Leak From the Sky: It Turns Out a Lot of Satellite Data Is Unencrypted
(www.pcmag.com)
from Delta_V@lemmy.world to technology@lemmy.world on 16 Oct 11:28
https://lemmy.world/post/37425108
from Delta_V@lemmy.world to technology@lemmy.world on 16 Oct 11:28
https://lemmy.world/post/37425108
…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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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.
https doesn’t hide metadata!
And not all data is http(s)
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.
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.
Shoutout Save It For Parts on Youtube who has been decoding all sorts of satellite data for years.
He’s awesome.
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.
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
Yes and no.
For communications sure. For general entertainment or old GOES satelite data, its fun and educational. I got a really good picture of one of the NOAA sats when the California wildfires were picking up and you could see the smoke stretch all the way to canada.
There’s a guy on YouTube that regularly shows what n orth k orea is watching on their TV channels. Its fascinating.
Does DPRK really have a TV satellite or is that guy just capturing analog (yes, analog) PAL or DVB-T2 terrestrial signals that make it to South Korea?
I’m not sure its been many years since I’ve looked.
Wikipedia only mentions analog/digital terrestrial, IPTV and cable as of 2020. They cite a 2013 article with this info: “Imported TV sets that are able to operate on both PAL and NTSC, such as those from Japan, have their NTSC abilities disabled by the government on import.” I can’t imagine how they do it on flat screens (it was not really feasible to import a new CRT in 2013+) because LCDs/OLEDs do all scaling in a single chip. Presumably, they could shut down the system if they detect 59.94 Hz with an added circuit but that’s easy to find and remove.
The primary channel KCTV has a satellite transmission, the few smaller channels are just terrestrial.
https://youtu.be/BTP_sQySr5M
Does nk actually have a satellite? Or is this some old Chinese shit the Chinese let them use?
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
Yep. Its part of the hobby. There’s a raspberry pi version. Just look up satnogs. Its a website. There’s also ARPA, meshtastic/meshcore, and a whole lot of other fun little side projects on communication.
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).
Huh. They just realized that? I’ve been digging in sat streams as far back as 20 years ago. Nothing changed
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.
The spice must flow.