Tech

They manage to hack Starlink for only 25 dollars

Starlink is, indisputably, a very innovative proposal. With its lights and shadows, which we have been counting over time, it is true that creating a network that provides global broadband access to the Internet is a laudable project. And whether we like it or not, the Internet is a key element in more and more activities, so having slow access systems or, worse still, remaining disconnected, generates a gap that is widening every day.

Ttechnically, the project also seems quite neat. It is true that the saturation of low orbit is becoming a very serious problem, and that any day it could give us a huge upset, but at least until today, we must recognize that the incidents in which it has been seen SpaceX has been involved, except at the end of last year with the Chinese space station, all systems have worked properly.

Now, it seems that as complex as the Starlink system is, it also has its black spots, and security researcher Lennert Wouters seems to have found one of them because, according to on his Twitter profile, has managed to build a device to gain access to the service. And, as he explained, said device it only cost him 25 dollarsnot bad if we take into account that, today, the cost of the connection equipment to the service from Spain costs 639.00 euros, plus 99 euros of monthly fee.

They manage to hack Starlink for only 25 dollars

The device produced by Wouters was put to the test at the Def Con 30 security conference, which is held between yesterday, Thursday, and next Sunday, and as he had previously anticipated, since we can assume that he would have tried it on more than one occasion, he was able to establish the connection practically instantaneously, and start from this way to use the Starlink satellite Internet access service. In addition, the researcher has made available to the public the plans of his mod chip on GitHub.

Wouters performed the hack as part of the SpaceX program that pays researchers to find bugs in the Starlink service and, in a quick response, SpaceX congratulated the researcher on the discovery and announced that it had released an update to its software to fix the problem. However, Wouters told Wired that Starlink will remain vulnerable to hacking until SpaceX creates a new version of the main chip in the terminals.

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