Global secrets exposed by geostationary satellites

CyberScoop reports that the U.S. military, telecommunications firms, and leading enterprises had their sensitive information intercepted after 39 geostationary satellites used for high-speed communications and backhaul internet services were scanned using consumer-grade satellite equipment worth $600.

More than 400 different transponders around the world have been infiltrated using the equipment, enabling the collection of unencrypted and encrypted traffic from the U.S. military, according to a study from researchers at the University of California, San Diego and the University of Maryland. Unencrypted traffic from the military provided details into infrastructure, logistics, and administrative management apps and systems.

Meanwhile, T-Mobile, Mexican telcos WiBo and TelMex, and Alaskan telco KPU Telecommunications had unencrypted phone data leaked following the scans.

"Many organizations appear to treat satellite[s] as any other internal link in their private networks. Our study provides concrete evidence that network-layer encryption protocols like IPSec are far from standard on internal networks," said researchers.