The Hacking of Starlink Terminals Has Begun

More than 3000 small satellites have been launched by Starlink since the beginning of the year. There are thousands of satellites planned for launch. Satellite components are being hacked.

One of the first security breakdowns of Starlink's user terminals will be revealed by a security researcher today. A series of hardware vulnerabilities allow attackers to access the Starlink system and run custom code on the devices.

Wouters created a hacking tool that could be attached to the Starlink dish to access the satellite dish's software. Off-the-shelf parts are used in the modchip, a custom circuit board. The homemade PCB is attached to the Starlink dish and can be used to launch a fault injection attack, which can cause the system to short out. Wouters can get into parts of the Starlink system.

Wouters is making his hacking tool open source so that others can use it. If you wanted to attack the satellite, you could try to build your own system that would allow you to talk to it. If you want to attack the satellites, you might want to use the user terminal.

Starlink paid Wouters through its bug bounty scheme after the researcher notified them of the flaws. The underlying issue can't be fixed unless a new version of the main chip is created by the company. Wouters says that all the terminals are vulnerable.

After Wouters gives a presentation at Black Hat, Starlink says it will release a public update, but it won't tell WIRED anything about it.

The internet system of Starlink consists of three parts. There are satellites that beam down connections to the surface from around 340 miles above the ground. gateways that send internet connections up to the satellites are one of the systems on Earth. The user terminals were originally round but are now rectangular.

Since Starlink started selling them, there have been many teardowns. Engineers on the video sharing website open up their terminals and show how they work. There are others discussing the technical specifications on the internet. Wouters looked at the security of the terminal and its chips. The terminal was designed by capable people.