New Space and Tech

How a Team From Italy Won the First Hack-a-Sat Satellite Hacking Contest

By Jon Kelvey
SpaceRef
September 1, 2023
Filed under , , , ,
How a Team From Italy Won the First Hack-a-Sat Satellite Hacking Contest
Members of mHACKeroni accept their prize for winning Hack-a-Sat.
Image credit: Sarah McNulty, Space Systems Command.

Lots of strange and disconcerting things have been hacked at the annual DEF CON hacker conference in Las Vegas since it began in 1993. Smart home devices, voting machines, and a Jeep Cherokee in motion on the highway, for instance.

But The 2023 DEF CON featured something new and unusual even by conference standards: a capture-the-flag-type contest between five teams of hackers to see who could hack and take control of a satellite while it was in orbit around the Earth.

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Jon Kelvey

Jon Kelvey is a science writer covering space, aerospace, and biosciences. His work has appeared in publications such as Air & Space Magazine, Earth and Space News, Slate, and Smithsonian in addition to SpaceRef.