Iran Vs Starlink continues.
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The dangerous game of “cat and mouse” continues. Just hours after reports that “the jamming and packet loss situation in Tehran has improved significantly,” we have reports that Iran has escalated its attacks on Starlink. This is now unprecedented.
Cyber investigator Nariman Gharib posted on X Wednesday P.M., claiming the “first documented technical evidence of state-level GPS spoofing against consumer satellite internet.” This attack hit its mark. “Starlink stayed online but was barely usable.”
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The attack was detected by analyzing the telemetry from a Starlink terminal in Iran. Gharib says “the data provides direct technical evidence of GPS spoofing/jamming detection.” In short, Iran successfully spoofed multiple GPS signals to overwhelm the Starling device and its countermeasures, throwing its steering off course.
While the actual packet loss was only around 20%, “the link survived but bandwidth was restricted and connection remained unstable.” This is very different from the jamming that had been assumed to be underway, and is more akin to reports that radio noise was being broadcast from Russian supplied trucks on the ground.
Gharib says that “after 24 minutes of operation, the terminal recorded zero seconds of stable connection. The Extended Kalman Filter (sensor fusion for positioning) took 198 seconds to converge – significantly longer than typical – indicating the terminal was struggling to establish reliable position without GPS.”
Earlier reports had been more positive. NasNet, a local group supporting Starlink deployments in Iran, claimed that the packet loss through jamming “has decreased from about 35% to about 10%,” resulting in more stable connections.
However, NasNet also warned that “the issue of parasites is a constant game of cat and mouse, so the situation may change again or even get worse.”
All of these attacks are localized, targeting ground-based terminals rather than Starlink’s infrastructure itself. That results in a patchy situation across the country. But for the Iranian authorities, the focus is restricting transmissions near high-profile locations, for which this approach is highly effective.
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New reports claim Elon Musk has made Starlink free in Iran. But that’s of little value if Iran’s countermeasures continue. This “state-level electronic warfare against consumer satellite internet infrastructure,” Gharib says, “reveals both the attack’s effectiveness at degrading service and Starlink’s resilience in maintaining basic connectivity.”
I have reached out to SpaceX/Starlink for any comments on the latest report.