With just $800 in basic equipment, researchers found a stunning variety of data—including thousands of T-Mobile users’ calls and texts and even US military communications—sent by satellites unencrypted.
With just $800 in basic equipment, researchers found a stunning variety of data—including thousands of T-Mobile users’ calls and texts and even US military communications—sent by satellites unencrypted.
Typically satellites have beams they turn on and off to service different areas, with one beam pointing towards the RAN that receives the data rather than just repeating a broadcast out to everywhere the satellite can theoretically reach. For mobile telecom backhaul via satellite it is standardized that the data should be encrypted for untrusted transport links so this seems to me like an issue of not following specs.