this post was submitted on 14 Oct 2025
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326
Satellites Are Leaking the World’s Secrets: Calls, Texts, Military and Corporate Data (www.wired.com)
submitted 2 days ago by schizoidman@lemmy.zip to c/technology@lemmy.world
22 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

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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[–] vacuumflower@lemmy.sdf.org 32 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (3 children)

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

[–] FE80@lemmy.world 15 points 1 day ago (1 children)

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

[–] knightly@pawb.social 10 points 1 day ago (1 children)

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

[–] BD89@lemmy.sdf.org 2 points 11 hours ago (1 children)

Is it illegal to do this? I mean they aren't being used anymore so no harm no foul right?

[–] knightly@pawb.social 2 points 8 hours ago

The legality is questionable, but just listening is harmless.

[–] aBundleOfFerrets@sh.itjust.works 35 points 2 days ago (1 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.

[–] vacuumflower@lemmy.sdf.org 4 points 2 days ago (1 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.

[–] Arkthos@pawb.social 20 points 2 days ago (1 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.

[–] vacuumflower@lemmy.sdf.org 0 points 2 days ago (1 children)

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.

[–] Arkthos@pawb.social 5 points 2 days ago

Oh. Yeah most bands used by satellites are also regulated.

[–] Theoriginalthon@lemmy.world 8 points 1 day 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