[Scan-DC] Hacking drone video

[Jeff Krauss]

Intercepting the drone video requires a number of pieces of knowledge.

Analog video vs. digital?
If Skygrabber was actually used, that must mean the intercepted 
signal was digital video, not analog FM video.
(The 1986 incident where "Captain Midnight" jammed and overpowered an 
HBO satellite movie distribution used FM video.)

Satellite orbital slot and transponder number?
Satellites today often use spot beam antennas but traditionally they 
have used antennas that cover wide areas ("global beam").  So it's 
plausible that anyone within the downlink antenna coverage pattern of 
the particular satellite could receive the RF signal, once knowing 
which transponder (frequency) it is on.

Frequency within the transponder?
Transponders have bandwidths of 24 or 36 MHz and the video signals of 
interest might be in separate narrowband carriers within a 
transponder, or (less likely) they might be spread across the full 
transponder bandwidth.

Transport?
Transport means things like packet size and the metadata used by a 
receiver to arrange packets in the right order, synchronize audio 
with video, and  to separate several video signals multiplexed into a 
single RF channel.  Digital TV broadcasting uses something called 
MPEG transport, but streaming video over the Internet might use 
proprietary transport such as that used by YouTube or Streambox or 
Sling.  So the receiver would need software that could support the 
transport scheme used by the drone video.

Video coding?
MPEG-2 video coding (compression) is used by broadcasters, but here 
again there are a number of video coding schemes, some proprietary, 
that are in use.

So it might not be trivial to compile all of these pieces of information.
But once compiled, it might be trivial to intercept and decode the video.




>-----------------------------
>
>Message: 2
>Date: Sun, 20 Dec 2009 11:50:12 -0500
>From: "Andrew Clegg" <w4jecom at w4je.com>
>Subject: Re: [Scan-DC] Hacking drone video
>To: <scan-dc at mailman.qth.net>
>Message-ID: <D5459556FFF84C81A9C32D982E6F83F3 at CleggHome>
>Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed; charset="iso-8859-1";
>         reply-type=original
>
>Apparently "SkyGrabber" was one software packages that was used to intercept
>the drone feeds, according to this article:
>
>http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/hacked-drones-secure-us-spy-planes/story?id=9366687
>
>The English is a bit rough, but here's a link to SkyGrabber's web site with
>a bit of info about how it works:
>
>http://www.skygrabber.com/en/skygrabber.php
>
>I don't know anything about this, but it's interesting that you can
>apparently grab files off of broadband satellite downlinks. I would have
>thought that if you sign up for satellite internet, your own data is somehow
>encrypted separately from other users. But apparently not, according to
>SkyGrabber's description:
>
>"The program intercepts data of other users, assemble in files and saves
>files in your hard drive. SkyGrabber makes your life more exciting and
>interesting."
>
>Your life probably also becomes "more exciting and interesting" when other
>people are using SkyGrabber to grab your banking data and the like.
>
>Andy
>
>
>
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