Leak From the Sky: It Turns Out a Lot of Satellite Data Is Unencrypted

Submitted ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩ by ⁨Delta_V@lemmy.world⁩ to ⁨technology@lemmy.world⁩

https://www.pcmag.com/news/leak-from-the-sky-it-turns-out-a-lot-of-satellite-data-is-unencrypted

…the recovered data included user SMS and voice call contents, user internet traffic, and cellular network signaling protocols… the team was able to collect unencrypted satellite data “from sea vessels owned by the US military,” along with traffic from multiple organizations within the Mexican government and military, including personnel records, narcotics activity, and military asset tracking…

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mesamunefire@piefed.social ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
Its an open secret to those in the satellite tracking community. If you ever go n satnogs you can even get a 25/50$ USB RTLSDR and start tracking the old satellites today. Its a fun hobby.

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- peoplebeproblems@midwest.social ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
  Wait no actually this could be life saving. Is is capable of picking up all meteorological signals?
  
  I think the lowest bands are 8.3khz. oh WOW we could potentially use it to get Astronomical data too in case the regime cuts us off from that!
  
  9ooooooh boy
  
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  - mesamunefire@piefed.social ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
    Yep. Its part of the hobby. There’s a raspberry pi version. Just look up satnogs. Its a website.
    
    Also there are citizen weather setups. They are not as good as the national weather service, but in places that don’t get a lot of coverage (some parts of Wyoming for example) they are great. They don’t use SATs but in theory could use that data as well. This is where my knowledge gets murky as I only know about them in passing. There’s kits online and on tindie (maker website).
    
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- peoplebeproblems@midwest.social ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
  So I could potentially be interested in some satellites that have capabilities that are not defined, and one of these things can read the coms?
  
  Seems like a problem
  
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  - mesamunefire@piefed.social ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
    Yes and no.
    
    For communications sure. For general entertainmwnt or old GOES satelite data, its fun and educational. I got a really giid picture of one of the NOAA sats when the californis wildfires were picjing up smd you coukd see the smoke stretch all the way to canada.
    
    There’s a guy on YouTube that regularly shoes what n orth k orea is watching on their TV channels. Its fascinating.
    
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einkorn@feddit.org ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
Yes, we have stuff like HTTPS nowadays, but I think that given a certain importance of an application, transfered data should be encrypted on the application level as well.

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- sexy_peach@feddit.org ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
  https doesn’t hide metadata!
  
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  - Redjard@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
    Steadily improving. I set up my webserver with ech which is the next step, hiding even the domain. A solid chunk of the internet uses cloudflare as an intermediary, which also has ech and only leaves “someone connected to some cloudflare page at this time for that amount of data”.
    
    As more places roll out deep package inspection, I’m sure in due time more randomization for package sizes will follow, making even the amount of data uncertain.
    
    Most web metadata is at the http layer anyway and has always been hidden by https.
    
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DarrinBrunner@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
So, they only encrypted what was being intercepted by the masses, that is, TV? Sounds right.

I suppose there are people around the world who still have one of those big dishes in their backyard and are listening in on everything.

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PhatalFlaw@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
Shoutout Save It For Parts on Youtube who has been decoding all sorts of satellite data for years.

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- mesamunefire@piefed.social ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
  He’s awesome.
  
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sommerset@thelemmy.club ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
Huh. They just realized that? I’ve been digging in sat streams as far back as 20 years ago. Nothing changed

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echodot@feddit.uk ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
Yeah. Everybody already knows this but also it’s fine because it’s mostly just weather satellites. It’s not as if spice satellites are unencrypted.

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- BlackAura@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
  
  spice satellites
  
  The spice must flow.
  
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