EVERY 95 MINUTES, the Chinese satellite Zhuhai-1 02 makes a full pass around the planet, its solar-panel arms extending from its boxy body as it observes Earth. Sometimes, its path takes it over Pueblo, Colorado. There, more than 300 miles below, Mike Coletta’s receiving station can pick up Zhuhai’s transmissions. Because as sophisticated as space technology is, the terrestrial tech necessary to make contact with celestial satellites is surprisingly low. Coletta just has four TV antennas—the kind that look like 2-D pine trees—each pointed in a cardinal direction. They’re bolted into place along garage beams, a patio post, and the rooftop of his house. Inside his home office, on Tuesday, Coletta waits for Zhuhai's signals to appear. He sits in front of a laptop and an iPad, a big shelved monitor hovering above. Coletta has, since 2012, spent his free time eavesdropping on the sky, picking up satellite signals—signals that, for the most part, were never meant for hi...
At exactly noon on the first Tuesday after Balint Seeber moved from Silicon Valley to San Francisco in late 2015, the Australian radio hacker and security researcher was surprised to discover a phenomenon already known to practically every other resident of the city: a brief, piercing wail that rose and then fell, followed by a man's voice: "This is a test. This is a test of the outdoor warning system. This is only a test." The next week, at exactly the same time, Seeber heard it again. A few weeks after that, Seeber found himself staring up from his bicycle at a utility pole in the city's SoMa neighborhood, examining one of the more than 100 sirens that produced that inescapable emergency test message around the city. At the top, he noticed a vertical antenna; it seemed to be receiving signals via radio, not wires. The thought came to him: Could a hacker like him hijack that command system to trigger all the sirens around the whole city at will, or to use th...
THIS WEEK SAW a tragic start, when late Sunday night a man named Stephen Paddock killed 58 people and wounded hundreds more in Las Vegas. Hoaxes and conspiracy theoriesflooded the internet in the immediate aftermath, as did questions—since answered—around how Paddock was able to fire at automatic speeds. We also took a look at gun-control tech—but didn't find much that's promising. There's at least a little levity—although more tragicomic, really—in Yahoo announcing that its one-billion account leak in 2013 was actually a three-billion account leak. You also might enjoy this handy guide to when Donald Trump is tweeting, and when one of his staffers has commandeered his account. Also, the Department of Energy's email about not leaking leaked, so that's fun. OK, back to terrible things. There's been an alarming rise incyberattacks against abortion clinics lately. Another NSA contractor let critical data slip. The Equifax leak took on a ...
Comments
Post a Comment