[bigjimmyk3]

I have a friend who chases satellite contacts, and it's a fascinating hobby -- as noted the contact windows are pretty short, and you have to know how to adjust your freqs within the window to account for Doppler effect.

The upside is that you can work most satellites with a standard handheld on frequencies available (in the US) to technician licensees, e.g. the base license class.

[Simulacra]

In theory couldn't anyone try to hack it, then?

[ganoushoreilly]

Yes, if you have the time, knowledge, and appropriate equipment it's possible. There was even a time where if you had the right information you could steal bandwidth on some commercial sats in the early 2ks. We're not talking a lot of bandwidth but it was possible.

Now there are a few people that use repurposed dishes to catch the downstream from various satellites but that's more collection than active hacking so to speak. There was also a huge market for dish / direcTv cards (i'm sure it still exists) as well.

Here's a few presentations from BH/DC from around that time.

https://www.blackhat.com/presentations/bh-dc-09/Laurie/Black...

https://www.blackhat.com/presentations/bh-dc-10/Nve_Leonardo...