A team of researchers discovers that a big chunk of geostationary satellite data flowing over North America is unencrypted, including data from mobile carriers and the military.

…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…

  • mesa@piefed.socialEnglish
    62·
    12 days ago

    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.

    • peoplebeproblems@midwest.socialEnglish
      27·
      12 days ago

      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

      • mesa@piefed.socialEnglish
        22·
        12 days ago

        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).

    • peoplebeproblems@midwest.socialEnglish
      3·
      12 days ago

      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

      • mesa@piefed.socialEnglish
        12·
        12 days ago

        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.

  • Fair Fairy@thelemmy.clubEnglish
    16·
    12 days ago

    Huh. They just realized that? I’ve been digging in sat streams as far back as 20 years ago. Nothing changed

  • Echo Dot@feddit.ukEnglish
    61·
    12 days ago

    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.