that's the place to mount an attempt to take it over. The prohibitive cost of getting an antenna into space where you can counter some of the effects of Earth's spin and keep the damn rover in contact all the time would be the biggest problem. The trick would be to get into NASA's flight control computers. They're almost definitely as top-secret military systems in terms of access. (i.e, no outside connections to unsecure nets, controls almost certainly limited to certain stations...) Besides, how much encryption is needed between two points if intercepting the traffic is expensive, the communications protocol is undocumented (as far as anyone outside NASA is concerned), and the actual frequency is also hard to find? ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Ryan Anderson - <Pug Majere> "Who knows, even the horse might sing" Wayne State University - CULMA "May you live in interesting times.." randerso@ece.eng.wayne.edu Ohio = VYI of the USA PGP Fingerprint - 7E 8E C6 54 96 AC D9 57 E4 F8 AE 9C 10 7E 78 C9 -----------------------------------------------------------------------