For those wanting to explore and learn about this type of hardware attack, check out a relatively new book published by "No Starch Press" called "The Hardware Hacking Handbook" [1].
Play around with fault injection and differential power analysis with easy to obtain hardware such as a Raspberry Pi.
I was surprised to learn that there is an actual shortage regarding RPis... I remember the days we were hording these things. "Maybe I have an idea some day, so I better buy two of them." was the motto. Wild days to remember.
I'm not familiar with that book, but if the RPi is used to send or receive data over gpio, serial, parallel, i2c, ethernet etc. then the functions can be replicated pretty much on every SBC out there.
Many projects/articles/books use the Raspberry Pi just because it's the most popular and the name alone attracts users/readers/buyers, but, as with many other projects, almost all can be adapted with minimal changes to work using other easily available, and often also a lot cheaper, boards.
What are the potential uses of this? Is it more about exploring how the user terminal works, or is it about enabling new features somehow on the user terminal?
Given that Starlink user terminals can obviously also transmit data, maybe you can make a point to point connection between user terminals over hundreds of kilometers (given line of sight, so realistically much much less).
Make a mesh network that way.
Are the Rx/tx protocols really that symmetrical that an UT can receive and decode transmission from another UT? Since for cellular networks that is definitely not the case.
You can replace the OS that it runs with one of your own (that's not signed by Starlink keys).
You could, for example, modify the root filesystem to allow you to ssh into it, or query it with SNMP, or perhaps report a different GPS location to its APIs (instead of the one it's actually at).
I'd personally like my Starlink to use its real GPS for calculating which satellites it needs to talk to, but only report a truncated (or no) location to HQ, so that SpaceX doesn't have my meter-resolution location every time I'm online.
I imagine there are some Ukranian soldiers who feel the same way.
> I'd personally like my Starlink to use its real GPS for calculating which satellites it needs to talk to, but only report a truncated (or no) location to HQ, so that SpaceX doesn't have my meter-resolution location every time I'm online.
That’s actually what it does by default. Unless specifically activated for debugging reasons, the terminal does not send its lat/lon, so the most they know is what cell you are in (~10km-ish resolution)
> I imagine there are some Ukranian soldiers who feel the same way.
I imagine there are russian soldiers who even more think the same way... Putting the GPS location to be a few miles over in enemy territory would be a good way to make the dish work when it's geofenced.
I know several people who accomplish great things in their spare time. The common theme is that those projects are their entertainment. They get off work and can't wait to go work on their projects. They go to bed on Friday night excited to have time on the weekend to work on their stuff.
On the other end of the spectrum, I've mentored college grads for a while who would always complain that they never had time to do anything. I'd often ask them to open up the screen time report on their phone and they'd be shocked to discover they were spending 4 hours per day on Reddit or Netflix or something.
You have to choose to make things a priority. It's fine if you just want to relax in your spare time, of course, but the key is to be deliberate about those choices rather than letting the flow of entertainment media carry you away.
It's so easy to get trapped in a local minima when with just a little effort you can have a much better time. I got so much happier when I made a conscious effort to play videogames instead of doomscrolling.
If you see it as another project, and then you see other things as entertainment and the things you do to relax, it feels like there isn't enough time.
I always envy those people that find true entertainment and enjoyment in active activities like this, instead of just passive entertainment to "rest".
I'm not big on motivational but this one from Arnold Schwarzenegger resonated with me and still does. You have so many hours in the day, it's what you use them for that makes a difference https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1bumPyvzCyo
The screentime report was jarring for me as well. It sounds silly, but I used the parental control on my iphone to turn it «dumb».
I can still use the internet, but blocked most social media sites and apps, reddit/etc. My good friend has the passcode.
If I need them I can use my laptop/desktop, but it’s not as gratifying and right there. My screentime dropped by 4-5 hours per day, it’s insane. Now I get bored occasionally and (unintentionally) frustrated my phone can’t solve that, but I do read more, and work on more hobbies.
Have enough stability (money, housing, relationships) that you have mental juice left over for things higher up Maslow's pyramid.
I'm not being glib. That's really the answer. Sometimes, it just isn't possible to achieve, and that is both frightening and demoralizing. Doesn't make it any less true.
It's hard to hack on projects when the rent's due, after all. It is demoralizing to think of all the lost works (not just software) our society loses due to the 9-5 grind for most.
In my experience it's not a matter of stability but a matter of motivation. The motivation to do this kind of thing feels a lot less now than when I was younger.
Yeah. Life just keeps piling on responsibility after responsibility until we can no longer afford to care about stuff. Even simply starting something is hard.
For me, it's about having a goal which is concrete enough to achieve and deliver satisfaction, but unrelated to daily life enough to not be a stressor. And one major key for me is to never, ever develop a timeline.
When I was a kid/teenager, I worked on a lot of game console reverse engineering projects. As an adult, I wanted to get back into systems reverse engineering, but game consoles felt both too "useless" and too locked up. So, since I already had a major car hobby, I decided I'd learn how to calibrate OEM automotive engine control units - both the software reverse engineering and exploitation side and the actual mechanics and engine control side.
This turned out to be a great idea because everything fell into a cadence and a nice "proximal development" area - novel enough to be fun and engaging, but achievable enough to get hits of success. There was always something new to learn, but it was always something easy enough to be a week or two away. And there was absolutely no timeline besides my own, so it remained fun.
For me as an adult, the two major detriments to curiosity are a timeline (now it's work) and a lack of purpose (now it's just fiddling around). Setting a goal but not a timeline is what really gets me going. YMMV.
If I'm not feeling success, I aim at a more achievable goal, or pick up another project. If I'm bored, I aim bigger. And if I feel like I have no "free" time, I rethink priorities. Yes, sometimes work sucks, or an unexpected obligation is a drag, but by and large, as an adult with a marketable skill, I and I think most HN readers are blessed with pretty broad autonomy to decide what to do next.
For example: lately, I've left most of these projects behind in favor of day job security and preparing for a family life, but I don't feel stressed out or like I lack "time and energy" - my goals have just moved along as I have.
For me personally what has worked is going to bed early and waking up early before the world's distractions begin. This gives me 1 to 2 hours every day uninterrupted to work on projects. Why it's working better for me then staying up late to tinker is because I'm guaranteed not to have excuses or distractions such as working into the evening on my day job.
Added bonus not waking up tired. Took me about a month to adapt to this routine given I've never - ever - been a morning person in my life. And I'm still not if I go to bed late.
Completely cut out all alcohol which ensures better quality sleep - ready to start the day by working on a fun project.
I think hardware hacking is the coolest stuff ever. That is why we have so many people buying Raspberry Pi-s.
I guess the best way to keep your curiosity after X years of age is to start with a really challenging project that you know has steps of micro-success. Also, find a motivating community where you can chill, rant or discuss things with. That's why I am here, you are here. You need to have some level of familiarity with the domain of knowledge so, you know what you can achieve in what amount of time. There needs to be the idea of challenge, definite success and somewhat familiarity involved.
My example: I like the old school WSB community. If you know, the tesla-short era. So, I attempted to build tooling that they will enjoy, and I will have fun discussing. My checklist of accomplishments was things I knew can be completed in a few hours. The progressive dopamine hits kept me focused. I was doing great.
Why did I fail? Community itself become not the same. Fun discussions were harder to find. Market kept going up, meaning tools that I made is worthless because anything I didn't make sense because stonks go up. A Complex JavaScript project felt harder to write than I anticipated. So again, community, challenge and knowing your limits.
If you are looking for hardware hacking motivation, these two videos blew my mind. Joe Grand, crypto wallet hacking:
When WSB got extremely popular, and it was being spammed. Subreddit was flooded with spam and mods removed posts aggressively. It wasn't the place to show, "look what I made". Not blaming the mods, I just didn't belong anymore.
If you can achieve validation by yourself internally, that is incredible. But the average human needs other people to say, "Good job :)"
Finding a way to get validation from your projects is fantastic, a friendly community and likes on your YouTube videos or blogs can have immense impact.
In my experience it has largely been about letting myself do it. I get too worried about work and obligations, but I need to relax and follow those impulses. Force myself to make time for stuff.
I’ve gone through long stints of neglecting hobbies, but it’s always my fault.
Lately I love building out and refining my hydroponic garden’s automation and related application. At the moment I’m expanding it to a mushroom spawning and fruiting system. I spend a few hours a week on it, but I love it. I’m awful with hardware but learn so much every week.
Your situation might be different, but I highly recommend literally forcing yourself to make the time. I know that has been my mistake over the last 15 years – never acknowledging and then accommodating the need to just do fun and interesting stuff.
I'll bet you probably have tons of energy, but also more responsibilities and even in your youth you were not that dedicated - you just had moments of intense interest and did stuff for fun without too much diligence and no other worries.
This repo is from a research group from a university in Belgium [1]. In general though all the sybling comments are right. It is a matter of prioritizing projects over other things in live.
Readit News
Play around with fault injection and differential power analysis with easy to obtain hardware such as a Raspberry Pi.
[1] https://nostarch.com/hardwarehacking
!!!
Many projects/articles/books use the Raspberry Pi just because it's the most popular and the name alone attracts users/readers/buyers, but, as with many other projects, almost all can be adapted with minimal changes to work using other easily available, and often also a lot cheaper, boards.
You could, for example, modify the root filesystem to allow you to ssh into it, or query it with SNMP, or perhaps report a different GPS location to its APIs (instead of the one it's actually at).
I'd personally like my Starlink to use its real GPS for calculating which satellites it needs to talk to, but only report a truncated (or no) location to HQ, so that SpaceX doesn't have my meter-resolution location every time I'm online.
I imagine there are some Ukranian soldiers who feel the same way.
That’s actually what it does by default. Unless specifically activated for debugging reasons, the terminal does not send its lat/lon, so the most they know is what cell you are in (~10km-ish resolution)
I imagine there are russian soldiers who even more think the same way... Putting the GPS location to be a few miles over in enemy territory would be a good way to make the dish work when it's geofenced.
How do you keep this curiosity alive into adulthood?
On the other end of the spectrum, I've mentored college grads for a while who would always complain that they never had time to do anything. I'd often ask them to open up the screen time report on their phone and they'd be shocked to discover they were spending 4 hours per day on Reddit or Netflix or something.
You have to choose to make things a priority. It's fine if you just want to relax in your spare time, of course, but the key is to be deliberate about those choices rather than letting the flow of entertainment media carry you away.
If you see it as another project, and then you see other things as entertainment and the things you do to relax, it feels like there isn't enough time.
I always envy those people that find true entertainment and enjoyment in active activities like this, instead of just passive entertainment to "rest".
I can still use the internet, but blocked most social media sites and apps, reddit/etc. My good friend has the passcode.
If I need them I can use my laptop/desktop, but it’s not as gratifying and right there. My screentime dropped by 4-5 hours per day, it’s insane. Now I get bored occasionally and (unintentionally) frustrated my phone can’t solve that, but I do read more, and work on more hobbies.
I'm not being glib. That's really the answer. Sometimes, it just isn't possible to achieve, and that is both frightening and demoralizing. Doesn't make it any less true.
When I was a kid/teenager, I worked on a lot of game console reverse engineering projects. As an adult, I wanted to get back into systems reverse engineering, but game consoles felt both too "useless" and too locked up. So, since I already had a major car hobby, I decided I'd learn how to calibrate OEM automotive engine control units - both the software reverse engineering and exploitation side and the actual mechanics and engine control side.
This turned out to be a great idea because everything fell into a cadence and a nice "proximal development" area - novel enough to be fun and engaging, but achievable enough to get hits of success. There was always something new to learn, but it was always something easy enough to be a week or two away. And there was absolutely no timeline besides my own, so it remained fun.
For me as an adult, the two major detriments to curiosity are a timeline (now it's work) and a lack of purpose (now it's just fiddling around). Setting a goal but not a timeline is what really gets me going. YMMV.
If I'm not feeling success, I aim at a more achievable goal, or pick up another project. If I'm bored, I aim bigger. And if I feel like I have no "free" time, I rethink priorities. Yes, sometimes work sucks, or an unexpected obligation is a drag, but by and large, as an adult with a marketable skill, I and I think most HN readers are blessed with pretty broad autonomy to decide what to do next.
For example: lately, I've left most of these projects behind in favor of day job security and preparing for a family life, but I don't feel stressed out or like I lack "time and energy" - my goals have just moved along as I have.
Added bonus not waking up tired. Took me about a month to adapt to this routine given I've never - ever - been a morning person in my life. And I'm still not if I go to bed late.
Completely cut out all alcohol which ensures better quality sleep - ready to start the day by working on a fun project.
I guess the best way to keep your curiosity after X years of age is to start with a really challenging project that you know has steps of micro-success. Also, find a motivating community where you can chill, rant or discuss things with. That's why I am here, you are here. You need to have some level of familiarity with the domain of knowledge so, you know what you can achieve in what amount of time. There needs to be the idea of challenge, definite success and somewhat familiarity involved.
My example: I like the old school WSB community. If you know, the tesla-short era. So, I attempted to build tooling that they will enjoy, and I will have fun discussing. My checklist of accomplishments was things I knew can be completed in a few hours. The progressive dopamine hits kept me focused. I was doing great.
Why did I fail? Community itself become not the same. Fun discussions were harder to find. Market kept going up, meaning tools that I made is worthless because anything I didn't make sense because stonks go up. A Complex JavaScript project felt harder to write than I anticipated. So again, community, challenge and knowing your limits.
If you are looking for hardware hacking motivation, these two videos blew my mind. Joe Grand, crypto wallet hacking:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dT9y-KQbqi4&t
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=icBD5PiyoyI
This channel is also good, but it is a bit wacky: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=icBD5PiyoyI
Edit: Also validation.
When WSB got extremely popular, and it was being spammed. Subreddit was flooded with spam and mods removed posts aggressively. It wasn't the place to show, "look what I made". Not blaming the mods, I just didn't belong anymore.
If you can achieve validation by yourself internally, that is incredible. But the average human needs other people to say, "Good job :)"
Finding a way to get validation from your projects is fantastic, a friendly community and likes on your YouTube videos or blogs can have immense impact.
Messed up the link. This is the correct one.
https://www.youtube.com/c/ZackFreedman
I’ve gone through long stints of neglecting hobbies, but it’s always my fault.
Lately I love building out and refining my hydroponic garden’s automation and related application. At the moment I’m expanding it to a mushroom spawning and fruiting system. I spend a few hours a week on it, but I love it. I’m awful with hardware but learn so much every week.
Your situation might be different, but I highly recommend literally forcing yourself to make the time. I know that has been my mistake over the last 15 years – never acknowledging and then accommodating the need to just do fun and interesting stuff.
I'll bet you probably have tons of energy, but also more responsibilities and even in your youth you were not that dedicated - you just had moments of intense interest and did stuff for fun without too much diligence and no other worries.
Maybe carve out some 'me time' for whatever.
And a bit of cardio really, really helps.
[1] https://www.esat.kuleuven.be/cosic/
In their spare time they are probably watching porn/netflix like everyone else.
"We are not providing exact glitch parameters"
Is this the old "lamer protection" again...
Does that mean the fault timings are limited to 4 nanosecond granularity? Is that enough to make a reliable attack?
Is anything done to sync with the startup and locking of the host clock PLL, since that would presumably vary quite a bit based on temperature?