back to article How did you spend your time at university? Pizza, booze, sleeping? This Oxford student is snooping on satellites

FYI, if you didn't already know: readily available satellite TV electronics can be used to sniff and inspect satellite internet traffic. That's according to a team lead by University of Oxford PhD student (and occasional GDPR exploiter) James Pavur, who presented his crew's findings on the matter at this year's remote edition …

  1. Mark192

    In space...

    In space, everyone can hear you stream.

    1. danbishop
      Pint

      Re: In space...

      Genius. Start your weekend with a pint on me ->

  2. tip pc Silver badge

    Would be really interesting if he could send to the satellite too.

    Would be interesting if he found a way to send to the satellite too, either for free service or to actually gain access to remote systems.

    Serves as a good reminder to people that authentication is not enough, as you never know who is listening.

    1. JimboSmith Silver badge

      Re: Would be really interesting if he could send to the satellite too.

      Reminds me of the Channel4 (Dispatches?) Documentary with Duncan Campbell about the Echelon System. I seem to recall him with a standard dish and a receiver of some sort and able to listen in to calls being routed via satellite. This was in the analogue era and hopefully things have changed but I won't hold my breath.

    2. Pascal Monett Silver badge

      Re: Would be really interesting if he could send to the satellite too.

      I don't think he really needs to. If internal Windows traffic is being sent to and from space, he can likely gather enough info to make a targeted attack via a proper land connection and, if he's got enough, he might even be able to authenticate without any hacking involved.

      Who in their right mind would think "Hey, why don't we just include our non-encrypted satellite link right in our LAN ? Makes things a lot more simple, right ?".

      Right. It makes things very simple for hackers to infiltrate you and scumbags to mount ransomware attacks on you.

      Brilliant.

  3. werdsmith Silver badge

    Forget it’s a satellite link for a moment, this is nothing other than an RF connection carrying unencrypted traffic, it might as well be point to point terrestrial, there is no need to get excited about the fact the RF signal has come from space. Although satellite coverage is wider and probably requires less travel to intercept.

    Perhaps the satellite service already has natural latency and they don’t want to introduce more at each end, so they leave it up to the customer.

    1. Roland6 Silver badge

      Also, given the nature of the link, any encryption really needs to be end-to-end not be simply implemented by the satellite link.

      Someone mush have linked a network analyzer to an Internet core router - it would be interesting to see how the amount of encrypted traffic has grown over the decades, but also I expect there is still much commercially sensitive data flowing unencrypted...

      the only difference here is that with RF transmissions you don't need physical access to a switch/router

      1. Dagg Silver badge

        any encryption really needs to be end-to-end

        Not in Australia, the government is trying to pass king canute laws to ban this to allow them and others (crims and foreign governments etc) access.

    2. John Brown (no body) Silver badge

      "Forget it’s a satellite link for a moment, this is nothing other than an RF connection carrying unencrypted traffic,"

      This was my thought too. Few providers other than specialised ones offer in-flight encryption. Most ISPs and/or transit providers only send and receive data for their customers. It's up to the customer to decide if the want to encrypt their data. It's a non-story to anyone who has given it more than a moments thought. Anyone who hasn't given it a moments thought isn't sending anything important or is in the wrong job.

      1. Yet Another Anonymous coward Silver badge

        > It's up to the customer to decide if the want to encrypt their data

        if I use my mobile phone to send data the GSM signal is encrypted, It doesn't seem unreasonable for the customer to assume that a satelite link is similarly encrypted.

    3. Cuddles

      "Forget it’s a satellite link for a moment, this is nothing other than an RF connection carrying unencrypted traffic, it might as well be point to point terrestrial, there is no need to get excited about the fact the RF signal has come from space. Although satellite coverage is wider and probably requires less travel to intercept."

      That wideness is kind of the whole point though. Intercepting a relatively well focussed point-to-point transmission requires being in the right place, not to mention knowing where the right place is. When talking about things like trans-oceanic shipping and aeroplanes, it may not even be possible to get to the right place. If you're worried about state TLAs spying on you, that may still be a worry, but regular hackers are unlikely to be a big problem.

      The trouble with satelites is that they spray transmissions over thousands of square miles, so someone sitting at home can catch transmissions intended for a ship in the middle of the Atlantic, or somewhere on a different continent. Sure, the actual technique will be no different, but the increase in range and lack of any directionality is enough to turn it into a very different problem.

      That said, it's also worth noting that with a point-to-point transmission you're likely to be able to intercept both directions, while with satellites you can only get traffic from the space-to-ground leg.

  4. Androgynous Cupboard Silver badge

    Satellite or no...

    Who the actual f*** connects a Windows LAN to an unencrypted internet service? In 2020?

    1. karlkarl Silver badge

      Re: Satellite or no...

      These days, I wouldn't recommend connecting a Windows LAN to any kind of internet to be fair.

    2. Throatwarbler Mangrove Silver badge
      Boffin

      Re: Satellite or no...

      I wouldn't connect any kind of LAN to an open, unencrypted link. Those Linux boxes probably aren't as secure as you think. Regardless, by definition, this is not a LAN connection, it's a WAN connection, over which it's perfectly natural to pass the described traffic; how many people fully encrypt their MPLS links, for example? Not saying that they shouldn't, mind you ...

  5. cmaurand

    State actors aren't listening from the ground. Line of sight in the vacuum of space.

    1. JJKing
      Facepalm

      How can I snoop thee, let me list the way.

      Do you mean they are snooping through a Keyhole?

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: How can I snoop thee, let me list the way.

        It takes some real TALENT to do that...

  6. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Spend my time at uni?

    *Checks calendar* Sorry, the official secrecy act time limit hasn't expired on that one yet. Ask me again in about 997 years, 6 months, & 3 days...

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Spend my time at uni?

      An attempt at humour, one supposes?

    2. Antron Argaiv Silver badge
      Thumb Up

      Re: Spend my time at uni?

      I think we can assume that the Security Services of several countries are aware that satellite traffic can be monitored by third parties, and have taken the appropriate steps.

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Which internet router encrypts traffic?

    The whole internet traffic is not encrypted by its nodes - it's always been left to users to encrypt any traffic sent across it. Why satellites links should be different? Operators that do value their traffic - i.e. TV broadcaster - do encrypt it.

    It's also far easier to distribute the traffic encryption where there is more and cheaper processing power than on satellites or at their ground stations, and the data overhead should not make the link much costlier, and even so you may pay later and bitterly.

    1. J. Cook Silver badge

      Re: Which internet router encrypts traffic?

      Operators that do value their traffic - i.e. TV broadcaster - do encrypt it.

      Yep. There was a decent trade for a while with some of the people I used to work with many years ago pirating DirecTV signals; apparently, the decryption scheme they were using had some flaws in it or some such. I was never really interested at the time, so I didn't bother finding out more.

POST COMMENT House rules

Not a member of The Register? Create a new account here.

  • Enter your comment

  • Add an icon

Anonymous cowards cannot choose their icon

Other stories you might like