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Billions of Calls Exposed Via Unencrypted Satellites
A team of six academics found that unencrypted satellite broadcasts expose sensitive military, corporate, and personal data to anyone with consumer-grade equipment, affecting over 2,700 users in one session.
- On Monday, a team of six academics from the University of Maryland and the University of California published a paper finding geosynchronous satellites broadcast sensitive data unencrypted, interceptable with about $600 of equipment after a three-year study from a San Diego university roof observing 39 satellites.
- Cost barriers have left many satellite links unencrypted, the team said, as encryption is often too costly for remote/off‑grid receivers and no single stakeholder manages GEO satellite communications.
- During a nine‑hour recording session, they observed US calls, texts, in‑flight Wi‑Fi, utility infrastructure traffic, military and law enforcement communications, and unencrypted vessel data, using a $180 satellite dish, $195 motor, and $230 tuner card.
- After notifying affected companies, the researchers found rescans showed T‑Mobile, Walmart and KPU had deployed fixes, but details on other affected providers remain withheld.
- With agencies likely exploiting links, researchers will publish `Don't Look Up` on Github, warning `These signals are just being broadcast to over 40 percent of the Earth at any point in time`.
39 Articles
39 Articles
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The skies above us are teeming with satellites. The latest figures estimate there are over 12,000 satellites currently active, with thousands more defunct craft left to decay in orbit. All that activity has caused numerous complications for astronomers and researchers alike, interfering with radio telescopes with “unintended” radiation leaks. Now it turns out that they’re also contributing to a massive leak of personal, corporate, and government…
Researchers find a startlingly cheap way to steal your secrets from space
How much private and sensitive data can you get by pointing $600 worth of satellite equipment at the sky?Quite a bit, it turns out. Researchers from the University of Maryland and the University of California, San Diego say they were able to intercept sensitive data from the U.S. military, telecommunications firms, major businesses and organizations by passively scanning and collecting unencrypted data from the satellites responsible for beaming…
Satellites Are Leaking the World’s Secrets - WhoWhatWhy
Satellites Are Leaking the World’s Secrets — Calls, Texts, Military and Corporate Data (Maria) The author writes, “Satellites beam data down to the Earth all around us, all the time. So you might expect that those radio communications would be encrypted to prevent any snoop with a satellite dish from accessing the torrent of secret information raining from the sky. You would, to a troubling degree, be wrong. Roughly half of geostationary satell…
Satellites Have Been Leaking Sensitive Data From T-Mobile and Others, Research Reveals
Calls, texts and information from military and corporate accounts were exposed and unencrypted, according to a report. T-Mobile has since fixed the problem, but others have not.
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