Mistakes happen! I bet the enemies were not eavesdropping, because they did not know either! Or did they know and we didn't? 😊
What is not to like about data leaks? Just kidding!
"Security researchers have discovered that as many as half of all geostationary satellites in Earth’s orbit are carrying unencrypted sensitive consumer, corporate, and military information, making this data wide open to eavesdropping. ..."
"Summary
We pointed a commercial-off-the-shelf satellite dish at the sky and carried out the most comprehensive public study to date of geostationary satellite communication.
A shockingly large amount of sensitive traffic is being broadcast unencrypted, including critical infrastructure, internal corporate and government communications, private citizens’ voice calls and SMS, and consumer Internet traffic from in-flight wifi and mobile networks. This data can be passively observed by anyone with a few hundred dollars of consumer-grade hardware. There are thousands of geostationary satellite transponders globally, and data from a single transponder may be visible from an area as large as 40% of the surface of the earth. ..."
From the abstract:
"Geosynchronous (GEO) satellite links provide IP backhaul to remote critical infrastructure for utilities, telecom, government, military, and commercial users. To date, academic studies of GEO infrastructure have focused on a handful of satellites and specific use cases.
We perform the first broad scan of IP traffic on 39 GEO satellites across 25 distinct longitudes with 411 transponders using consumer grade equipment. We overcome the poor signal quality plaguing prior work and build the first general parser that can handle the diverse protocols in use by heterogeneous endpoints.
We found 50% of GEO links contained cleartext IP traffic; while link-layer encryption has been standard practice in satellite TV for decades, IP links typically lacked encryption at both the link and network layers. This gives us a unique view into the internal network security practices of these organizations. We observed unencrypted cellular backhaul traffic from several providers including cleartext call and text contents, job scheduling and industrial control systems for utility infrastructure, military asset tracking, inventory management for global retail stores, and in-flight wifi."
Satellites Are Leaking the World’s Secrets: Calls, Texts, Military and Corporate Data "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."
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