Technologically innovative rebels C/P from Royce News:::::// 2007-06-11 Sri Lanka's Tamil Tigers top off their innovations by hijacking a satellite in orbit over the Indian Ocean, sparking fears of a more advanced phase of rebel warfare.
Washington, DC-based Intelsat Ltd is the world's largest provider of geosynchronous satellite services with 52 satellites in orbit. In March, Sri Lanka raised the issue at the 31st Extraordinary Meeting of International Telecommunications Satellite Organization in Paris with Intelsat Ltd CEO David McGlade. On 10 April, Sri Lanka's ambassador to the US, Bernard Goonetileke, met with Intelsat officials, including Senior Vice President in charge of customer operations and engineering David Synkfield to demand that the company take immediate action to halt the broadcasts by the National Television of Tamil Eelam and Pulikalin Kural ("Voice of Tigers") radio transmissions.
"Intelsat does not tolerate terrorist or others operating illegally on its satellites. Since we first learned of the LTTE's signal piracy, we have been actively pursuing a number of technical alternatives to halt the transmissions. We are clear in our resolve to ending this terrorist organization's unauthorized use of our satellite," Intelsat General Counsel Phillip Spector told the media in a press statement.
Intelsat has five high-performance beams covering Europe, Southern Africa, the Middle East, India and Southeast Asia. The LTTE's NTT network was a free channel in Asia while the TTN was an encrypted paid subscription channel in Europe, where the LTTE used the service provider Globecast, a subsidiary of France Telecom.
Intelsat technicians are still trying to figure out how the LTTE pulled off its technological coup. Intelsat-12 has 30 main transponders, of which eight were dedicated to the Indian subcontinent, and 11 backup transponders. Compounding Intelsat's woes is the fact that if transponders on a bent-pipe satellite are not being fully utilized and contain some "empty" space, the void could be identified by using a spectrum analyzer in conjunction with a satellite-receiving dish at a cost of only a few hundred dollars for hardware and software.
Locating the hijacker is difficult, as the uplink signal is transmitted in a highly directed beam, undetectable at ground level unless you are extremely close to the covert transmitter.
Following the revelations of the LTTE broadcasts the French authorities moved quickly; French police raided the TTN's studio in Paris and Globecast confirmed to the Sri Lankan Embassy in France that on 2 May it had halted TTN broadcasts on its Eutelsat satellite, which had 22,000 subscribers generating €330,000 monthly.
And of late, it seems that just about anyone, rebel or not, can dabble in satellite piracy. In Garden City, Michigan, Extreme Media is advertising its new "Satellite Piracy" video on its website, available for US$15, along with two other "Hacking Digital Satellite Systems" films, proudly proclaiming that its new video "includes a complete discussion of all the latest piracy methods being used for DIRECTV and DISH Network, as well as Canadian and Caribbean systems. Everything you ever wanted to know about satellite television piracy is included in this video."
For $15 a wack, I'll form a bogus company and provide a video on "DISCUSSION" of hacking DTV too..LOL...hell, we can discuss anything..what a scam that place is!