{"id":214158,"date":"2025-10-15T02:27:07","date_gmt":"2025-10-15T02:27:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/214158\/"},"modified":"2025-10-15T02:27:07","modified_gmt":"2025-10-15T02:27:07","slug":"researchers-alarmed-to-discover-satellites-broadcasting-unencrypted-military-secrets","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/214158\/","title":{"rendered":"Researchers Alarmed to Discover Satellites Broadcasting Unencrypted Military Secrets"},"content":{"rendered":"

The skies above us are teeming with satellites. The latest figures estimate there are over 12,000 satellites<\/a> currently active, with thousands more defunct craft<\/a> left to decay in orbit. All that activity has caused numerous complications for astronomers and researchers alike, interfering with radio telescopes<\/a> with \u201cunintended\u201d radiation leaks<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Now it turns out that they\u2019re also contributing to a massive leak of personal, corporate, and government data, as researchers at UC San Diego and the University of Maryland were alarmed to discover. First reported by Wired<\/a>, the joint study uncovered glaring holes<\/a> in satellite security enabling \u201canyone with a few hundred dollars of consumer grade hardware\u201d to rustle up a huge collection of unencrypted data beamed down to Earth.<\/p>\n

Using an $800 fixed-position satellite dish on the roof of a UC San Diego building, researchers were able to receive calls, texts, and internet traffic from T-Mobile\u2019s cellular network, data from devices using in-flight WiFi, text communications from industrial control systems, and logistics information for big-box retail stores like Walmart.<\/p>\n

Probably the most damning thing the team recovered was a trove of unencrypted US and Mexican governmental traffic, including communications and network info from US military ships, surveillance operation data, and Mexican military and police chatter.<\/p>\n

In the case of US military ships, there was so much exposed data that researchers were able to piece together the names of individual vessels, enabling them to run full background checks. \u201cBy investigating the names, we determined they were all formerly privately-owned ships that were now owned by the US,\u201d the team wrote.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt just completely shocked us,\u201d Aaron Schulman, a UC professor and co-lead of the study, told Wired. \u201cThere are some really critical pieces of our infrastructure relying on this satellite ecosystem, and our suspicion was that it would all be encrypted.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cTime and time again, every time we found something new, it wasn\u2019t,\u201d Schulman continued. \u201cThey assumed that no one was ever going to check and scan all these satellites and see what was out there. That was their method of security.\u201d<\/p>\n

To make things even wilder, the research teams estimate they were only able to access about 15 percent of the satellites in operation, meaning there\u2019s likely much more unencrypted data being beamed down to the ground as we speak. Luckily, the team took a little time to warn the groups involved of the vulnerabilities before publishing their study, and confirmed that both T-Mobile and Walmart have since encrypted their satellite data.<\/p>\n

In their summary of the three-year study, the researchers wrote that data from just one satellite could be obtainable from an area as large as 40 percent of the surface of the Earth.<\/p>\n

Addressing the question of why on earth this satellite data wasn\u2019t encrypted in the first place, the study\u2019s authors wrote that \u201cthere are direct costs to enabling encryption,\u201d making it hard for some stakeholders or corporations to justify if they don\u2019t perceive an imminent security threat. \u201cSome users may forgo encryption intentionally; others may be unaware these links are unencrypted or underestimate the risk and ease of eavesdropping attacks,\u201d they wrote.<\/p>\n

More on satellites: Startup Working on Spacecraft Designed to Eat Dead Satellites for Fuel<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The skies above us are teeming with satellites. The latest figures estimate there are over 12,000 satellites currently…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":214159,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[64,63,128,285],"class_list":{"0":"post-214158","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-space","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-science","11":"tag-space"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/214158","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=214158"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/214158\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/214159"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=214158"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=214158"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=214158"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}