How to Jam a Worldwide Satellite TV Broadcast

An anonymous reader submits: "According to an MSNBC article, 'it's simply a matter of aiming a strong signal at the uplink transponder on the satellite and overwhelming the...broadcaster's signals...You need a dish, some power, not too much. You put up a test pattern ... and do a sweep and find the transponder on the satellite you want to jam. It could even be smaller than the standard 6-meter dish. It could be a small dish with a lot of power.' This was apparently how an Iranian satellite television station was knocked off of Loral Skynet's TelStar-12 a few days ago. Loral contacted TLS, a company which specializes in satellite broadcast security, who quickly located the source of the jamming to Cuba."

Wow, a Denial of Service attack

[Anonymous Coward]

How original. I hope someone doesn't try that on the internet.

Cuba, eh?

[DoorFrame]

I know how to solve this problem... SANCTIONS! That'll show 'em.

Noooo!

[deman1985]

This information can't leak out! We'll be subjected to Mystery Science Theatre 24/7! God save us all!

Obligatory Simpsons Quote.

[sweeney37]

"And may God help you if that thing carried the Spice Channel."

-Moe Syzlak

timothy == good, michael == bad

[Anonymous Coward]

Taco... fire michael, promote timothy, and then take a sabbatical and let someone else run the show for a while, until you get some passion for the job and stop hating the readers so much.

Thank you.

Regards,

Hank Kingsley

Dangerous

[Flamed to a Crisp]

This could get very very dangerous. Imagine if some terrorists got ahold of a dish (not very hard these days) and knocked out some vital communication systems. Chaos! Our only hope is that since the instructions have been Slashdotted, the terrorists can't get through.

MSNBC giving out hacking instructions??

[Anonymous Coward]

Funny, the other divisions of MS seem to think it's some kind of horrible, immoral, illegal thing when you describe how to hack hardware. What happened to "very committed to respect for others' intellectual property and we request the same respect applied to our innovations"?

In other news....

[mrpuffypants]

In other news, DirecTV was knocked off the air permanently for unexplained reasons today.

Comcast, AOL/TW, and Cox all declined to comment.

Aw ah...Uh huh!

[da3dAlus]

"Not if we JAM IT!"
"Ah ha!"
"Down scope."
"Down scope!"
"Radar...about to be...JAMMED!"

Re:Cuba, eh?

[Rolo Tomasi]

The hawks in congress must be pretty confused ... Cubans vs. Iranians - whom are we going to send the military aid?

Logistically hard

[gilesjuk]

You need a huge knife and gallons of jam.

Hah! That's nothing.

[Talisman]

I work as a communications officer aboard a ship. We pulled into Cape Town on day 1 of the World Cricket Championships. One of the games was being broadcast nearby, until our active radar filled the air with distortion.

The second the gangway hit the deck, two sweaty, panicked cameramen came charging up, asking to speak to me. I was already at the gangway because I needed to meet a technician.

"You have to turn off your radar! We're broadcasting the World Cricket Chapmionships LIVE AND YOU KILLED OUR SIGNAL!"

Me: "Oh. Who's playing?"

Them: "Pakistan and Bangladesh."

Me: "Pakistan, eh? Yeah, I'll turn it off ASAP."

And 20 minutes later, I did ;)

For any of you gusy that were watching that game, sorry.

Kinda ;)

Tal

Mandatory T3 joke.

[tcc]

> Iranian satellite television station was knocked off of Loral Skynet's TelStar-12

And so it begins... Skynet has become self-aware... and picked a country that supposedly has loads of WMD and terrorists. Guess even AI can be fooled :)

DMCA Violation!!

[heli0]

How to Jam a Worldwide Satellite TV Broadcast

"According to an MSNBC article, 'it's simply a matter of aiming a strong signal at the uplink transponder on the satellite and overwhelming the...broadcaster's signals...You need a dish, some power, not too much. You put up a test pattern ... and do a sweep and find the transponder on the satellite you want to jam'."

So who from Microsoft or General Electric is going to prison for this DMCA violation?

Signal Replacement

[HeX86]

C'mon, lets get creative, instead of blocking out boring TV, lets replace it with eppisodes of Mystery Science Theater 3000 or something.

Think creative!e

Re:The tricky thing is....

[heli0]

The international enforcement arm of the FCC is the DOD.

Re:Hah! That's nothing.

[dr3vil]

No problem. In any given twenty minutes of a cricket game, the chances that anything actually happened are pretty low.

Re:Logistically hard

[SuiteSisterMary]

Sir, the radar, sir...it's being..jammed.

*lick*

Raspberry! I hate raspberry! There's only one man who'd DARE give me the raspberry....LONE STAR!

Re:The tricky thing is....

[usotsuki]

And the international enforcement arm of /. is the DoS.

-uso.

Double Whammy

[MochaMan]

Bad day for NITV... first their satellite gets jammed, and then we slashdot their site.

Re:Hah! That's nothing.

[Talisman]

And if I was in the military, you might have had a point.

Re:Wow, a Denial of Service attack

[Anonym0us Cow Herd]

What if they only DOSed the satellite during the commercials?

Replace obnoxious commercials with something less irritating, such as Cowboy Neal running around naked.

Test pattern? How quaint.

[graybeard]

Once upon a time, the announcer would announce, "This is the end of our broadcast day. Please rejoin WWWW at 6AM." Perhaps this announcement followed an inspirational moment from the Reverent Billy Bob Cross, or the Navy Hymn, or the Star-Spangled Banner, complete with fly-over. If one were lucky, one had just seen the Late Movie, or the Late-Late Movie. Now, it Infomercials as far as the eye can see.

Gyro Stabalised

[Porag_Spliffing]

I Sail on a rather small boat with sat comms using a gyro stabalised dish in a little dome. If you take the dome off it is some fun to watch the thing stay pointed while the boat pitches and rolls every which way (as long as you do not suffer from seasickness*). It does a fantastic job of keeping a (two way) signal even in rather rough weather.

* Watching the dish track is not the problem, getting the bloody dome on and off in bad weather is sure to send you for the leeward rail