Sattelite Groundstation Security Research - Bogus Recording Data

Hi everyone!

I understand this may be a weird topic but I hope this lands on open minds. I am a security researcher (not just some guy who thinks hes a “hacker”, I have been working in offensive cyber security for 6 years) and I am currently exploring the security of satellite ground stations both open source and proprietary.

SatNogs caught my eye a while back due to the open sharing of data and ease of deployment. I love space and this project so much I have convinced someone I know to set up his own station just for observations!

The point of this post is not to make this a big deal or to cause any panic, I am putting this up as both a request for comments and a suggestion/warning about my ground station’s observations. Currently I am exploring the RF side of this project, meaning some of my observations will contain bogus data. I mark each one as failed, though I do wish we had the option to delete them.

No malicious data will be fed into the network, just silly data (images in the waterfall, music, etc). I wish there was a way for me to set up a false satellite observation just for my testing! Let me know if this is possible so I dont clog up the real satellite observation feeds.

I have made my ground station’s name and description as obvious as I can that the data will be bad moving forward. I will also bring forward vulnerabilities I discover (if any) immediately, as I would like to see this project survive and thrive for years to come.

Please leave comments if you have thoughts or ideas. Cheers and happy observing!

@tejihefi I suggest you use network-dev.satnogs.org for your testing.

While I understand your intentions, the usage you describe is not acceptable in the production site, however it can be tolerated if not malicious in the network-dev site.

Saying the above I would be glad for your feedback from the security (and not only) perspective.

About your question on marking observations as failed, this is not possible. Also it is not possible to remove an observation after it is done, however you can request its deletion if there is an important reason.

Thank you for the reply! I understand the usage should be kept to the network-dev site and will utilize this moving forward.

As for removing an observation, I would request observation 11762566 be deleted due to erronious data from one of my RF transmitters.

I will update as I go along with any concerns or feedback I have!

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