• lordmauve@programming.dev
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    6 months ago

    No, it doesn’t. Commands could be authenticated using a pre-shared secret. Even public cryptography existed prior to Voyager 1’s launch (by a year).

    Based on the state of computer security at that time I would guess that’s unlikely, but then again it was the Cold War.

    Anyway, just because it is possible it doesn’t mean anyone can do it.

    • Glytch@lemmy.world
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      6 months ago

      If they had a way to affect our technology in a meaningful way at interstellar distances we can assume their understanding of mathematics is significantly more advanced than ours.

      If their understand of mathematics is that much more advanced we can assume that their knowledge of cryptography is also much more advanced.

      They’d probably be able to crack our encryption fairly easily.

    • KillingTimeItself@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      6 months ago

      you say that like aliens wouldn’t just acquire the hardware itself. If there are aliens, and they know about the probe, chances are they’re probably in a better position to fuck with it than we are. From a computing power angle (i.e. it’s easy to crack) as well as hardware level.