In San Diego, a small research team pointed a cheap residential satellite dish at the sky and watched the world's private traffic pour in. Using about $800 of off the shelf hardware and open source tools, they spent three years sweeping geostationary satellites that sit 22,000 miles above Earth and still quietly handle backhaul for airlines, remote cell towers, oil rigs, utilities, and governments. Instead of hardened, encrypted links, they kept finding raw, readable data flowing straight into their receiver.
From just 39 satellites, only a slice of the global geostationary fleet, the team captured private phone calls, text messages, in flight Wi Fi sessions, and internal corporate and government communications. A nine hour recording of T Mobile satellite backhaul revealed more than 2,700 phone numbers plus one side of users’ calls and SMS. Other links exposed browsing activity from passengers on commercial flights and traffic from rural internet customers whose data had been routed skyward without proper protection.
The leaks went far beyond consumer chatter. Mexican military and police units were broadcasting mission details, asset locations, and helicopter maintenance logs in the clear. U.S. vessels were transmitting unencrypted internal traffic that revealed ship identities and movements. Operators of critical infrastructure, including a major Latin American electric utility, were sending status reports, customer records, and failure alerts with no end to end encryption at all, creating an easy starting point for espionage or disruption.
After quiet disclosure, some firms, including T Mobile and AT&T, scrambled to add encryption, while others lagged behind. The researchers are now preparing an open source toolkit, named after their paper “Don’t Look Up,” so regulators, defenders, and operators can see for themselves what is leaking from orbit. The larger lesson is blunt, security by hoping nobody looks up is not security, it is an invitation.
#satellites #cybersecurity #encryption #infosec #space #communications #datasecurity #privacy #technologyIn San Diego, a small research team pointed a cheap residential satellite dish at the sky and watched the world's private traffic pour in. Using about $800 of off the shelf hardware and open source tools, they spent three years sweeping geostationary satellites that sit 22,000 miles above Earth and still quietly handle backhaul for airlines, remote cell towers, oil rigs, utilities, and governments. Instead of hardened, encrypted links, they kept finding raw, readable data flowing straight into their receiver.
From just 39 satellites, only a slice of the global geostationary fleet, the team captured private phone calls, text messages, in flight Wi Fi sessions, and internal corporate and government communications. A nine hour recording of T Mobile satellite backhaul revealed more than 2,700 phone numbers plus one side of users’ calls and SMS. Other links exposed browsing activity from passengers on commercial flights and traffic from rural internet customers whose data had been routed skyward without proper protection.
The leaks went far beyond consumer chatter. Mexican military and police units were broadcasting mission details, asset locations, and helicopter maintenance logs in the clear. U.S. vessels were transmitting unencrypted internal traffic that revealed ship identities and movements. Operators of critical infrastructure, including a major Latin American electric utility, were sending status reports, customer records, and failure alerts with no end to end encryption at all, creating an easy starting point for espionage or disruption.
After quiet disclosure, some firms, including T Mobile and AT&T, scrambled to add encryption, while others lagged behind. The researchers are now preparing an open source toolkit, named after their paper “Don’t Look Up,” so regulators, defenders, and operators can see for themselves what is leaking from orbit. The larger lesson is blunt, security by hoping nobody looks up is not security, it is an invitation.
#satellites #cybersecurity #encryption #infosec #space #communications #datasecurity #privacy #technology
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