Soar into the uncharted atmosphere of space cybersecurity with Tim Fowler, as he shares his journey from terrestrial cybersecurity to the final frontier at HackSpaceCon. Explore the future of hacking satellites, the significance of 'Deorbit plans,' and the exhilarating world of building your own virtual satellite lab in this captivating episode.
Guest: Tim Fowler, Offensive Security Analyst, Black Hills Information Security [@BHinfoSecurity]
On LinkedIn | https://www.linkedin.com/in/roobixx/
On Twitter | https://twitter.com/roobixx
At HackSpaceCon | https://www.hackspacecon.com/speakers24#tim-fowler
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Hosts:
Sean Martin, Co-Founder at ITSPmagazine [@ITSPmagazine] and Host of Redefining CyberSecurity Podcast [@RedefiningCyber]
On ITSPmagazine | https://www.itspmagazine.com/itspmagazine-podcast-radio-hosts/sean-martin
Marco Ciappelli, Co-Founder at ITSPmagazine [@ITSPmagazine] and Host of Redefining Society Podcast
On ITSPmagazine | https://www.itspmagazine.com/itspmagazine-podcast-radio-hosts/marco-ciappelli
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Episode Notes
In this thought-provoking episode of On Location with Sean and Marco, we soar into the fascinating world of space cybersecurity with our esteemed guest, Tim Fowler. As a penetration tester at Black Hills Information Security, specializing in offensive security, Tim shares his intriguing transition from focusing on terrestrial cybersecurity challenges to those within the space domain.
With the space industry rapidly democratizing, he highlights the urgency for better securing our assets in space, drawing a compelling parallel with the historical oversight in the industrial control systems (ICS) sector. The conversation explores the unique challenges and opportunities space cybersecurity presents, including the emerging need for governance, risk, and compliance (GRC) frameworks tailored for space. Tim's insights shed light on the importance of secure software development and contingency planning in this critical yet exhilarating field.
Additionally, Tim enthuses about his upcoming workshop at HackSpaceCon, 'Bring Your Own Satellite' (BYOS), aimed at demystifying space cybersecurity through hands-on experience with virtual satellites. The episode also humorously touches upon the concept of 'Deorbit plans' and the fanciful notion of hacking the 'Death Star,' blending deep technical discussion with engaging speculative thought.
This episode is a must-listen for anyone curious about the nexus of cybersecurity and space exploration, offering a unique perspective on a domain that is becoming increasingly integral to our daily lives and future aspirations.
Key Questions Addressed
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Resources
HackSpaceCon: https://www.hackspacecon.com/
About Tim's "Bring Your Own Satellite" Workshop: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/roobixx_satellitecommunication-virtuallab-spacetech-activity-7168236170760404992-uY1_/
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The Art of Hacking the Final Frontier: Learn How to Bring Your Own Satellite by Crafting Virtual Labs | An On Location HackSpaceCon Coverage Conversation with Tim Fowler
Please note that this transcript was created using AI technology and may contain inaccuracies or deviations from the original audio file. The transcript is provided for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon as a substitute for the original recording, as errors may exist. At this time, we provide it “as it is,” and we hope it can be helpful for our audience.
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Tim Fowler: [00:00:00] Marco.
Sean Martin: Postcard in hand. I'm ready, ready to roll.
Marco Ciappelli: Yeah. Where are you going?
Sean Martin: Actually, that's a mistake because I don't have, I'm off to go get a postcard so I can send it off somewhere else.
Marco Ciappelli: First, first you want to get to the place. I do want to get postcard. Might
Sean Martin: take me a few days to get there.
Marco Ciappelli: Where are you going?
Sean Martin: Up there? Space. Going up there. We're going way out. I'm going to, I'm going to ride a sat, a sat cube like a, like a bronching bull at a, at a. At a pub, a country pub.
Marco Ciappelli: I want to see you do that.
Sean Martin: I know.
Marco Ciappelli: Well, let's set, let's set the stage first. All right. Event coverage with Sean Martin, which is you and Marco Ciappelli, which is me.
And, uh, we talked to people that go to talk to event. How about that?
Sean Martin: Yep. We get the pleasure to attend many events. Uh, [00:01:00] Before, during and after in person and virtually and talk to cool people doing cool things and today. That cool person is Tim Fowler. Tim, thanks for joining us.
Tim Fowler: Uh, my pleasure. Thank you for having
me.
Sean Martin: Yeah, it's very, very good to have you on. And that cool thing is, uh, hacking satellites and, uh, and connected to event hack space con, which, uh, congratulations, you were, you were You're selected to participate in that event. I know it's not always easy getting, getting accepted into those things.
Tim Fowler: Yeah. The, the CFP slog is, is, is brutal, you know?
Uh, the one thing I have to always remind myself, uh, when the inevitable rejections do come in is like, there's. It's, it's, it's tough. Like, you know, I've, I've organized conferences before where he's like, okay, we've got like 15 slots, 60 submissions, like good luck. Um, and so all the, all the conferences that I've ever gotten rejected to, uh, I try to, I don't take it personally.
It's, you know, it's like, uh, that stinks. [00:02:00] But at the same time, then you, then you see the lineup and you go. Yeah, I get it. I get it. That's that was better than mine. So, uh, yeah, I know, but it's a good
Marco Ciappelli: thing, right? I mean, doesn't it push you to do raises a little bit more? Yeah,
Tim Fowler: it does. It absolutely does. Um, I, I, I'm going to try to get into shmoo con this, uh, in 2025 as it's the last year I've tried and tried and tried and tried and I've gotten um, Very, very close.
Uh, but it just hasn't worked out. Um, but yeah, it's, it's always, it's one of those things that it's not necessarily, it's not an indictment of your research, your efforts or anything like that. It's just, Hey, we've got so many slots we have. So like we want to focus on this particular content and you know, we made a decision.
Um, and you know, it's, it's try a little bit, try harder, um, and stuff, but there's also a plethora of conferences out there that, you know, if you don't get into one, submit to submit more.
Sean Martin: And what this tells me, which I think is [00:03:00] pretty cool is that there are a lot of people looking at a lot of things that presumably a lot of them are really cool.
Like what you're doing, even if you don't make it for every single, uh, conference, there's a lot of work going on. And, uh,
Tim Fowler: Yeah, there absolutely is. And there's so many, there's so many little areas to specialize, um, within the cybersecurity realm and stuff like that. And for the longest time I've, um, spent on offensive security.
That's what I do for a day job for black Hills information, security, penetration tests, zoom, compromise and stuff like that. Um, but it's, it's been in the last couple of years that I've really taken that focus and shifted it, um, to a sector that isn't historically gotten a lot of attention, uh, from a security perspective.
And that is the, the space domain, um, you know, here in the U S we've got the, the space force now, which is, uh, really, really cool. Um, well, depending on your perspective of it. Um, and, uh, And things like that, but it's, it's like, how can I take what I know [00:04:00] in breaking into organizations and, uh, breaking networks and making things work from, uh, for my pleasure as, uh, as a penitentiary and an attacker or simulated attacker and apply that to the space domain, figuring out where The gaps are, um, across the industry where we kind of collectively have to move, um, as especially with the democratization of space, it's taking place where it's not, it's no longer just the governments and the militaries that are, uh, operating in a space apparatus.
It's Amazon and Google and pick a, you know, Every tech company that, you know, has some kind of, um, presence and influence in space and stuff we're, we're on the, the, what I call the space race 2. 0, um, whereas a, the public race to space, um, and with that is going to come the need for us to better secure, um, not only our assets in space today, but more so for the future.
Um, I, uh, liken it to the ICS realm. [00:05:00] Where, you know, 10, 20 years ago, ICS was absolutely, absolutely a thing, but nobody was really talking about it from a security perspective. And as things became more accessible, um, and, uh, technology kind of changed and things like that, we started to see is like, Hey, we've, there's something going on here, we need to take a focus on that.
And that's kind of where I met, um, in my research and efforts. From a space perspective,
Sean Martin: I love it. And it's cool. You mentioned ICS industrial control systems because I was actually bring you there. Um, so we've seen a transition from I. T. networks and securing those and certainly more more interest and focus on O.
T. slash I. C. S. Networks and systems and devices and space now getting more attention. What are some of the differences between those three? What excites you about the space one in particular?
Tim Fowler: [00:06:00] So the fundamentally, the thing that excites me about the space part is it's no different than the other two. Um, technologically there are.
Implementation differences. Uh, slightly higher latency. Um, in a lot of cases, there are operational constraints that don't exist in terrestrial networks or ICS implementations and things like that. Um, so there it's, it is a unique environment to be able to operate, but fundamentals don't change. Um, the way we architect things properly.
Um, it's just more about we're now starting to, to, to dial in the microscope, um, on the space, uh, segments and, and, uh, vehicles and things like that to go, Hey, we really need to start looking, doing the stuff we've been doing over here. We need to start doing this now. Um, and [00:07:00] that's the. thing for me is that, um, and the thing that I actually enjoy most when I'm talking about space and, and, uh, training people and things, it's like, I've got a slide in a, in a, uh, my training class that it's, it's a, um, multi tier web application for, uh, like network diagram and it's a satellite and with all the subsystems and they're the exact same diagram.
It's just thinking about it in what we know, take what we know and apply it to something that we don't know. And what we started to figure out is that the terminology might be different. The actual technologies might different, but from an architecture from an approach is the exact same. Um, and that's really the thing that makes me excited.
It's like, hey, it's not. It's not this some foreign abstract concept that you have to learn. Yeah, there are a lot of kind of abstract things that you're going to have to learn from, from the space side of things. But if you can, we [00:08:00] can put it into concepts that we already understand, it makes it much more approachable.
And, and, and then you can learn the details as you go. As long as you understand those fundamentals.
Marco Ciappelli: Very cool. So I'm not going to wear my, uh, Society hat right now because I had plenty of conversation about, you know, how it's space influence in everyday life and GPS and many, many, many more. I want to go into how do you one day get up, put your pants on and hack a set, right?
So you said things like, No, no. I mean, I'm getting the specific following on what you were saying, meaning the, the way to look at things is about the same, the methodology is about the same, but the tools are different. And I'm thinking like you with an M radio, you can talk to the International Space Station.
There was a video the other day with a guy with an antenna, like an old TV antenna. Mm-Hmm. that, I don't know if it's true or not, but [00:09:00] apparently it connected to this.
Tim Fowler: A hundred percent true. A hundred percent true. Alright, so good. Yeah, I love,
Marco Ciappelli: I love that kind of. So what, what do you need to actually execute what you're doing?
Tim Fowler: Yeah. So you're, you're going to need, and in most cases, as I said, you're going to need a lot of the same skills that you already have if you're going to approach. So if I, if, if. If I tell you I'm going to hire you as a penetration tester to breach my organization, and we have this super secret software that that's the target for you.
Okay, well, there's fundamentally nothing different than, hey, uh, I want you to breach. Uh, me and we happen to be running a satellite that has our secret sauce, uh, software and you're gonna have to use your same kind of skill sets from, uh, you know, uh, from an OSINT perspective, um, to just, you know, be able to, to learn as much as you can do in all the reconnaissance efforts and things like that.
Um, At some point in time, it's going to take a, a, [00:10:00] some, some mechanism of a breach, uh, whether it's, uh, through social engineering, um, or missing patches or anything like that. Uh, credential, uh, misuse, um, is, is a common one. We saw that in the K8 set hack, uh, on the, the eve of the Ukrainian invasion where, um, uh, Credentials were compromised and were used in an unauthorized way.
Um, and so, um, from that perspective, it's, it's, I'm literally going to treat it just like I would like a normal penetration test and stuff where the complexity start to change is when we actually get into the communication. Um, the, the system of actually interacting with the satellite, understanding what the protocols are, understanding what the packet structure looks like, the command structure, the telemetry structure, that's where it does start to get a little bit different.
And you, you do have to understand kind of at a specialized level, um, that, um, there [00:11:00] are intricacies and things like that. Um, the, the ability to reverse engineer firmware. Uh, looking for those vulnerabilities and stuff like that for potential buffer overflows and command injections and stuff. These are all things we do in CTFs, um, and stuff like that.
Not so much real world, unfortunately. Um, but it's still going to, it's still going to be the same kind of tactile approach. Um, as far as, you know, you were talking about like signals and stuff, like SDRs have been absolutely. pivotal, um, for, um, uh, how they've, uh, impacted our ability to interact with space systems.
Um, I, I did a webcast a couple of last week, I think, um, on software defined radios for space signal analysis and talked about in 2019, um, the SpaceX Falcon nine, uh, Um, had was, was sending unencrypted telemetry and video feeds, uh, to the ground from the rocket and some very intrepid hackers were able to [00:12:00] demodulate that and decode that in stream.
Um, the SpaceX Falcon nine. Live video from I think it was the stage two liquid oxygen tank camera. Um, and then three weeks later, within three weeks, all communication or all telemetry was encrypted, which was cool. But that was a capability of software defined radio with. Just signal processing. Um, and a lot of that aspect can happen offline.
Once you capture those initial signals, it's just a matter of brute force, brute force and determination to eventually we're going to be able to reverse engineer those, decode those and demodulate those appropriately. To be able to see what's there. Um, and once you're, if you're dealing with the unencrypted communications, now the whole gambit is there.
Um, and there are reasons that, that, that can happen. are unencrypted, especially in space systems. Um, there are reasons that they have to be encrypted and how you manage that from an operational standpoint, from a mission perspective is one [00:13:00] of those constraints that, that I talked about, like, that's kind of unique to space because we have this whole thing called ionizing radiation, um, that can cause.
Absolute havoc, uh, to your, uh, memory, uh, on, on board. And so we use specialized hardware to, to, to try to reduce the impact of ionizing radiation. But what happens if you have your encryption keys sitting in, in a flash memory and experiences a bit flip? Your communication is gone, um, which means you now have to figure out how you're going to restore communication.
You better, you're going to have to fall back to unencrypted communication at some point in time, which means you now have a whole decision tree that you have to make, make of what, um, what are we going to limit? Hey, we're on open comms. Uh, we only, the only thing we can do is reestablish encrypted comms.
We don't want to have full control of our satellite just sitting there going, it's like, Oh, you Do a barrel roll, enter, and all [00:14:00] of a sudden, you know, it starts, it starts barreling off in orbit.
Sean Martin: Remember, I'm riding this thing now.
Tim Fowler: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, hold on. It's going to get real interesting. But yeah, and so, fundamentally, again, it's the same type of stuff that we look at from web applications, from fat, Uh, uh, desktop application, uh, reverse engineering and binary stuff like that.
It's a network protocols and stuff like that. It's just, they're done in a very specific, very strategic way that we're not necessarily used to kind of approaching from a, From a general cyber security perspective, we're not used to like actually looking at packet definitions and defining each single bit in a packet and what it means.
Sean Martin: So this might seem like a lame question and that's because I'm lame and I don't know everything. Thankfully, I like to continue the same. Um, but see, you mentioned software defined radios. I think over [00:15:00] to look over to software defined networks and a lot of stuff you just described was around. Software and the communications between software and systems.
But I'm just running the role of software here. Um, has it increased?
Tim Fowler: Software is it's it's yes. So software is always been. A thing. Um, well, not always Sputnik one, it really wasn't software. It was just all integrated circuits, uh, are not, uh, not even integrated circuits, just circuits do it purely electrically, uh, through signal processing stuff.
But the modern day, the modern satellite is. It is a flying hunk of chips and processors and stuff that is to support the software. It's software is the key. Um, it is the biggest weakness. If we look at his historical, um, events, even into, um, recent moon landings and things like that for different, [00:16:00] uh, countries in the state, it fundamentally has come down to the failure, success and failure is dependent on software.
Um, because the software side of things is really, really, really difficult. Inherently, don't throw out cyber security, just getting the software to function and predict and to account for every possible variable and think that in of itself is a challenge. And in doing so, that's typically where you may introduce vulnerabilities and things like that from a cyber security perspective, because we're having to account for every possible state.
In iteration and processes, and we're designing PID controllers to be able to, to, to manage our movements and predict. And like, it's, it's very complex systems, uh, from a software perspective, um, that takes a lot, a lot of thought, a lot of, a lot of execution. Um, it has, has to be well designed and it has to be fault tolerant.
Um, you talked about software defined networking, like the new. I want to [00:17:00] say new, uh, SDR, uh, in satellite applications has been around since the nineties. Um, really it's this concept of software defined satellite where you have a satellite bus, a generic satellite bus that has all the bells and whistles that you necessarily need.
You can go buy this off the shelf from a, from a vendor or something like that. And then you just, you define your entire mission. You define your entire capability. Purely in software. Um, so software has, has always been, um, kind of present and been the, the fundamental issue. Uh, as far as like when things go wrong, there are cases where it's, it is hardware that fails, but more the times than not, it's going to be a software issue.
Um, and oftentimes software issues can lead to hardware failures, uh, when things get out of bounds and, and stuff like that. So at the heart of it, yeah. Secure software development life cycle is fundamental. Contingency [00:18:00] planning in your software is fundamental. Um, and, um, yeah, it's, it's, that's, that's where, that's where the heart of everything is going to be, is in software.
Marco Ciappelli: I have a question, and I know we're going to go into it. I'm sorry. It's not, it's totally, I'm fascinated by all of this. I, I love space and, and. And everything that come with it. So my question is following a conversation we just had with the ISAC, right? Sean space ISAC. And We were talking about the complexity that now it's way more than what it used to be when it was all military, like it was national control.
I mean, the, the, the, the, the race to space wasn't with commercial entity. Now you mentioned that we got commercial entity. We're looking at, uh, going just for a trip to space, hotel in space. So the futuristic [00:19:00] hat on and, uh, What, what do you see it coming? I mean, first of all, I see a lot of people need it to do the job that you do.
That's for sure. And, uh, and how is, uh, these commercial versus, you know, national effort and, and government coming all together and standards, um, it'd be a big mess. That's that's my guess.
Tim Fowler: So, uh, yes. Um, and there's the potential for chaos is always there. Um, the one thing that I that I will say, um, in the research that I've done, and this is, uh, backed up by some other people's research and things like that, that, uh, typically the bigger and the more complex the project is, Uh, or the mission in space, the more likely that mission is to adhere to establish standards, which is good.
Um, now there are some caveats to that, depending [00:20:00] on you nations, uh, that you're, you're talking about and things like that, but there are, uh, some very, very robust and comprehensive, uh, recommendations and standards. Uh, most of them put out by, um, an organization called CCSDS, the. Committee Consultative Committee for Space Systems, Data Systems.
Um, uh, I just got a CCSDS, um, that have a, I mean, they, if you want some very difficult reading, go read these blue books and green books and things like that. Um, there are, uh, frameworks, uh, even from, from. That's in recommendations and stuff on how to secure infrastructure, both in spacecraft, both on the ground station communication links.
There are a lot of these kind of, uh, pushed for these standards. Cause one of the things that, that standards help us do is it helps us have interoperability, um, and things because if I'm more, let's say I'm working for space company, not X, not. Base X, but, uh, space B. And then I go work for, you know, [00:21:00] green origin over here.
Um, I don't want to, I don't necessarily want to have to learn all new stuff. Uh, because it's like, Oh, we're doing this super proprietary, things like that. No, uh, standardizations will absolutely help. Um, And we're going to see, uh, I think more and more, uh, this kind of, uh, framework structures that, that, uh, people are getting on board with and being like, okay, here's how we're going to do this.
Um, because it keeps things consistent and it keeps things stable, um, in terms of, you know, not having a bunch of competing, uh, frameworks and, and things like that. And so I, I think that's, I think we're gonna, uh, we're gonna head there. Um, effectively I call it GRC in space, um, governance, risk and compliance.
Um, And there's going to be a need, a big push for that because we're already see it like in a great example is the space debris. Um, it's a big, it's an issue. Um, we hear a lot about it. Everybody's afraid of the Kepler syndrome. Uh, Chrysler. I'm sorry. Chrysler syndrome. Um, [00:22:00] and, um, And, uh, where, you know, chain reaction satellites, hitting satellites and debris and stuff like that.
But like, so, like, 1 of the things we have to do now, um, if, like, if we want to launch, uh, like a cube sat into space, we have to have, like, a 10 year D orbit plan. Um, and we have to be able to show that. Like we can, we can meet that so that, you know, within, within a 10 year period that that satellite will no longer be a threat to anybody else and stuff.
And just taking some of those kind of regulatory compliance, um, steps to, to making sure that we're being good stewards within space because nobody owns space. Um, and, and, and so did you say Tim?
Sean Martin: Sorry, did, did you say Deorbit plan?
Tim Fowler: Yeah, a deorbit plan.
Sean Martin: So, so taking it out of orbit, does that, does that mean actually retrieving it or nos or?
Tim Fowler: No, the, the, the goal is to deorbit it into the atmosphere so that it burns up. Um, but you want to make sure that you do that in a safe manner. Uh, with cube SATs and things [00:23:00] like these nano and pico satellites, that's, it's much less of a, of a risk or a burden, a thing like that. It's more one of you. You're thinking if you're wanting to deorbit, you know, a 2000 ton GPS satellite, that's a lot of mass.
Um, and you want to do it in a way that when you still have control over the satellite, because if you, it's like, yep, what we've ran, we ran out of batteries. We ran out of propulsion. Okay, let's just hope it, you know, it'll, uh, gravity will win eventually. But what is the carnage that it could cause on the way down?
Um, especially when you're not able to maintain your orbits and stuff like that. So it's just a, you know, uh, being able to, to deorbit safely. There's, uh, entire companies that are dealing with, uh, deescalation of potential events because of collisions. Um, you know, they're tracking all of these satellites and, you know, Hey, your, your own course to, you know, it may be.
200 orbits from now or something like that, but you could potentially collide with [00:24:00] another, uh, satellite and being able to deescalate, figure out who's going to move and stuff like that. There's a whole entire industry of just cooperation in space waste management. Yeah, waste. Yeah. Yeah. Uh, yeah. You just set your, you set your little dumpster bag out and they'll come.
Yeah. Nope. There, I mean, there are actually missions, uh, um, to, um, uh, help clean up space debris, um, and, and man, especially the larger chunks. There was a mission that was scheduled, I think January of this year. Um, where the original target was about 150 kilogram mass. Um, but it got hit by a piece of space debris last year, and now it's 150 kilograms of much smaller chunks of debris.
And they're like, yeah, we can't go and recover that. Um, but yeah, there's, there's cleanups efforts. And I mean, there's a whole like that people don't realize just how incredibly diverse the space industry really is.
Sean Martin: So I want to get to your, your [00:25:00] session at hackspace con and this is. I mean, it's a super cool thing.
It's going to touch a lot of people beyond HackspaceCon, I hope. Um, so you talked about frameworks. Thanks for bringing that up, Marco. You talked about software, which leads me to, well, the frameworks say that there's some openness to what's happening. And with software, it makes it much more accessible as well, in terms of it's easier to get.
Software than sometimes getting some hardware and some of the hardware you can potentially virtualize with software. So it's becoming more accessible to folks to actually see what's going on and get in and explore and have some fun. And that's what your talk at hack space on is all about, right? So that's, that's exactly getting a system up and running and having some fun.
Yeah, that's. What's going on there?
Tim Fowler: Yeah. So, um, I'm really excited. Uh, so hackspace. com we're going to be debuting, [00:26:00] um, this workshop called bios bring your own satellite. Um, and it's, uh, effectively a, uh, kind of step by step process for building out a virtual satellite lab. Um, and the nice thing about it is where it's primarily focused on the virtual side of stuff as you kind of talked about, like the, uh, being able to simulate and emulate things, uh, through software, um, gives us the ability to go hands on without spending tremendous amount of money and, and just being able to play.
Uh, but the, the, the workshop just kind of walks, uh, attendees through. A few of brief introduction to like some of the concepts and stuff like, Hey, you kind of need to know what this means, um, to be able to actually do it. And then we went through and go through. We deploy, uh, an open source mission, uh, control solution, um, that it allows us to, to, to manage our spacecraft both, uh, and, and send commands and telemetry, um, uh, to, and from the spacecraft will be deploying.
Not one, um, [00:27:00] At least two, possibly three, uh, virtual satellites, um, of various complexities and things like that. One will be based off of NASA's core flight system, which is a, uh, flight proven flight software, um, that's open source. Um, so you can kind of go play around with like some real stuff that has heritage of flying space.
Um, but I also have, uh, some custom, uh, virtual satellites that I've built for the purpose of this workshop, uh, to kind of take that, uh, experience. Um, uh, the, the barrier of entry and drop it down conceptually. Um, it's like, it's not, um, the most technically accurate representation of a, um, uh, a satellite and stuff, but it's foundationally.
Um, and so where it's like everything from a command structure, maybe packed into, uh, uh, bits and bytes or doing string based commands and stuff like that. So you can visually see it and understand it and stuff. Um, but then, uh, the last part of that is like kind of laying out a little framework [00:28:00] is like how you can go and do your own, uh, expand it and build it.
Um, but also the. Other aspect to that is that you can then also integrate physical hardware into the virtual environment. Um, talk a little bit about that at the end, um, because there are some open source, um, uh, like CubeSats, uh, simulators that you can go and build and buy kits and stuff like that of how you can then, you know, Take into going off the virtual, actually do it on the, on the real hardware.
Um, and that's where that's, that's, we're going to get, it's, it's, we've got a lot to go through. It's a very short workshop timeframe, um, and hex space. And that's, I'm, I'm just eternally grateful that I get to do it. Uh, they had a lot of workshops to try to pack into a, to a single day. So we only got about an hour and 15 to go through it.
Um, but which is, is. Actually works out well because that means there'll be a lot of, um, additional steps that, that attendees can take after the fact, uh, to, to be able to continue to [00:29:00] learn.
Marco Ciappelli: Wow. Last question is the death star still unknockable?
Tim Fowler: Um, which version of the death star? Uh, I mean, it's, I mean, let's be honest, if we're still going to continue to leave gaping two meter holes. Uh, and the side of our, you know, star base. Uh, yeah, probably it's, it's going to be hardware
Marco Ciappelli: is an, is an X wing there.
Tim Fowler: So yeah, I mean, yeah, I mean, but maybe some government requisition or something, you know, check gov deals or something like that and see if we can find, um, uh, uh, uh, uh, a used X wing for a reasonable price. Check your local swamps. Um,
Marco Ciappelli: Joe jokes apart. This was fascinating. Thank you so much for. Stopping by and, uh, and, uh, hope we can get more of this conversation.
Tim Fowler: Yeah, thank you. Thank you. So thank you so much for having me. Uh, it's been a blast. And, um, I, you know, I'd love to talk about the societal [00:30:00] aspects of space because that's the part that people, we don't quite understand, um, how reliant we are on space as an ecosystem just to do our, just to function in our daily lives.
Um, and it's only going to get better. It's going to get, we're going to become even more reliant on that in the future. Um, in the very near future too. So I would love to come back.
Marco Ciappelli: Yep. Let's have that conversation.
Sean Martin: Uh, I'll be, I'll be happy to hear that one. And, uh, in the meantime, I, I'm not ready to build my own.
Death star, but, uh, you have to start somewhere.
Tim Fowler: Yeah, you start, start with a simulated CubeSat. There you go. That's, that's my, that's my recommendation for everybody. Um, and so, um, following the, the actual, uh, workshop, uh, there is going to be a fairly sizable open source release of most of the content for those that people that can't go to the workshop, there will also be [00:31:00] other offerings of the workshop for in person.
throughout the year. One will be in the summer. Uh, it'll be a live stream, um, in conjunction with Black Hills Information Security and anti siphon training. Uh, there'll be a live in person workshop at Wild West Hacking Fest, um, in, uh, South Dakota in October. And officially, unofficially, it will be at the Aerospace Village at DEF CON.
Sean Martin: Oh, cool. And then we will be there with, uh, with Henry and, uh, Steve and crew.
Tim Fowler: So yeah, they're, they've, uh, they kind of got excited about all this and they're like, come, come, come, come. And I'm like, okay, we'll come. I can see
Marco Ciappelli: Henry and Steve
get excited about that.
Sean Martin: Love it. All right. So the session. First off, it's at HackspaceCon, April 10th through the 13th, uh, Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
Tim's session is a new ethos, a journey into the why, how, and who cares of building a simulated CubeSat lab. It's on April 12th at noon local time here and there [00:32:00] in Florida. In which room? The millennium Falcon room. There you go.
Tim Fowler: Just, uh, yeah, so that that's my presentation. And then the actual workshop is the next day.
Um, so I'm doing a talk in a workshop and, uh, the workshop bios, bring your own satellite that will be, um, on the 13th and I think 1. 1 p. m. I believe. Um, and I don't remember which room it is, but it's all, it's all up on the calendar. Um, I'm super excited about HackspaceCon. It is going to be an incredible event.
If you can come out, uh, be a part of the community, you're not going to regret it.
Sean Martin: I can see that. And, uh, grateful to have you on, Tim. Thanks for doing all what you do. All that you do and, uh, paying it forward with that session and the workshop. And of course, everybody listening and watching, take, take some time there.
If you can, if you're interested, go, go and learn and participate with the community and, uh, follow Marco and I, as we [00:33:00] continue our journey, covering different events and conferences, many of which Tim mentioned, we'll be at as well, either in person or virtually. Uh, so we hope to see you all there. Thanks, Tim.
Thanks, Marco. Thanks everybody for watching.
Tim Fowler: See you everybody. Thanks gentlemen.