Decoding Data from Iridium Satellites • Hacker News Board

Re: Decoding Data from Iridium Satellites

#11

Post by iheartmemcache » Wed, Aug 31, 2016, 12:58 PM UTC

finchisko wrote: post #5

It's not surprising considering age of Iridium. Also I believe they don't make lot of money, so any development (also security related) is pretty much ceased.

Iridium is basically only still in business because of US armed forces (and maybe diplomatic services? though not sure how much field work they do..) operational dependencies. Editorial retraction, mea culpa: Wrong about the TACSAT statement here. See parent below for the http://www.airspacemag.com/space/the-rise-and-fall-and-rise-... Post chapter-11 (2000), investors got the whole Iridium infrastructure at sub-pennies on the dollar. (Literally. They got it for the price of the _single launch_ (i.e., not including materials, R&D, labor, etc) of their multitude (60ish) of sub-orbitals.).

Which I'm sure they're selling at absurd prices thanks to Sept 11.

Editorial retraction, mea culpa, #2 [conflated the hell out of ARSOF, again, see below. The economic analysis + usage of Iridium still holds.] C-37 is USAF aircraft - this dude seriously compromised his personal security by making this talk [and implicitly, his identity] public. He's going to have the pleasure of having SSSS scribbled onto every airline ticket he purchases from now on, I'd wager.

Iridium was such a brilliant buy. ROI at must be absolute insanity.

@Dasmoth - 64 billion dollars in grey-money was allocated for "Overseas Contingency Operations" by the Omnibus bill last December. I'm sure SAIC/Northrup/whoever gets the contract to 'fix this hole' is going to be enjoying the 800 million they secure from the Pentagon to basically modify transmissions/upgrade the firmware of the phones to use Diffie-Hellman handshakes and AES haha.

Re: Decoding Data from Iridium Satellites

#12

Post by nxzero » Wed, Aug 31, 2016, 1:16 PM UTC

iheartmemcache wrote: post #11

finchisko wrote: post #5

It's not surprising considering age of Iridium. Also I believe they don't make lot of money, so any development (also security related) is pretty much ceased.

Iridium is basically only still in business because of US armed forces (and maybe diplomatic services? though not sure how much field work they do..) operational dependencies. Editorial retraction, mea culpa: Wrong about the TACSAT statement here. See parent below for the http://www.airspacemag.com/space/the-rise-and-fall-and-rise-... Post chapter-11 (2000), investors got the whole Iridium infrastructure at sub-penni…

SSSS is meaningless, never heard of anyone that had meaningful issues as a result of having this flag.

What is SSSS? See the Wikipedia page:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secondary_Security_Screening...

Re: Decoding Data from Iridium Satellites

#13

Post by wyldfire » Wed, Aug 31, 2016, 1:23 PM UTC

The doppler shift described at ~14:45 was a really interesting component of Iridium that I recall when I learned about it many years ago.

These guys are great, this was an enjoyable presentation.

Re: Decoding Data from Iridium Satellites

#14

Post by hendzen » Wed, Aug 31, 2016, 1:27 PM UTC

finchisko wrote: post #5

It's not surprising considering age of Iridium. Also I believe they don't make lot of money, so any development (also security related) is pretty much ceased.

There is an active market for iridium phone rentals for hiking/backpacking purposes, so they do get active use by civilians. Additionally in places like Alaska many people who live in remote areas have an iridium phone in as there is no cell coverage.

Re: Decoding Data from Iridium Satellites

#15

Post by iheartmemcache » Wed, Aug 31, 2016, 1:29 PM UTC

nxzero wrote: post #12

iheartmemcache wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Iridium is basically only still in business because of US armed forces (and maybe diplomatic services? though not sure how much field work they do..) operational dependencies. Editorial retraction, mea culpa: Wrong about the TACSAT statement here. See parent below for the http://www.airspacemag.com/space/the-rise-and-fall-and-rise-... Post chapter-11 (2000), investors got the whole Iridium infrastructure at sub-penni…

SSSS is meaningless, never heard of anyone that had meaningful issues as a result of having this flag. What is SSSS? See the Wikipedia page: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secondary_Security_Screening...

I was just thinking about how aggravating it must be from the POV of someone who used to fly a lot. If I was still flying twice a week consulting I'd be livid. If I was perma-SSSS'd. I'm sure he's under far more vigilant security scrutinization--I mean even pre-9/11 DEFCON had 'spot the fed' games as a lark because they were so obvious.

Most of the major conferences I'm sure have attendees listed (not a new practice - post-McCarthy's 'red scare' made it acceptable for both federal/local LEO to monitor protestors - but I'm sure it's way easier now and this dude basically painted a target on his body.)

Re: Decoding Data from Iridium Satellites

#16

Post by misterdata » Wed, Aug 31, 2016, 1:30 PM UTC

wyldfire wrote: post #13

The doppler shift described at ~14:45 was a really interesting component of Iridium that I recall when I learned about it many years ago. These guys are great, this was an enjoyable presentation.

The doppler shfit also supposedly provided a clue about the whereabouts of MH370 after it disappeared: https://theaviationist.com/2014/03/27/inmarsat-helps-finding...

Re: Decoding Data from Iridium Satellites

#17

Post by nxzero » Wed, Aug 31, 2016, 1:54 PM UTC

iheartmemcache wrote: post #15

nxzero wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

SSSS is meaningless, never heard of anyone that had meaningful issues as a result of having this flag. What is SSSS? See the Wikipedia page: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secondary_Security_Screening...

I was just thinking about how aggravating it must be from the POV of someone who used to fly a lot. If I was still flying twice a week consulting I'd be livid. If I was perma-SSSS'd. I'm sure he's under far more vigilant security scrutinization--I mean even pre-9/11 DEFCON had 'spot the fed' games as a lark because they were so obvious. Most of the major conferences I'm sure have attendees listed (not a new practice…

Have you ever flown with an SSSS, if so, how did it cause any issues? If not, at best your response is speculative.

My experience is that those with SSSS get through TSA screening faster and given they expect the search, don't have anything worth searching.

Clearly if you have an SSSS and create problems or provide surface for friction, then sure it's a pain, but then again, with or without an SSSS there's the potential you'll still have issues.

Re: Decoding Data from Iridium Satellites

#18

Post by xvilka » Wed, Aug 31, 2016, 2:07 PM UTC

finchisko wrote: post #5

It's not surprising considering age of Iridium. Also I believe they don't make lot of money, so any development (also security related) is pretty much ceased.

They're already produced and will start soon launching Iridium NEXT [1] satellites, moreover developed a whole platform called Iridium Prime [2].

[1] https://www.iridium.com/network/iridiumnext

[2] https://www.iridium.com/company/industryleadership/iridiumpr...

Re: Decoding Data from Iridium Satellites

#19

Post by blantonl » Wed, Aug 31, 2016, 2:40 PM UTC

iheartmemcache wrote: post #11

finchisko wrote: post #5

It's not surprising considering age of Iridium. Also I believe they don't make lot of money, so any development (also security related) is pretty much ceased.

Iridium is basically only still in business because of US armed forces (and maybe diplomatic services? though not sure how much field work they do..) operational dependencies. Editorial retraction, mea culpa: Wrong about the TACSAT statement here. See parent below for the http://www.airspacemag.com/space/the-rise-and-fall-and-rise-... Post chapter-11 (2000), investors got the whole Iridium infrastructure at sub-penni…

All TACSAT coms are done via single-channel Iridium networks at UHF.

Huh? Military UHF TACSAT communications are single channel UHF networks via geostationary satellites. But the military also makes extensive use of Iridium and INMARSAT networks to fill in gaps of bandwidth/availability coverage.

SATCOM / INMARSAT is heavily based on Iridium

Huh? No. Iridium is cross-linked Low-Earth Orbit (LEO) architecture. UHF Military TACSAT is geostationary dedicated transponders for the military - and those satellites also carry EHF/SHF payloads as well. INMARSAT is also Geostationary in the L and C band areas.

Re: Decoding Data from Iridium Satellites

#20

Post by jandrese » Wed, Aug 31, 2016, 2:51 PM UTC

iheartmemcache wrote: post #11

finchisko wrote: post #5

It's not surprising considering age of Iridium. Also I believe they don't make lot of money, so any development (also security related) is pretty much ceased.

Iridium is basically only still in business because of US armed forces (and maybe diplomatic services? though not sure how much field work they do..) operational dependencies. Editorial retraction, mea culpa: Wrong about the TACSAT statement here. See parent below for the http://www.airspacemag.com/space/the-rise-and-fall-and-rise-... Post chapter-11 (2000), investors got the whole Iridium infrastructure at sub-penni…

INMARSAT is a different system entirely. Iridium uses a relatively massive constellation (77 birds, plus or minus) of Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellites. Inmarsat runs a handful of Geosynchronous (GEO) satellites.

Iridium has some advantages. It has coverage at the poles, where GEO sats typically do not. The mobile units can be small(ish) and handheld. But it also has some significant limitations. Datarates are in the 2400bps range. Latency goes all over the place due to the way the calls get routed through the constellation. Dropped calls are common.

Inmarsat operates a service called BGAN (Broadband Global Area Network), which depending on your hardware delivers speeds in the 128kbps to 512kbps range. The latency is always bad (GEO is a long way away), but more consistent. The terminals are big bulky affairs that range in size from a briefcase up to a mini-fridge. You can't hang one on your belt like you can with an Iridium phone, and some require you to set the antenna up and point it at the satellite manually.

While it is true that the Iridium company bought the system for a song, it's also true that they bought a massively expensive maintenance liability. You can't just ignore a satellite and expect it to keep working, they require operators on the ground to regularly monitor each and every bird to insure that it doesn't drift off orbit and to handle conditions that arise. They also have to launch replacement satellites regularly as the old ones start to fail. Plus they're building out a whole new system. The ROI is no doubt positive (they've been doing this for years now), but maybe not as much as you might expect. Iridium's biggest problem was its tiny userbase.

Motorola's whole business model with the original Iridium was pretty insane. They saw the relatively sparse deployment of cell towers back in the AMP era as something that was going to last. The only way to fix it was satellite communications, but the phones needed to be small enough to be used like cell phones (admittedly, compared to a 1980s cell phone they really weren't too bulky), which means low power which means LEO, which means you need a ton of satellites to cover the globe. By the time they finally got them all launched cell towers were everywhere and people (especially businessmen) realized that they liked using them indoors (which Iridium was terrible at) and paying only pennies per minute (instead of dollars per minute). The target audience was small, and many of those people couldn't afford the system at all.