August 19, 2020

US Air Force Invites Satellite Hack

US Air Force Invites Satellite Hack

DEF CON is one of the world’s largest and most notable hacker conventions, held annually in Las Vegas, Nevada. 

The winning team’s picture.

This year, the US Air Force held a “Hack-a-Sat” competition where they invited attendees of DEF CON to attempt to take control of an Air Force satellite currently in orbit around Earth, to point it at the moon and take a picture. And guess what? Much to the surprise of the US Air Force, the winning team got a picture of the moon via the satellite. 

The US Air Force did not configure the satellite to make hacking it easy or even possible.  In fact, the whole idea is the Air Force believed and tried to make the satellite unhackable, so that if it could be hacked, they could learn from the hack and improve their security.  And this test wasn’t on a common resource like a computer or network, where common knowledge of hacking is in the wild every day, but a rare piece of technology.

Where does your company’s security stack up against the cybersecurity of the US Air Force?

Is your computer network more common & valuable to an everyday hacker than a satellite?

If you have questions on security measures we can put in place for your business, call us at 423-534-3418! Don’t let your valuable data fall into the wrong hands!


Tags: