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Satellites Are Leaking the World’s Secrets: Calls, Texts, Military and Corporate Data (www.wired.com)
submitted 1 year ago by to c/technology@lemmy.world
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https://archive.md/QMvAI

With just $800 in basic equipment, researchers found a stunning variety of data—including thousands of T-Mobile users’ calls and texts and even US military communications—sent by satellites unencrypted.

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[–] 30 points 1 year ago (10 children)

There must be some additional steps. Otherwise those satellites would be overloaded by hooligans.

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  • [–] 34 points 1 year ago (4 children)

    Nope, lol. These suckers are fucking ancient. There isn’t any processing, you can’t overload something that isn’t actually reading the data or using a protocol.

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  • [–] 4 points 1 year ago (3 children)

    They still use energy, no? To relay signals on another frequency. That should come from somewhere, and also the more different signals, the more noise. And without their input frequency being regulated, there must be lots of noise.

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  • [–] 18 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    You can do this same attack on any antenna, noise can't be protocolled away. Repeating both signal and noise is a downside to bent-pipe setups.

    Input frequencies are regulated via band-pass filters.

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  • [–] 0 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    I'm not talking about technical things, just that IRL on regulated frequencies one can do something because people using it for bullshit are legally prosecuted. Depends on wavelength, of course.

    But OK, now I think I get what you are talking about.

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  • [–] 16 points 1 year ago (3 children)

    Someone tell me how to join team "satellite hooligan".

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  • [–] 10 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    You can get a cheap SDR for a few bucks and an antenna for about the same. The rest is software and ingenuity.

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  • [–] 6 points 1 year ago

    Well the biggest steps I'm going to assume are having a satellite dish, knowing where to point it, knowing what to send, then hope that someone is listening. Much easier for a hooligan to throw a rock at someone or find a can of spray paint

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