ICMP_HOST_BELOW_HORIZON - TCP/IP Into Orbit 150
Christopher Neufeld writes "As reported on ScienceDaily today, on April 10 of this year, some standard IP modules were uploaded to UoSAT-12, and got it answering pings. "
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ICMP_HOST_BELOW_HORIZON - TCP/IP Into Orbit
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The 11 is for people with the pride of a 10 and the pocketbook of an 8. -- R.B. Greenberg [referring to PDPs?]
Re:HUH? (Score:1)
Hehe.
thank you
Great!!! (Score:1)
A Fire Upon The Deep (Score:1)
It has an interplanetary network on that scale, with huge inter-solarsystem gateways... ya know, the economies of a whole planet would stem from the fact it was a gateway... dman fascinating read, very recommended.
Not a huge surprise (Score:2)
I wonder what UoSat-12's IP address is?
...phil
Re:Is the technology transferable to Iridium? (Score:3)
The rest is left as an excercise for the reader.
...phil
Re:Security -- this is foolish! (Score:1)
Let's say that the engineer has logged into the satellite via ssh. His connection is a little laggy, but nevertheless he's entering attitude-control commands for future execution. You're sniffing his packets, but what do you see? Noise, mostly. What could you do with it? Probably nothing.
Re:Weeks? Try hours. (Score:1)
According to that Voyager is about 75 AU from Sun.
THIS IS NOT BRUCE (Score:1)
Hal Duston
hald@sound.net
Except.... (Score:1)
OT: Is your name related to Tackhead Sound System? (Score:1)
Re:OT: Is your name related to Tackhead Sound Syst (Score:1)
I've got a good collection of old Cabaret Voltaire, Throbbing Gristle, Zoviet France, Controlled Bleeding, Negativland (including the wallpaper sample album!), Nocturnal Emissions, Psychic TV, among others (oh wow I just found a Tackhead "Whats your mussion now?" EP... cool!). This stuff is just itching to get converted to mp3 -- I don't consider that so much a copyright violation as preserving history. Oh well, feel free to email me if you'd like to discuss this further.
cool, but... (Score:2)
OTOH, the idea of DOSing a TV sat is pretty cool
~luge
Bring On The Packet Monkeys.... (Score:4)
Re:Internet's Scalability (Score:2)
How about this, if the objective is Earth<->Mars, you have several artifical sats that orbit the sun. You route through these sats using a potocol _LIKE_ BGP routing. You may even be able to make the routing protocol smart enough to know its position in space and select the best next hop. By breaking the trip down into smaller hops, data integrity can be checked at each hop.
Sattelites already part of the internet arent they (Score:1)
I mean, just think of all the extra NASA missions: STS-31337 - Astronauts launch to press reset button on blue-screened sattelite!
And for the script kiddies, the IP is 207.46.130.14. (The intelligent among you will realise that this is merely an elaborate plot to packet/slashdot the evil empires (aka M$) website.
Deep space internet (Score:1)
The problem with thinking about internet in space is that we are going to need people at the other end, and unless there is a colony on mars, then there is no point in placing an internet link to one or two probes.
The same goes for interstellar networks, if (when) we advance far enough to colonise other solar systems, we will most likely have discovered a method to send signals faster than light (as well as Superluminal velocities in spacecraft). If not, and radio signals are our only method of communicating via computers, then it would work out far faster simply jumping in one of our little spceships and delivering the message by hand.
Thing is, when we get to the stage of travelling interstellar distances, we can just ask bug-eyed-bill and his space poodle how their species did it! (Assuming M$ and government philosophy of what they dont know, assume they are to stupid to know, and charge them for the priveledge, didnt take them over that is)
pingflood! (Score:1)
<rubbing hands together evilly>
;)
Re:Security -- this is foolish! (Score:1)
I guess we could go back and forth over this forever, but what about something on their machine? You know -- get a friend of his daughter's to install a poisoned version of ICQ that traps keystrokes. I think the problem isn't so much TCP/IP, but it's that this can be accessed from non-secure locations. IMHO, satellites ought to be adjustable only from steel-clad bunkers thousands of feet beneath the earth.
OK, well maybe not that extreme. But you know what I mean.
-Waldo
Security -- this is foolish! (Score:4)
From the article:
From the comfort of home, an engineer logs onto the Internet using a laptop computer and communicates with an orbiting spacecraft. Using industry standard Internet protocols, simple keystrokes send commands adjusting the spacecraft's attitude.
"Comfort of home"? Pretending that I'm a $6/hour ISP admin, couldn't I trap those packets and crash a satellite?
I'm not trying to be a fearmonger, but I really do think that this is a case of Too Much Stuff Connected To The Internet. We all laughed a few years ago when kooks started saying that "Internet hackers" could shut down power plants and kill small woodlands animals. At the time, of course, none of these things were net connected.
Now, between IPv6-addressable squirrels and this satellite, we really could have a problem on our hands.
-Waldo
Re:Distributed networks (Score:1)
* [...] Note that 120 sec is
* defined in the protocol as the maximum possible RTT. I guess
* we'll have to use something other than TCP to talk to the
* University of Mars.
*
* PAWS allows us longer timeouts and large windows, so once
* implemented ftp to mars will work nicely. We will have to fix
* the 120 second clamps though!
hmm... (Score:1)
could be interesting.
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Re:hmm... (Score:2)
Re:How about some Amateur Sats? (Score:3)
How about some Amateur Sats? (Score:3)
i am actually suprised this wasn't done earlier with amateur satellites, as it is (aside from the issues involving communication with orbiting communications systems) just a wireless network connect. if the satellite was in polar orbit you'd have availability problems, but a sat in the clarke belt would be nifty.
anyone know of plans in the amateur community to do this?
oh, and check out AmSat [amsat.org] for info on amateur satellites and whatnot.
Re:Except.... (Score:1)
Re:cool..... and a question (Score:2)
Re:Security -- this is foolish! (Score:2)
Re:Meaning of DOS (Score:1)
This was the operatingsystem Apple used on the Apple ][(+) with the 140 K 5.25 inch drives.
In 1983 Apple released ProDOS which supported things like subdirectory's and hard drives.
This was before the Mac and HFS (the first Mac uses MFS which didn't supported real subdirectory's).
So, yet more work for ICANN... (Score:1)
satellite-13.iridium.orbit not responding still trying
Is the technology transferable to Iridium? (Score:3)
Just my 2c.
Re:Independence Day (Score:2)
With the tits and everything, it is doubtful they will send a virus that is even executable on whatever processor is in there. We're safe for now.
Immediately followed by a suit from Metallica... (Score:3)
Other problems with disks in space (Score:2)
Actually, you would need to mount two disks, back-to-back, otherwise, when the drives spin up, the whole satilite will start rotating in the other direction. Newton's Third Law makes working in space a pain in the butt at times.
When I was working at the Space Science Center at Unnamed U., they were building instruments for data collection. They found it cheaper in the long run to simply use hundreds of megabytes of static RAM (what we computer geeks call "cache RAM"). RAM because disks are a pain to work with in space, and static RAM because it resists radiation better and doesn't need to be refreshed.
I wonder what 192 MB of cache RAM goes for?
Re:Security -- this is foolish! (Score:1)
Egoine
Re: Not a huge surprise (Score:1)
Actually, these Plotted Results [nasa.gov] from the project's site shows us that ping times are between 0.1 and 0.2 seconds, a few of them higher. I've seen worse ping times on today's earth-Internet :)
Re:Linux already supports IPv4 martian packets (Score:1)
A Martian packet is one that appears to have made a round trip to Mars (i.e. is older than the TCP 120 second timeout) en route to your computer.
Linux already supports IPv4 martian packets (Score:2)
devinet.c: {NET_IPV4_CONF_LOG_MARTIANS, "log_martians",
devinet.c: &ipv4_devconf.log_martians, sizeof(int), 0644, NULL,
route.c:
route.c: goto martian_source;
route.c: goto martian_source;
route.c: goto martian_destination;
route.c: goto martian_source;
route.c: goto martian_destination;
route.c: goto martian_source;
route.c: goto martian_source;
route.c: * Do not cache martian addresses: they should be logged (RFC1812)
route.c:martian_destination:
route.c: printk(KERN_WARNING "martian destination %08x from %08x, dev %s\n", daddr, saddr, dev->name);
route.c:martian_source:
route.c: * RFC1812 recommenadtion, if source is martian,
route.c: printk(KERN_WARNING "martian source %08x for %08x, dev %s\n", saddr, daddr, dev->name);
(yes, I am kidding, and yes, that grep will actually print out what I posted)
direcpc and satellite phone (Score:1)
This will make Vint Happy (Score:5)
Vinton Cerf (the "father" of the Internet, perhaps even without the quotes) is constantly talking about Internet in space, interplanetary Internet and so on. For example, in his celebrated essay (an Internet draft) "The Internet is for Everyone" (now the official motto of the ISOC [isoc.org]), he writes:
To be quite honest, if I didn't have so much admiration for him, I would say that Vint is going just a bit off his rocker, there. But, who cares? The idea is fun, and if a man can't dream, what's left for him to do?
Did you know it, the ISOC has even formed an "Interplanetary International Special Interest Group" (IPNSIG).
--
David A. Madore (ISOC member)
Amateur Satellite potential (Score:2)
I just hope that it is not made into another Iridium-like network. The reason the current satellites are not too busy right now is the need for an amateur radio license and the skills needed involved to track a low-orbit satellite. If TCP/IP is used for this purpose in the future, don't expect to have it on your cell phone or anything.
Visit Amsat [amsat.org] if you want more information about the current state of amateur radio in the sky.
Re:How difficult... - Head spacing (Score:1)
I do recall that someone (Western Digital?) a few years ago (about 7 or so) reported on filling a harddrive with a liquid, that is more viscous than air. This allowed the head to platter spacing to be reduced, as the more visquius liquid is a better shock adsorber. I belive they had a working prototype at one molecule above the surface. Advantage of this is that it allow more precise control of applied force, and better spatial location of magnetic domainms (IOW - higher data density)
Nah. (Score:3)
That's why things https and ssh exist. If I were a $6/hour ISP admin and could crack those, I wouldn't be a $6/hours ISP admin for long. There's tons of RSA encrypted traffic that's way more juicy.
Combine VPN, strong encryption, and vigilant system administration and I don't think anyone will be sending spurious orders. Other than that I would see potential DOS problems, especially if the engineer is sending a sequence low level maneuvering orders that could be interrupted during execution. However you'd have to be brain damaged to design the system to work that way anyway -- what if your transmitter failed?
SETI (Score:1)
PINGS....IN....SPACE (Score:4)
On a more serious note, this bodes well for network engineers who want to get into the satcom industry. The differences between the computer industry and the communications industry are rapidly disappearing.
-Josh
Re:This will make Vint Happy (Score:1)
The trick is to implement an addressing system that's extensible. If we over-implenent, like an addressing system with 128 64-bit fields we'll be wasting space now, for a while we will be ok (for a really long while) but then, with the unevitable expantion of computers, we will run out of space. If we implenet an extensible system from the start... all we have to do is drop in new support, and near-transparent upgrades to the system.
Hmm.. (Score:2)
Re:How difficult... (Score:1)
There are also problems with heat transfer because of no air. Cooling in space is not an easy thing to do.
Internet's Scalability (Score:1)
Meaning of DOS (Score:1)
Re:cool, but... (Score:1)
"Kill Your TV"...and everyone else's, too, at the same time! :-)
Re: (Score:2)
Proper protocol (Score:1)
Re:Internet's Scalability (Score:2)
Vernor Vinge already covered that in his two books "A Fire Upon The Deep" and "A Deepness In The Sky". Granted, the protocols being used are not IP, but the basic technologies, etc. are clearly (and at one point, explicitly) descended from modern-day networking.
Vinge does better than most SF authors about having believable (from a tech and programming standpoint) computer systems. It is clear from his writing that he has thought about such things as "how would robust communications protocols work among civilisations that are spread out to interstellar distances and relativistic velocities" -- and his solutions are more than just handwaving. Of course, Vinge's day job is a CS professor...
New top-level domain (Score:2)
You can now... sorta. (Score:2)
Re:OT: Is your name related to Tackhead Sound Syst (Score:1)
ObTack: :)
This Tackhead [nl.net] site has pretty up-to-date info. And some really interesting links. Nuff said
Re:OT: Is your name related to Tackhead Sound Syst (Score:1)
Seriously, I've been trolling for vinyl too. Very hard to find. All I have is the more recent stuff on CD. I'm regularly polling a couple of good indie record stores that have good industrial coverage and will let you know if I find anything rare. Meanwhile, keep your eyes on the obvious site that you've probably found from the Tackhead site I mentioned. (It was news to me too :)
As for Tackhead - I'll heartily recommend the three "Power, Inc." volumes, which should still be available on CD. They're also being done through Keith LeBlanc's own label, which I would hope means that Keith actually gets some of the proceeds from the sales...
(...getting back on topic, at least marginally...) ...unlike certain other bands which don't want their music *traded* as a commodity, but being bought and sold as a commodity is just fine. *g*
Re:How about some Amateur Sats? (Score:5)
Get Gold & Appel (or some similar organization) to launch a mess of "sats" into "orbit" at the Earth/Sun Lagrange points. Run something like "Freedom" on them. Give each sat a bunch of space-hardened (i.e. you need an atmosphere and some radiation and heat shielding) umpteen gigabyte RAID drives.
15 minute ping times, sure. But how the fsck will RIAA stop us from downloading MP3s when the servers are located in deep space? :) :) :)
All it takes is one .com billionaire with a really twisted sense of humor.
Re:Bring On The Packet Monkeys.... (Score:2)
Hmmmm....
Maybe that can explain this [yahoo.com]
So much for your GUIDs (Score:1)
Sorry, I've been waiting to make that crack for a looooong time.
Re:Security -- this is foolish! (Score:1)
How does the engineer log in then? Thumb a ride on the next space shuttle?
Re:New top-level domain (Score:1)
Re:So much for your GUIDs (Score:1)
I guess that Bill Gates, having achieved world domination (or close to it), decided to set his sights a bit higher...
uploading (Score:2)
standard Internet software modules were uploaded to the spacecraft.
Brings new meaning to the term "upload".
-Michael
not quite what it sounds like (Score:1)
They've enabled ICMP. They've talked about controlling orbital adjustments. I'm not up on how these birds are built, but I'm not sure from what I've read that this in any way opens up the data stream to the Internet.
Sure, you might be able to (literally) crash the satellite, but the idea of a DoS attack interrupting the data stream seems a bit of a reach. These are good examples of the problems which will need to be solved before our satellites all become nothing but nodes, but if someone managed a DoS attack on the IP port, it would only appear to mean they'd have to go back to inband satellite control instead of IP-based satellite control.
But I suppose it IS logical to assume that all the satellite functions would eventually be exposed via IP. IF that were the case with Iridium, it would be ironic to see a hacker deorbit all the birds, then let Motorola file an insurance claim and finally turn a profit on the system!
Re:Internet's Scalability (Score:1)
- ... travel faster than light under certain circumstances
Actually, there have been theoretical methods for doing just this from the quantum phyisics guys -- a process of quantum entanglement. The problem is (among many others) moving entangled particles farther than a few AU's apart. [Then again, someone or something would have to carry the other part of the "transceiver" to the other side of the cosmos...]I don't think IP is the best solution for long range, high delay and loss transmissions. Do you actually think NASA sends just one "turn left
We'll see... there are people much smarter than the average
Re:It doesn't. (Score:1)
The next thing ya' know, the universe will filled with drone arms [scifi.com]...
Im^H'm in but thel ag is horrribl^H^H^H^Hible (Score:5)
Re:You'll have to ping farther than that. (Score:2)
Re:Immediately followed by a suit from Metallica.. (Score:1)
Re:Independence Day (Score:1)
Re:Direcpc - Satelite Internet - I have it now (Score:2)
What the article is talking about is different. The satelite is actually part of the network and not just a transfer medium. They are talking "to" it. A paragraph in the article points this out:
Satelites have never really been used in this way before and I'm interested in it. It has the potential to speed up intercontinental communication quite a bit. I would think that it is a lot faster to bounce a signal through the air to a satelite to another satelite and then back to land on the other side of the planet than it is to pass the signal under the ocean via copper or fiber. Fiber is a faster medium for transfer but the routers and things slow it down.
On another note, it would be a lot of fun to play with this. Anyone want to upload the source for DeCSS to an orbiting satalite?
-magicsloth
Weeks? Try hours. (Score:1)
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It doesn't. (Score:2)
TCP/IP essentially doesn't work over such distances. On the other hand, schemes like Fidonet and Usenet News would work fine as long as they had a transport scheme underneath. You can forget a System-Wide Web, but a system of caching servers for Usenet posts, static web pages, or any other kind of content that doesn't require active communication with the originator will work fine. All you have to do is broadcast everything that's new or changed, and use appropriate encoding to guarantee that the receiver can reconstruct any data errors (something like trellis encoding would be appropriate). What you'd get at Pluto would be some hours out of date and Alpha Centauri would be years behind the fashions, but it would get there.
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This post made from 100% post-consumer recycled magnetic
That's not the weak point. (Score:3)
If you have your own radio gear, you could have sent commands to the satellite using whatever protocol and authentication it wants even without TCP/IP. Adding TCP/IP, if the satellite functions are protected with the same authentication codes, doesn't make it significantly easier.
The other way is to hack through someone else's gateway. If they've firewalled it, you've got the problem of defeating the firewall before you get to the satellite and its authentication mechanisms. Of course, if someone has left the authentication info lying around in an accessible place on their Internet-accessible computer, you're all set... assuming the satellite will accept configuration commands over the TCP/IP channel (it might not, the article didn't say if this was only used for the store/forward system or command and control as well).
It's a pity we can't just ask Bruce Schnier for his opinion of their security model.
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This post made from 100% post-consumer recycled magnetic
You'll have to ping farther than that. (Score:5)
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This post made from 100% post-consumer recycled magnetic
trace route (Score:1)
Re:Is the technology transferable to Iridium? (Score:1)
Re:Security -- this is foolish! (Score:1)
Re:Is the technology transferable to Iridium? (Score:3)
j.
World DEEPEST web server is . . (Score:1)
I am part of a team that is operating an Apache Linux based webserver at 600 feet. The vehicle is unmanned and thats why reliability is paramount. Topside Communication is via a fiber optic cable.
The Linux box is host to a data acquisition system that acquires vehicle health data and provides a human interface to control power. A Perl based application communicates to data acquisition modules (check www.Opto22.com) using a firewire driver rewritten from C++ to Perl.
The operator interface is CGI/Perl and if a condition alarms occurs and is not acknowledged the application sends out e-mails alerts. The operator can view historical data which is plotted with Gnuplot which I can do at home in my underware.
The entire system is 100% Open Source software.
air gap (Score:1)
or I am way off
Jon
Re:Deep space internet (Score:2)
TCP v4's Maximum Segment Lifetime... (Score:1)
(Sorry, I'm too lazy to check what difference TCPv6 makes here (if at all).)
Re:Security -- this is foolish! (Score:2)
Packets from Mars? (Score:4)
Maybe I'm showing my age here, but does anyone else remember "Packets from Mars"?
martian: n. A packet sent on a TCP/IP network with a source address of the test loopback interface [127.0.0.1]. This means that it will come back labeled with a source address that is clearly not of this earth. "The domain server is getting lots of packets from Mars. Does that gateway have a martian filter?" Compare Christmas tree packet, Godzillagram.
jargon/m/martian.html [science.uva.nl]
From The Jargon file (4.2)
Re:Independence Day (Score:2)
You've forgotten about Java - write once (on alien mothership), run everywhere (once the worm hits our Net).
James.
Re:Security -- this is foolish! (Score:3)
Some of the other instruments' actual command computers were compromised in similar ways at other times. If the attackers had known what they were doing, (I think they, too, were script kiddies) they could've sent commands to the spacecraft, a million miles away.
The problem for that project, as for so many, is lack of clear forethought about security and time pressure once the system was installed. We had a heterogeneous network set up by people from something like 10 different countries, and many workstations (mine included) that were administered by the scientists who used them.
The big shock for me, both in my experience at NASA and at other high-technology, high-risk ventures, is that people remain people even if they work for NASA. Folks who are interested in flying spacecraft have little time to install the latest OS patches or to design secure protocols -- they're too busy shooting from the hip, making huge volumes of hastily written code work right, or cranking out the next research paper.
IMHO, we need *less* connectivity, not more, to our spacecraft and their ground systems!
The Future of Warfare... (Score:2)
'The Chinese tanks are advancing on our position sir!' '"ping -F north-hem.GPS" soldier!'
Tyranny = Government choosing how much power to give the people.
OMNI (Score:2)
This is definitely the way to go IMO. It will allow easier access to satellites or whatever in space and when this kind of thing becomes more common, the general public will be able to perhaps interact with satellites over the internet from their own computer.
Oh great... (Score:2)
Security in space. (Score:3)
At some point in time, it is likely that researchers using the Internet proper will be able to communcate with a satellite. At that point, yes, there is a possibility of malicious individuals (or groups) getting into your sattellite. At least one barrier to entry would be the ground station-to-satellite link. If you kept this secure (using open and tested protocols and such), a malicious entity would require both a ground station of their own and strong knowledge of the ground-satellite signal specifications and protocols.
If you set the satellite to only act on signals coming from known-good ground stations (based on geophysical location), then a ground station would have to be compromised in order to take over a satellite. This would add another layer of security.
If you, say, hard code those coordinates and the verification routines (and make sure you don't pull a Hubble), you could be fairly certain that your satellite can't be controlled by anyone else, except through your links. If, then, you use secure connections through said link (which means keeping the stuff current, of course), you should be fine.
All in all, it should be no easier to maliciously control a 'Net sat than it is to use an existing attack against the current generation. (Disclaimer: I am not a rocket scientist, although I did take a class covering the basics.)
Direcpc - Satelite Internet - I have it now (Score:2)
Granted it is just a router really but still - it's cool. I get the internet and Directv off of one dish.
(You still have to have a modem and dialin for the outgoing traffic...)
What about security? (Score:2)
Security critical components should be on a private network. Sure, use TCP/IP, TCP/IP rocks, but if you are going to have remote control I for one would be far more relaxed if you were on a private network (the solar system intranet!).
Maybe I'm overreacting, but I can't help looking up to the sky, thinking of a script kiddy, and ducking under cover.
IP in space eh? (Score:2)
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Re:Security -- this is foolish! (Score:4)
Actually, satellite ground systems are already using TCP/IP. Ground systems communicate through the satellite on special commanding boxes, but those boxes get their commands through ethernet.
Now, many amateurs receive signals from satellites, then decommutate and decode the telemetry. The old style C band satellite dishes work for this, they just need a little refit. One COULD command a bird with more hardware and some hacking - the US and USSR did it to each other's birds during the cold war.
What's my point? I don't think this necessarily makes satellites more vulnerable. After all, the commanding and payload (commercial signals) ususally pass through different paths, and the command paths have a bit of security involved, including encryption chips with closed-source algorithms, courtesy NSA. That encryption applies only to US owned birds, BTW.
Oh yeah, let's just give out that info... (Score:2)
Not to mention the script kiddies wanting to "0w/\/" it...
Re:Packets from Mars? (Score:2)
Independence Day (Score:3)
Re:Security -- this is foolish! (Score:2)
Have you ever heard of private networks? You can have a TCP/IP network with its own internal numbering and no connection to the outside internet. What router did you think would pass your packets to the satellite's uplink antenna?