Chinese TV Sattelite taken over.

Slashdot posts:

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Last week Falun Gong hackers in China were able to briefly take over the Sinosat-1 satellite and broadcast a banner for several minutes on all channels of China Central Television. This was apparently repeated several time on different channels on Sunday but so far the Chinese government has imposed a news blackout on the incident. However thanks to the Internet and the millions of witnesses, word has leaked out. Surprisingly, security on satellites can be very weak - often transponders are left on when not active and will continue to rebroadcast whatever is beamed at them. It's believed that Falun Gong used a 3 meter dish antenna mounted on a vehicle to overpower the government's uplink signal. This is not the only time that satellite signals have been hacked - there was the famous 'Captain Midnight' incident in 1986 and it's believed that Iraq has been attacking Kurdish satellite tv channels for several years. Hackers have even (discreetly) made use of the U.S. Navy's FleetSatCom satellites.

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Australian IT writes:

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(...) The satellite broadcast, in which a banner reading "Falun Gong is good" replaced normal TV viewing in Shandong province on Sunday night and again in prime time on Tuesday, is among the group's most daring moves since it was banned in 1999. (...)

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I like how the Chinese gov't isn't allowing any internal press coverage.

--"We didn't see anything and NEITHER did you!!!!!"

Kind of reminds of a Smirnoff joke. About how the Soviets had two channels. One that had Soviet propaganda and the other is just a KGB agent saying "Turn back to channel one."

Korpdeath: You ever hear the one about the two letters to the new russian ruler from the previous one?

"Okay, now that you've got my job, I'm giving you a present. Take these two letters. When you are stuck in a situation that you simply cannot get out of, open the first letter. The next time you are stuck, open the second."

The new ruler thanked the old one and went on to work in politics. At one point, he was stuck in a big political problem, and it looked like there was no way out. He opened the first letter. It said: "Blame everything on me." So he did, he blamed the old ruler for the current problems.

Many years later, he had another big problem, and decided to open the second letter. It read: "Sit down. Write two letters."

:)

As a friend of mine once said: "You know what REALLY scared the Chinese government about Falun Gong? For a protest, thousands of them came and sat in total silence, and then left."

That's a good one Terr. I'm gonna have to remember that one. :thumbsup:

There's an update to this story. Actually, two.

First, fifteen people held responsible for this (or a similar) hack have been sentenced to 20 years of prison.

Second, they did it again. This time, the effects were noticeable in the entire country. ABCnews has the details