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**This also means that aliens can reprogram all of our satellites. **
Yes if they can track them in middle of space.
It's impressive that we can still send data to the satellite. I mean you need to send the signal to the place where the satellite will be in 24 hours.
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.
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.
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.
Nearly all such satellites would have highly directional antennas, so the aliens would have to be neat earth before they could do that. Voyager is not expecting a command signal from anywhere else but Earth. The signal would have to originate not more than a fraction of a degree from Earth from Voyager's perspective.
So they just need to go behind it?
Wasn't there a documentary about this?
Star Trek the Motion Picture