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Don’t Look Up: Sensitive internal links in the clear on GEO satellites [pdf]

satcom.sysnet.ucsd.edu

71–80 of 145 posts

Re: Don’t Look Up: Sensitive internal links in the clear on GEO satellites [pdf]

#71
post #5

> remarkably, nearly all the end-user consumer Internet browsing and app traffic we observed used TLS or QUIC There was a surprising amount of resistance to the push to enable TLS everywhere on the public Internet. I'm glad it was ultimately successful.

It has improved security, but it has made it less durable. Hosts now need constant maintenance to keep up with changes to TLS policies, certificate renewal protocols and so on.

Re: Don’t Look Up: Sensitive internal links in the clear on GEO satellites [pdf]

#72

Had a vendor offer a customer of mine a huge discount if they purchased radios without the encryption license in the year of our lord 2024. Not even WPA or WEP. Just clear across the sky. And this is terrestrial. My bet is that in space there would be a noticable increase in heat/energy if they did encryption by default. But its still incredible to see them pretend like space is impossible to get to, ultimate obscuri…

The landing page has a Q&A. This is the relevant part of the response to the question, "Why aren't all GEO satellite links encrypted?" >Encryption imposes additional overhead to an already limited bandwidth, decryption hardware may exceed the power budget of remote, off-grid receivers, and satellite terminal vendors can charge additional license fees for enabling link-layer encryption. In addition, encryption makes i…

It's not a spacecraft issue. Encryption can be done at the ground stations, and mandated as part of the standards for interfsce equipment, just like with DOCSIS. There's nothing, physically, to stop you passing unencrypted traffic down your DOCSIS cable, if you wanted to make a nonstandard modem and send unencrypted traffic on your local physical segment of the network. But the rest of the network will refuse to talk to it.

The same could have easily been mandated for satellite links - no encryption, your packet won't get forwarded to the internet at the ground station, and any packets sent to you from the internet will be sent to you encrypted. And all this can be implementd without needing to touch the satellite itself, which will continue to forward what it sees as unencrypted traffic without any design changes. It could even have been implemented incrementally on existing running services, with old and new equipment working side-by-side, but all new ground stations required to support encryption, and with a sunset date for old equipment, and a rolling upgrade program.

DOCSIS got this right in 1999; the satellite industry has had 25 yeqrs to catch up.

Re: Don’t Look Up: Sensitive internal links in the clear on GEO satellites [pdf]

#73
post #67
post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you fire people for stuff they didn’t maliciously introduced you will end up with no people to work with. Imagine jailing doctors for every patient that died you would be out of doctors quite soon.

If the doctor is criminally negligent they could be jailed.

That's kind of obvious, I didn't think it has to be spelled out.

Re: Don’t Look Up: Sensitive internal links in the clear on GEO satellites [pdf]

#74
post #63

As with anything in life, when it's what you know and do on the regular, that simple thing can look like magic to others. I met an old timer in the satellite business that came out to help install our receiver for a new TV channel the company I was at was getting off the ground. He found out what bird we were using and what its slot was. Based on that, he knew how many satellites over from the satellite he knew and u…

Eh I kind of feel like you can't say that. If something is magical before you learn how it's done, it should be magical after. The magical part isn't "it's actually impossible", but "it's so far from what I could come up on my own", which still holds after you know the secret.

Yes, some excellent magic tricks work even better when you know how they work, especially if they’re the kind that’s based on putting in ridiculous amounts of work or skill/practice.

Penn and Teller play a lot with that idea, for example.

Re: Don’t Look Up: Sensitive internal links in the clear on GEO satellites [pdf]

#75

Had a vendor offer a customer of mine a huge discount if they purchased radios without the encryption license in the year of our lord 2024. Not even WPA or WEP. Just clear across the sky. And this is terrestrial. My bet is that in space there would be a noticable increase in heat/energy if they did encryption by default. But its still incredible to see them pretend like space is impossible to get to, ultimate obscuri…

> My bet is that in space there would be a noticable increase in heat/energy if they did encryption by default. Why would it? The data originates from earth, and should be encrypted during the uplink leg too, so the crypto should all happen in the ground segment (or even well before it reached anything that could be considered part of the satellite setup, honestly).

Exactly, and the little bit of data actually destined for satellites – which includes momentum wheel and booster control – is something you’ll definitely want to at least authenticate.

I believe that’s one of the few things that even amateur radio operators are allowed to encrypt for that reason.

Re: Don’t Look Up: Sensitive internal links in the clear on GEO satellites [pdf]

#76
post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Real-time military object telemetry with precise geolocation, identifiers, and live telemetry Oops

Pulls out the bamboo whip Another round of OpSec training

Why? I thought we are now clear on OpSec?

Re: Don’t Look Up: Sensitive internal links in the clear on GEO satellites [pdf]

#77
post #74
post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eh I kind of feel like you can't say that. If something is magical before you learn how it's done, it should be magical after. The magical part isn't "it's actually impossible", but "it's so far from what I could come up on my own", which still holds after you know the secret.

Yes, some excellent magic tricks work even better when you know how they work, especially if they’re the kind that’s based on putting in ridiculous amounts of work or skill/practice. Penn and Teller play a lot with that idea, for example.

You should hide the secret if it’s ugly, but you can expose if it’s beautiful (and it’s your trick!)

Re: Don’t Look Up: Sensitive internal links in the clear on GEO satellites [pdf]

#78
post #34

Some of the stuff that was extracted from the unencrypted traffic in the link: - T-Mobile backhaul: Users' SMS, voice call contents and internet traffic content in plain text. - AT&T Mexico cellular backhaul: Raw user internet traffic - TelMex VOIP on satellite backhaul: Plaintext voice calls - U.S. military: SIP traffic exposing ship names - Mexico government and military: Unencrypted intra-government traffic - Walm…

> This is insane! Not as insane as it was in the early 2000s… > while link-layer encryption has been standard practice in satellite TV for decades Before Snowden, I would say 99% of ALL TCP traffic I saw on satellites was in unadulterated plain-text. Web and email mostly. … the pipe was so fast, you could only pcap if you had a SCSI hard drive!

[deleted]

Re: Don’t Look Up: Sensitive internal links in the clear on GEO satellites [pdf]

#79
I think that the risk of anybody achiving a malicious outcome by accessingn these data streams is as spectacularly low as the effort required to get the signal and then figure out some context to the randomised transmissions and then weaponise that is high, very high. Presumably it is GB/sec by however many channels, 99% of it will dry your eyeballs out and quickly render even the most determined spook a quaking quivering mess huddled in the corner of an office screaming " make it stop" the researchers behind this are just showing off, but I will bet any money, nothing but nothing could keep them there going through the worlds slop, which a smart, counter spook would insure was a regular and tantilising portion of the signal to begin with. the issue is that these sattelites are just repeaters, and there is little ryme or reason to the content, and personel good enough to work it, can find much much more profitable things to do.

Re: Don’t Look Up: Sensitive internal links in the clear on GEO satellites [pdf]

#80
From the Introduction: "Each satellite may carry traffic for dozens of independent networks through an array of on-board transponders, each covering a diameter of thousands of kilometers (at most a third of Earth’s surface)".

Can someone help me understand the use of "diameter" in this sentence. I am guessing it refers to the satellite's signal coverage of the Earth's surface. If that's the case, wouldn't something like arc degrees be a better measure? I just can't figure out how "diameter" can be used to describe a coverage arc or area.

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