NASA remotely reprogramming Voyager 1 also means that aliens can reprogram all of our satellites.
This is assuming that they would know and understand the code. Also, that nothing is encrypted but I guess encryption can be broken.
I would doubt they would have encrypted anything on the probe back in 1977 when it launched.
The ultimate security by obscurity. Do you have a 30m antenna? Can you point it exactly at the space ship with almost no error? Do you know what it’s code and protocols are? OK, please reprogram Voyager
Stick with the plan.
OP says reprogram all of the satellites. So I would assume that would include the modern ones with encryption as well.
I cannot confirm or deny any such arrangement exists with an existing alien species.
Aliens would need to understand the systems.
I mean… Can you reprogram Voyager 1? We have a bunch of random polyhedrons from the ancient world and we don’t even know what the hell they are. Our stuff could be so ancient compared to an alien that they are just as baffled by it as we are of those polyhedrons.
They might not even be able to understand the simple pictorial instructions for playing the audio on the golden record Voyager carries.
There’s a novel titled Glasshouse, by Charles Stross, where members of a far future civilization sign up to live in a simulated mid-20th century town. At one point the protagonist disassembles a flashlight and discovers that it’s just a flashlight-shaped case containing a small wormhole whose other end is in close orbit around a star. No one knew how to make an LED or incandescent bulb, or understood enough about early electronic components to hook one up to a switch and a battery. It was easier to make a wormhole generator and stick it in a metal tube.
As a member of the deep state, I can confirm this is true.
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