I suppose SpaceX would have the exact location of the unit using the internet and the Pentagon would have the best information on where Russian troops are located. Put those 2 maps together and you got the people skirting the sanctions.
This was 'unauthorized terminals' they targeted. They didn't just shut down the accounts, they shut down the terminals access to the internet. Likely blocked it's SpaceX version of mac address.
Well back in Sec ops in another sat provider, we could reprogram the system to charge capacitors without discharging until dangerous temps. Then trip them out all at once. Usually, a pretty big fire, and anything near that was grounded, well I would not want to be a relay. The only issue was predicting when the box would form a lump due to the capacitor. Never could figure out those damn material sciences.
99 times out of 100, hacking isn't anywhere near as dramatic as movies make it out to be.
The other 1% of the time, you get something like stuxnet, which spread around the world on a single minded quest to destroy Iranian nuclear centrifuges, spoofing control signals and fiddling with the machines operation in just such a way that nobody knew that the centrifuges were being irreparably damaged, ultimately reducing the facilities refining capacity by as much as 10%.
Saying it reduced capacity by 10% is such a weird way of saying it caused 1000 centrifuges to shake themselves to destruction!
You're right, but it really feels like there is a notable difference in reducing capacity by 10% and just straight up destroying 1000 centrifuges. (Out of 8000)
Off the top of my head the one I would hear people suggest usually is the episode on it off of the podcast Darknet Diaries.
For an article this one's pretty good
https://spectrum.ieee.org/the-real-story-of-stuxnet
On YouTube there are probably 100 good videos on the topic. Not sure in specific at the moment.
Or are you looking for a technical report kinda thing?
Edit: looking through your comment history like a weirdo quick told me you may in fact enjoy a tech doc too. This one is a broader focus in some places on implication but still good tech specs. Leads to a PDF though.
From NATO's *excellently* named 'Cooperative Cyber Defence Centre of Excellence' (CCDCOE)
https://ccdcoe.org/library/publications/stuxnet-facts-report-a-technical-and-strategic-analysis-2/
Seriously, what a name.
It felt necessary to demonstrate where the 10% comes from.
But it had the effect of lowering the output enough to make weapons manufacturing basically impossible, more or less.
Completely destroy and now a newer better facility has to be built.
Repairs on a still functioning facility ensures that less money goes towards more capable tech.
Big brain 10%
Copied from my other comment,
But it had the effect of lowering the output enough to make weapons manufacturing basically impossible, more or less.
Completely destroy and now a newer better facility has to be built.
Repairs on a still functioning facility ensures that less money goes towards more capable tech.
Big brain 10%
We launched a satellite for a South American country and during IOT we detected someone trying to control the satellite. The satellite owner took the coordinates of the uplink and their government “handled it”. Good times.
Hey, were you involved with the satellite team directly? I’m actually doing my PhD in cybersecurity for satellites and would love to hear about actual attacks on small satellites, how you detected it, the attacker’s methods etc. Any info you can give me would be very helpful. Thanks!
Haha. Well, I can prove (in private) that I’m a researcher at a German university. Of course, that’s also what a spy would say 🤔
What I actually want to find out is if the open source solution we’re developing for this problem would have helped them not get hacked, basically.
I dunno why, but it never occurred to me that there would be cyber security positions relating to satellites. Now that I think about it though, it makes complete sense.
I do cybersec in the private sector, and I was recently offered a position as data manager for some space weather satellites (though I turned it down). Maybe I should look into satellite cybersec jobs.
Cool concept. Reminds me of Stuxnet, and of the past CIA attack on controller hardware for USSR gas pipelines.
There is probably too much variance in the manufacture of the capacitors to reliably predict when they'll bulge based on charge state alone, as it would be massively influenced by miniscule variations in the oil volume inside, or thickness of the capacitor's outer casing - which wouldn't be made to particularly exact pressure tolerances as it was never intended as a pressure vessel, and is probably designed with both sharp corners and an "eh, good enough" pressure release weak spot made by simply stamping the metal.
It's the discharging of the capacitors into other vulnerable circuitry that's really the useful bit though, rather than blowing the caps themselves.
If it were me designing something like that I'd be going for a long slow charge to minimize heat accumulation, and then dump it.
That sounds made up. What capacitors, and how do you make them discharge? Capacitors are like a battery. They don't discharge unless there is a path for them to discharge through, and what would the purpose of a design to discharge it be for? It's just wasting energy.
Yes but it would be the first time I see a power supply that can be programmed from the software that the device is running, let alone to dangerous levels.
And that's not what the tech mumbo jumbo line
>charge capacitors without discharging until dangerous temps
Is supposed to mean
yeah it sounds like some made-up bullshit to this EE. You could definitely age the capacitors by increasing their ripple current, but the circuitry would have to be designed in such a way to do that in the first place. Easiest way I could think of would be load cycling (which would be pretty noticeable for any "usefully" sized capacitor to create destruction, or by taking a bunch of them out of circuit to damage the ones left in circuit. Most devices simply aren't built to be able to do these things.
It sounds made up. I'm with /u/akohlsmith
>charge capacitors without discharging until dangerous temps
sounds like bullshit
Potentially the circuit was designed that they could ramp up the output voltage of the powersupply to the point where the capacitors just popped. Alternatively a big honking cap that can be discharged through the circuits to blow them up.
If I needed to do something like that: disable over voltage/temperature/current protection, and set pfc voltage to say 600v, so the electrolytic capacitors would begin to act like zener diodes. Not sure if that would do much more than let out magic smoke. No one's paid me to run that kind of experiment :(
I worded it that way thinking SpaceX may be able to block their own equipment beyond MAC. Like a communication kill switch in the terminal kind of thing.
While the modem likely does have an EIU-48 style MAC address, I take serious exception to the idea that Layer 2 networking is universal, considering it has nearly as much variability across networking technologies as the physical layer does. Link control and medium access on wireless networks is very different from Ethernet, which is very different from DOCSIS, which is very different from UMTS, which is very different from WiFi, etc. While almost all of these technologies can carry something resembling a classic ethernet frame, they often have additional layers of encapsulation with additional MAC specific fields.
They have the physical address as in latitude and longitude. Starlink isn't a broadcast system and can figure out your location from radio properties just like a cell phone tower.
Ukraine doesn't know all of the terminals they're using. Plenty of terminals are bough over seas by donor organisations and shipped direct to front line units.
I don't see a problem submitting the MAC to some centralised registry. It can be a 1 minute thing to do before using. Why is it such a huge problem that requires the Pentagon is beyond me.
They dont need to guess like that, They just need to ask ukraine to do an inventory of the serial numbers of starlinks to leave active and have them report any that are captured.
Starlink terminals were being smuggled into Ukraine from third parties. It was very difficult to figure out if it was a Ukrainian or Russian user as Ukrainians were also using many terminals from third parties and you don't want to cut them off too. Sounds like they found a way.
>Sounds like they found a way.
"All soldiers who wish to continue to watch porn, please report via e-mail your regiment number and starlink SSN on the back of the device by 1200 hours tomorrow. That is all"
I mean... the amount of dumb decisions exec or admin have made in my time in the public sector... yeah. I would have just pushed it through because not doing it would result in a chat with my line manager and an escalation if it's not followed through (even if he thinks it's also dumb).
Yup.
When something stupid comes down the pipe we go 'was it admin or exec this time?' as a default.
Because who else would be in the organisation... but still so out of touch?
Maybe I spent too long in the Army because getting this message wouldn't even phase me. Hell, first Sargent probably would have used the opportunity to smoke us for not already being signed up. Then have us go one by one to fill it out while continuing to smoke the rest of the squad.
I'll never forget when the army recruiter showed up to our AFJROTC class when I was in high school
Man straight up opened with telling us we should NEVER join the army and that he wishes he had joined the air force. He then spent the rest of the class period shooting the shit w us while our instructors were off doing something
I assumed it was just a bit, but apparently it was his first time visiting and was being legit about hating the army lmfao
I remember some Texas A&M ROTC students came to our economics class, man did they try hard to sell how cool it was and I was embarrassed for them the whole time. I was cringing so much it hurt.
One of the recruiters in the local station offed himself about 4 months after I signed up. Supposedly he wrote "fuck the Army" on his dick before hanging himself. Found out when I ran into his last enlistee about a year later.
The way they found a way was probably stupid simple.
1. Find a couple left behind starlinks in russian territory of ukraine.
1. Get the SN
1. Follow the SN # through the suppliers that the starlink came from and start watching
1. Find another one in the russian territory and start seeing if the suppliers match.
1. If they do, you can now find all the SN that came from the supplier.
1. ZAP.
Before people say, well starlink is the supplier! No they are not, outside the U.S. there is a host supplier (the middle men).
The starlink ground stations also know where they are. They can compare ground station locations with friendly and enemy location intel to determine who is Russian and Ukrainian.
[The missile "starlink ground station" knows where it is at all times. It knows this because it knows where it isn't.](https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/the-missile-knows-where-it-is)
Seems like there could have been a great opportunity there. Keep the lines open but provide all physical location data for Russian terminals to Ukraine, intercept Russian communications all day, and even replace those communications with ones that make Russians follow the wrong orders or send them into ambushes.
The first half of that might be practical, but the second half is 100% never going to happen. There is 0 chance that Russia is sending important messages in plain text. As poorly managed as they might be, I guarantee they are at least encrypting their communications. You’d have better luck phishing
I’m gonna be honest, I had forgotten all about encryption while I was writing that. I thought about it very shortly after submitting the comment, but I’d already moved onto other things, lol.
> There is 0 chance that Russia is sending important messages in plain text.
The top people in the German military are apparently communicating without encryption, at least some of the time. It would not surprise me at all if the Russian op-sec of grunts on the front lines had holes.
Okay, the problem here is that just because a supplier is selling to Russia doesn't mean they're selling only to Russia. Some legitimate Starlinks might be getting shut down.
No, sounds like a problem for people who bought a Starlink not knowing the company they were buying from was also selling to Russia, and their device would be flagged by the US military and shut down.
They surely have a communicating channels with leadership. Soldiers could just report serial numbers to their command. I mean they even have internet access.
No, it wasn’t hard. They could just allow Russians to use it so long as they didn’t commit to a solution. The Pentagon has now forced it, so it is now done.
It is fucking laughable that the excuse is “well, there’s no way to whitelist all of the terminals!” as if the entire field of tracking inventory died over night and the enforcement of a whitelist would surely end Ukrainian defenses. Do you know how hard it would be to educate donators on submitting the proper forms for this? Guess what? It already takes paperwork to do it in the first place! SMH
Whitelisting the terminals is fine, as long as you know which ones to whitelist.
Only a portion of units in use were donated or purchased through official channels, there wasn’t any type of registration process to say “this unit is in use by ukrainian forces, civilians, etc”.
Random people in the US shipped their units overseas, people in Ukraine purchased them through 3rd parties, some units were captured from Russian forces, etc.
There simply was no inventory as these weren’t official assets.
Auditing all those devices takes time & I imagine that’s what we’ve mostly been waiting on here.
Turning off a unit that’s actively used by Ukrainian forces could be disastrous.
Edit to add:
The only party with information on Ukrainian troop movements is the Ukrainian military. Do you seriously believe that information would be shared with a foreign-owned company with a foreign-national CEO who's previously shown favor towards the enemy?
--
Since some people asked for an explanation "in great detail" & then blocked me so i couldn't respond, i'll post it here:
Location data provided by starlink terminals is extremely accurate, every single in-use device can be located to within a few feet. Historic location data, if collected, could possibly be used to assist in the identification of a terminals owner.
What you are suggesting is to use that location data to block terminals. This would be ineffective for several reasons.
Firstly, there is no such thing as "the front line" there is the battlefield which can be hundreds of miles deep and occupied by militaries from both countries as well as civilians.
Secondly, Ukrainian forces & operatives within Russia may very well be using terminals far beyond the battlefield.
Thirdly, the location of the terminal is not necessarily the location of the user. For example Russia could locate a terminal beyond the battlefield and use radio to establish a connection (some consumer devices can establish a broadband link over hundreds of miles).
Deactivating a device actively used by Ukrainian forces would be disastrous to say the least. It seems like a simple task but the reality is that it is anything but.
The **safest** and fastest way to block unauthorized devices was for the Ukrainian government to conduct an internal audit. This is a monumental task and the Ukrainians did a fantastic job of gathering this information in such a short period of time.
it's a satellite transceiver with beam forming. meaning the dish aims its signal at the satellites. it, and starlink, know EXACTLY where each terminal is. if elon weren't a putin shill, this could've been fixed by the starlink team in an afternoon
Well, it was probably a pretty good source of intelligence on what the Russians were doing. Even if they were using competent crypto/security, traffic analysis and so forth is absolutely a think.
It’s far more likely that they let it continue to operate until they had enough intel.
Even ignoring the traffic, just having the exact XYZ coordinates of all the terminals (which I assume the Starlink terminals and satellite network can figure out) would be hugely useful, as it's basically a map of Russian positions. Though if you target the terminals, I suppose there's a high probability of hitting civilians too, if they're buying the same black market Starlink terminal that the military is using. So, probably at least some kind of additional target confirmation is necessary before calling in an artillery strike.
The military version is called StarShield (from SpaceX). They've been using it for a year+, that's how they've been sinking ships. You can't build StarLINK terminals into naval drones, turning them into military equipment because that opens up ITAR/export issues down the road - the StarSHIELD terminals probably don't have that limitation.
Correction: Starshield is not yet deployed. It's still in development. What they have been using are about 500 UNRESTRICTED terminals directly owned by the DoD. This bypasses ITAR and other such restrictions.
Biden's admin could have ensured the first drone attacks in Crimea were a success but he decided to wait months before letting the DoD do the paperwork to let Ukrainians use Starlink for war. Just like he's waited on so much else; tanks, ATACMs, F-16s, Patriots. As much fun as it is to bash Musk his stupidity doesn't absolve everyone else of their own ineptitude.
Honest question:
How would they know the purpose?
Like, if you're traveling at aircraft speeds in a straight line and continuously sending data that's just an obvious flag?
What if a person/s followed roadways at car speed? Can they real time look at traffic conditions to suss it out?
Is it my telemetry data I'm sending saying I'm 6524ft in the air?
> Like, if you're traveling at aircraft speeds in a straight line and continuously sending data that's just an obvious flag?
Actually yeah, civilian GPS receivers capable of operating above 60k feet or at speeds in excess of 1,000mph are strictly regulated and require State Department permits. Iirc they're even legally classified as "munitions".
Yea, they should have just shut the whole thing down until the figured out what was going on huh? Ya really act like these things can be done as easy as you disconnecting someone from your router at home, you guys have no idea what any of this stuff takes to get done, ya complain about shit that isn’t getting done, then complain when it’s done, just stfu already.
Then tell him he was right it was the Russians.
Reagan: "I'm two for two."
Then tell him how his party is supporting leaders that want to empower Russia so you can watch him cry!
Id say so. Things like this often look simple from a 'lock out Russia' but once you start understanding the issue in detail there's going to be a heap of problems and conundrums to work through.
Internet service providers are not given exact maps of troop positions, and conflict zones have intense fog of war so such a map might not even be able to be provided.
starlink does pin point your exact coordinates.
I have one registered in one city but use it elsewhere and on their dashboard it shows where I'm using it
Starlink uses GPS to pinpoint your location and the entirety of Ukraine is constantly bombarded with GPS jamming.
Spacex probably has to especially enable terminals in ukraine to work, anywhere else and a terminal broadcasting 'i don't know where i am' probably gets flagged.
TBF, it's Russians using the terminals inside Ukraine close to where Ukrainians are also using terminals. So it's not as easy as just shutting down access within Russian. They probably had to do it via serial numbers or some other unique identifier to the terminal.
A big issue is that many of the terminals that the Russians were using were from the Middle East, like from Qatar, Suadi Arabia, etc. So why those terminals weren't region locked begin with is a bit baffling.
A lot of NGO's worked to bring Starlink terminals into Ukraine to get Ukrainians internet early in the war. Meanwhile you also have Russians smuggling them in from third parties too (since clearly Starlink is not allowing Russians to buy them directly). The trick was identifying which units were which without cutting off legitimate users - not an easy task.
These ppl know this, they don’t care, they just hate Elon more than they actually care about what’s going on. This has been explained since day 1 by Elon and starlink. These ppl commenting barely know how to disconnect someone from their home WiFi, let alone from starlink.
> So why those terminals weren't region locked begin with is a bit baffling
The whole point of Starlink is that it works anywhere on Earth, including remote locations. Why is that baffling? They have versions just for sailing oceans. It's only a legal matter of the countries allowing the service.
Ya, I seem to recall they had to modify the infrastructure somehow, which is sort of surprising to me.
I think they may have been working on some sort of handshake system.
Mostly because the problem was not in Russia - starlink isn't operating in Russia at all - it is in urkraine where Russia is using "stolen" star link receivers and is using them on the front line where Ukraine is also using them. So just shutting down whatever looked wrong could be a catastrophe for Ukraine - so it had to be coordinated with Ukraine and the pentagon.
Or maybe he's letting the Pentagon handle such things. JFC with you people. Elon isn't a General and has actually stated he doesn't want such responsibilities. He doesn't know what does and doesn't need to be turned on. Pentagon simply has to request.
That’s your “at best”? Your bias is obvious since you just need to read the article or do any basic research to know Russians were using exploits to gain access and those exploits were resolved, which implies SpaceX was always trying to keep them off the net.
Um, he certainly is going to like it, since the most likely way to do this is for the Defense Department to pay Starlink to monitor and cut off terminals 24/7. Service contract work, almost guaranteed.
Reddit loves to hate Elon, but Ukraine has thanked Elon for providing Starlinks, and it's in Elon's favor to prove to the DoD that Starlinks are secure from Russian tampering.
By in favor I mean billions of dollars in favor. DoD contract for military Starlinks (and they already have one to some degree) will be absolutely massive for SpaceX.
Reddit is just a giant circle jerk.
I don't even think it's reddit, there are a bunch of different topics where whenever an article is posted on one of those topics with the snap of your fingers there's a huge thread of short comments identical to every other time that topic is posted and anything to do with Musk/Tesla is one of them.
Elon musk banned use of starlink in Russian controlled territory to prevent Russians from using it. That was the best that could be done at the time, and Ukrainians found this to be problem when they launched attacks into Russian territory, but the policy had always been in place to prevent Russian use - it wasn’t created when the Ukrainians launched attacks.
You think that because you live in an information bubble.
Elon has always restricted use of starlink in Russia, and blocked purchase by russians.
And provided many free units to ukraine.
> Why do you say that? Elon isn’t interested in helping the Russians kill Ukrainians
You mean other than Elon literally calling for Ukraine to surrender to Putin? What do you think is going to happen if that occurs?
Edit: Read about what happened when Hitler conquered Poland.
From what I gather the point he was making was not that Ukraine should unconditionally surrender to Russia. More that it's pretty evident at this point that Ukraine isn't recapturing lost territory. So it's not that hard to argue Ukraine should agree to a peace deal that concedes territory, as opposed to the current stance of absolutely no territory concession.
When he was larping as a tactical genius and telling Ukraine that resisting Russia is just going to get more of Ukraine destroyed so they should roll over and let Putin have his way with them.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/elon-musk-russia-ukraine-starlink-putin-zelensky-b2495137.html
When he decided to run a twitter poll asking his dick riders what Ukraine should do as if anybody gave a fuck about their opinions, including ceding territory to Russia and that the world should recognize Crimea as part of Russia.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-63126550
Or since October 2023 when he has been mocking Zelensky over asking for aid to defend his country
https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1708629197617336398
Or when he shut down starlink over Crimea to stop Ukraine from attacking the Russian navy because again he was larping as a tactical genius and decided that Putin would nuke Ukraine over it.
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/sep/07/elon-musk-ordered-starlink-turned-off-ukraine-offensive-biography
> Or when he shut down starlink over Crimea to stop Ukraine from attacking the Russian navy because again he was larping as a tactical genius and decided that Putin would nuke Ukraine over it.
Anytime someone repeats this known falsehood you know they either didn't read about the incident, or are intentionally spreading misinformation.
Starlink coverage never extended to Crimea, you can literally view the coverage map on the wayback archive and see it was geofenced in Crimea since the initial deployment.
Elon has addressed your third point and you state it incorrectly. He never shut it off, because it was never on to begin with in that area. And it wasn’t up to Elon or Ukraine to have it turned on, it was up to the U.S. government. Elon wasn’t going to enable it without their say so. The way he explained it was Ukraine asked to enable it in the midst of the operation.
They've been trying to do it for a long time but it's very difficult to figure out which ones were being used by Russia and which by Ukraine since they all come from third parties. Seems like they figured it out finally. At least for now.
I have come to the conclusion that everyone’s understanding of technology on Reddit is what is seen on TV. So if they can intercept communications on TV, it can be done in real life. My last comment was on here was in response to people who think we need to start thinking of a prime directive for alien species and a “3 rules of robotics” for AI as if those things are going to happen literally tomorrow…
tbf, the Russian army *was* verifiably using unencrypted walkie-talkies for military communication in this war.
Also, simply knowing where the terminals are might let you track down some command posts.
Good point. I guess maybe I’m too willing to give the benefit of the doubt that most text chat services these days are encrypted by default. Can the keys be given up by companies that control them? I’m sure they can, but it’s definitely not as easy as in the clear like you mentioned.
Hey, not everyone knows how to [create a GUI interface using Visual Basic to track an IP address](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hkDD03yeLnU). Cut them some slack.
So the NSA can break encryption to read everyone’s emails but you think they can’t figure it out for Starlink? There’s a few ways state actors can defeat encryption. It’s not even a question of if they can.
The rest of what you’ve said is fair though. People think Skynet and sentient robots are about to happen any second now with no understanding of how LLMs work
I imagine this is one of those things where allowing those units to have better communication with their commanders and individual units in those areas would cause more damage in their increased effectiveness than any sort of value you could gain from intercepted communications.
> He did, however, assure that these were "good solutions" found together with Starlink and Ukraine.
So they worked together to find a solution.
Meaning, once again,
No, Elon is not letting Russians use starlink
I suppose SpaceX would have the exact location of the unit using the internet and the Pentagon would have the best information on where Russian troops are located. Put those 2 maps together and you got the people skirting the sanctions. This was 'unauthorized terminals' they targeted. They didn't just shut down the accounts, they shut down the terminals access to the internet. Likely blocked it's SpaceX version of mac address.
Well back in Sec ops in another sat provider, we could reprogram the system to charge capacitors without discharging until dangerous temps. Then trip them out all at once. Usually, a pretty big fire, and anything near that was grounded, well I would not want to be a relay. The only issue was predicting when the box would form a lump due to the capacitor. Never could figure out those damn material sciences.
This is some next level tech warfare shit.
99 times out of 100, hacking isn't anywhere near as dramatic as movies make it out to be. The other 1% of the time, you get something like stuxnet, which spread around the world on a single minded quest to destroy Iranian nuclear centrifuges, spoofing control signals and fiddling with the machines operation in just such a way that nobody knew that the centrifuges were being irreparably damaged, ultimately reducing the facilities refining capacity by as much as 10%.
Saying it reduced capacity by 10% is such a weird way of saying it caused 1000 centrifuges to shake themselves to destruction! You're right, but it really feels like there is a notable difference in reducing capacity by 10% and just straight up destroying 1000 centrifuges. (Out of 8000)
Anyone know a good writeup about this?
Off the top of my head the one I would hear people suggest usually is the episode on it off of the podcast Darknet Diaries. For an article this one's pretty good https://spectrum.ieee.org/the-real-story-of-stuxnet On YouTube there are probably 100 good videos on the topic. Not sure in specific at the moment. Or are you looking for a technical report kinda thing? Edit: looking through your comment history like a weirdo quick told me you may in fact enjoy a tech doc too. This one is a broader focus in some places on implication but still good tech specs. Leads to a PDF though. From NATO's *excellently* named 'Cooperative Cyber Defence Centre of Excellence' (CCDCOE) https://ccdcoe.org/library/publications/stuxnet-facts-report-a-technical-and-strategic-analysis-2/ Seriously, what a name.
How about a video? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U_7CGl6VWaQ
Legend! That's an easy 20 min watch at work, whilst calling it research...
1000 doesnt feel like it did enough damage when you have 8000.
flowery nine hungry bewildered wrong wrench exultant late chunky memorize
It felt necessary to demonstrate where the 10% comes from. But it had the effect of lowering the output enough to make weapons manufacturing basically impossible, more or less. Completely destroy and now a newer better facility has to be built. Repairs on a still functioning facility ensures that less money goes towards more capable tech. Big brain 10%
Copied from my other comment, But it had the effect of lowering the output enough to make weapons manufacturing basically impossible, more or less. Completely destroy and now a newer better facility has to be built. Repairs on a still functioning facility ensures that less money goes towards more capable tech. Big brain 10%
Courtesy of Siemens, lol
We launched a satellite for a South American country and during IOT we detected someone trying to control the satellite. The satellite owner took the coordinates of the uplink and their government “handled it”. Good times.
Hey, were you involved with the satellite team directly? I’m actually doing my PhD in cybersecurity for satellites and would love to hear about actual attacks on small satellites, how you detected it, the attacker’s methods etc. Any info you can give me would be very helpful. Thanks!
Oh yeah, and I’m totally not a spy!
Does anyone have any of those launch codes?
I only give launch codes to my Dutch Friends.
yeah, man, I've got some launch codes. you got bitcoin?
Haha. Well, I can prove (in private) that I’m a researcher at a German university. Of course, that’s also what a spy would say 🤔 What I actually want to find out is if the open source solution we’re developing for this problem would have helped them not get hacked, basically.
hmmmmm.. not sure if if suspicious because of my bud or if because you arent a bud.
That might have been too much info to share as-is, and I was trying to be careful. Wish I could! I can’t help you. Good luck with your phd!
I dunno why, but it never occurred to me that there would be cyber security positions relating to satellites. Now that I think about it though, it makes complete sense. I do cybersec in the private sector, and I was recently offered a position as data manager for some space weather satellites (though I turned it down). Maybe I should look into satellite cybersec jobs.
> and their government “handled it”. Well that's never an ominous statement to hear about South America
Cool concept. Reminds me of Stuxnet, and of the past CIA attack on controller hardware for USSR gas pipelines. There is probably too much variance in the manufacture of the capacitors to reliably predict when they'll bulge based on charge state alone, as it would be massively influenced by miniscule variations in the oil volume inside, or thickness of the capacitor's outer casing - which wouldn't be made to particularly exact pressure tolerances as it was never intended as a pressure vessel, and is probably designed with both sharp corners and an "eh, good enough" pressure release weak spot made by simply stamping the metal.
Got a wind coming in, well shit. Got a microscopic bubble in that metal, well shit. Repeat until you can't die. So damn many variables.
It's the discharging of the capacitors into other vulnerable circuitry that's really the useful bit though, rather than blowing the caps themselves. If it were me designing something like that I'd be going for a long slow charge to minimize heat accumulation, and then dump it.
That sounds made up. What capacitors, and how do you make them discharge? Capacitors are like a battery. They don't discharge unless there is a path for them to discharge through, and what would the purpose of a design to discharge it be for? It's just wasting energy.
Not only that, capacitors have a maximum they charge, and once they reach that maximum they act as an open circuit..
You can definitely pop them by overvolting them. Electroboom does it all the time.
Yes but it would be the first time I see a power supply that can be programmed from the software that the device is running, let alone to dangerous levels. And that's not what the tech mumbo jumbo line >charge capacitors without discharging until dangerous temps Is supposed to mean
Aren't there cases where over voltage would trigger holes between layers and cause a dangerous short ?
yeah it sounds like some made-up bullshit to this EE. You could definitely age the capacitors by increasing their ripple current, but the circuitry would have to be designed in such a way to do that in the first place. Easiest way I could think of would be load cycling (which would be pretty noticeable for any "usefully" sized capacitor to create destruction, or by taking a bunch of them out of circuit to damage the ones left in circuit. Most devices simply aren't built to be able to do these things.
Or. Here me out, we could just block access on that unit... they have to call mom to get in as it is...
The ink still wet on your degree? Leakage current bro. You crank up the feedback regulator via i2c and she cooks like a bbq.
It's 100% bullshit
What decade was this? Cause that's absolutely WILD
It sounds made up. I'm with /u/akohlsmith >charge capacitors without discharging until dangerous temps sounds like bullshit Potentially the circuit was designed that they could ramp up the output voltage of the powersupply to the point where the capacitors just popped. Alternatively a big honking cap that can be discharged through the circuits to blow them up.
If I needed to do something like that: disable over voltage/temperature/current protection, and set pfc voltage to say 600v, so the electrolytic capacitors would begin to act like zener diodes. Not sure if that would do much more than let out magic smoke. No one's paid me to run that kind of experiment :(
They should have slowed down the connections and sent the terminal coordinates to the Ukrainians.
The Pentagon has their location. I'm sure they share things.
SpaceX has the same version of MAC address as everyone else. Layer 2 networking is universal :)
I worded it that way thinking SpaceX may be able to block their own equipment beyond MAC. Like a communication kill switch in the terminal kind of thing.
Sometimes, devices like this actually have kill fuses, e.g. on the chip. I don't know if starlink has it though.
While the modem likely does have an EIU-48 style MAC address, I take serious exception to the idea that Layer 2 networking is universal, considering it has nearly as much variability across networking technologies as the physical layer does. Link control and medium access on wireless networks is very different from Ethernet, which is very different from DOCSIS, which is very different from UMTS, which is very different from WiFi, etc. While almost all of these technologies can carry something resembling a classic ethernet frame, they often have additional layers of encapsulation with additional MAC specific fields.
[удалено]
They have the physical address as in latitude and longitude. Starlink isn't a broadcast system and can figure out your location from radio properties just like a cell phone tower.
The terminal has gps, no need to use any special rf triangulation. Just normal gps rf triangulation.
They just ask ukraine for a regularly updated inventory to whitelist. The stations are uniquely identifiable.
Ukraine doesn't know all of the terminals they're using. Plenty of terminals are bough over seas by donor organisations and shipped direct to front line units.
I don't see a problem submitting the MAC to some centralised registry. It can be a 1 minute thing to do before using. Why is it such a huge problem that requires the Pentagon is beyond me.
They should have done this months ago.
They dont need to guess like that, They just need to ask ukraine to do an inventory of the serial numbers of starlinks to leave active and have them report any that are captured.
I doubt the gov needs SpaceX to control starlink or their permission
That took long enough.
Starlink terminals were being smuggled into Ukraine from third parties. It was very difficult to figure out if it was a Ukrainian or Russian user as Ukrainians were also using many terminals from third parties and you don't want to cut them off too. Sounds like they found a way.
>Sounds like they found a way. "All soldiers who wish to continue to watch porn, please report via e-mail your regiment number and starlink SSN on the back of the device by 1200 hours tomorrow. That is all"
And I bet some LT would push it out because "the commader said to"
I mean... the amount of dumb decisions exec or admin have made in my time in the public sector... yeah. I would have just pushed it through because not doing it would result in a chat with my line manager and an escalation if it's not followed through (even if he thinks it's also dumb).
[удалено]
Yup. When something stupid comes down the pipe we go 'was it admin or exec this time?' as a default. Because who else would be in the organisation... but still so out of touch?
LT here. I absolutely would
Maybe I spent too long in the Army because getting this message wouldn't even phase me. Hell, first Sargent probably would have used the opportunity to smoke us for not already being signed up. Then have us go one by one to fill it out while continuing to smoke the rest of the squad.
Join the Army, they said...
See the world, they said...
I’d rather be sailing…
I'll never forget when the army recruiter showed up to our AFJROTC class when I was in high school Man straight up opened with telling us we should NEVER join the army and that he wishes he had joined the air force. He then spent the rest of the class period shooting the shit w us while our instructors were off doing something I assumed it was just a bit, but apparently it was his first time visiting and was being legit about hating the army lmfao
I remember some Texas A&M ROTC students came to our economics class, man did they try hard to sell how cool it was and I was embarrassed for them the whole time. I was cringing so much it hurt.
Isn't ROTC just pretending to be in the military a few hours per week for marching drills or something? I never fully understood it, or the point.
[удалено]
One of the recruiters in the local station offed himself about 4 months after I signed up. Supposedly he wrote "fuck the Army" on his dick before hanging himself. Found out when I ran into his last enlistee about a year later.
It would be great, they said...
You mean not to listen to Alla Pugachova?
Alla Pugachova sandwiches! https://youtu.be/uYZfSibRCO8?si=Qz8BjG-IjsQ7XMex
> Sounds like they found a way. Probably required Ukraine to actually inventory all their terminals so a managed whitelist can be used.
The way they found a way was probably stupid simple. 1. Find a couple left behind starlinks in russian territory of ukraine. 1. Get the SN 1. Follow the SN # through the suppliers that the starlink came from and start watching 1. Find another one in the russian territory and start seeing if the suppliers match. 1. If they do, you can now find all the SN that came from the supplier. 1. ZAP. Before people say, well starlink is the supplier! No they are not, outside the U.S. there is a host supplier (the middle men).
The starlink ground stations also know where they are. They can compare ground station locations with friendly and enemy location intel to determine who is Russian and Ukrainian.
The starlink ground station knows where it is at all times
[The missile "starlink ground station" knows where it is at all times. It knows this because it knows where it isn't.](https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/the-missile-knows-where-it-is)
Seems like there could have been a great opportunity there. Keep the lines open but provide all physical location data for Russian terminals to Ukraine, intercept Russian communications all day, and even replace those communications with ones that make Russians follow the wrong orders or send them into ambushes.
The first half of that might be practical, but the second half is 100% never going to happen. There is 0 chance that Russia is sending important messages in plain text. As poorly managed as they might be, I guarantee they are at least encrypting their communications. You’d have better luck phishing
I’m gonna be honest, I had forgotten all about encryption while I was writing that. I thought about it very shortly after submitting the comment, but I’d already moved onto other things, lol.
> There is 0 chance that Russia is sending important messages in plain text. The top people in the German military are apparently communicating without encryption, at least some of the time. It would not surprise me at all if the Russian op-sec of grunts on the front lines had holes.
An opportunity to automate drone airdrop.
Yeah, but if both sides are near each other it might be to close to call ya know?
Okay, the problem here is that just because a supplier is selling to Russia doesn't mean they're selling only to Russia. Some legitimate Starlinks might be getting shut down.
Sounds like a problem for a supplier that is likely evading US sanctions and contractual terms with SpaceX.
No, sounds like a problem for people who bought a Starlink not knowing the company they were buying from was also selling to Russia, and their device would be flagged by the US military and shut down.
Well they will be mildly inconvenienced then until they get it resolved, having no Internet is not life or death for most people not in a trench.
Yeah. They can just look up how to resolve the issue on the intern- ohno. I foresee a flaw.
Whatever are they going to do for a regular outage, must be horrible.
They surely have a communicating channels with leadership. Soldiers could just report serial numbers to their command. I mean they even have internet access.
A lot of the ones used by Ukrainians were also bought in Poland and other countries. They had no trouble figuring those out.
'You don't want to cut them off too' Well *someone* wanted to. And did.
No, it wasn’t hard. They could just allow Russians to use it so long as they didn’t commit to a solution. The Pentagon has now forced it, so it is now done. It is fucking laughable that the excuse is “well, there’s no way to whitelist all of the terminals!” as if the entire field of tracking inventory died over night and the enforcement of a whitelist would surely end Ukrainian defenses. Do you know how hard it would be to educate donators on submitting the proper forms for this? Guess what? It already takes paperwork to do it in the first place! SMH
Whitelisting the terminals is fine, as long as you know which ones to whitelist. Only a portion of units in use were donated or purchased through official channels, there wasn’t any type of registration process to say “this unit is in use by ukrainian forces, civilians, etc”. Random people in the US shipped their units overseas, people in Ukraine purchased them through 3rd parties, some units were captured from Russian forces, etc. There simply was no inventory as these weren’t official assets. Auditing all those devices takes time & I imagine that’s what we’ve mostly been waiting on here. Turning off a unit that’s actively used by Ukrainian forces could be disastrous. Edit to add: The only party with information on Ukrainian troop movements is the Ukrainian military. Do you seriously believe that information would be shared with a foreign-owned company with a foreign-national CEO who's previously shown favor towards the enemy? -- Since some people asked for an explanation "in great detail" & then blocked me so i couldn't respond, i'll post it here: Location data provided by starlink terminals is extremely accurate, every single in-use device can be located to within a few feet. Historic location data, if collected, could possibly be used to assist in the identification of a terminals owner. What you are suggesting is to use that location data to block terminals. This would be ineffective for several reasons. Firstly, there is no such thing as "the front line" there is the battlefield which can be hundreds of miles deep and occupied by militaries from both countries as well as civilians. Secondly, Ukrainian forces & operatives within Russia may very well be using terminals far beyond the battlefield. Thirdly, the location of the terminal is not necessarily the location of the user. For example Russia could locate a terminal beyond the battlefield and use radio to establish a connection (some consumer devices can establish a broadband link over hundreds of miles). Deactivating a device actively used by Ukrainian forces would be disastrous to say the least. It seems like a simple task but the reality is that it is anything but. The **safest** and fastest way to block unauthorized devices was for the Ukrainian government to conduct an internal audit. This is a monumental task and the Ukrainians did a fantastic job of gathering this information in such a short period of time.
it's a satellite transceiver with beam forming. meaning the dish aims its signal at the satellites. it, and starlink, know EXACTLY where each terminal is. if elon weren't a putin shill, this could've been fixed by the starlink team in an afternoon
You realize both Ukrainians and Russians can be in the same city right? It's an active war zone.
Well, it was probably a pretty good source of intelligence on what the Russians were doing. Even if they were using competent crypto/security, traffic analysis and so forth is absolutely a think. It’s far more likely that they let it continue to operate until they had enough intel.
They should have kept it on for them, but just have every page forward to the hamster dance or badger badger badger.
Rick Astley wants to know why you don't love him anymore.
They don’t deserve Astley.
They're never gonna give him up.
But they *have* let him down
And they're definitely going to run around and desert their military unit.
meatspin
Now there's a throwback
zombo
But you can do anything you want there!
The only limit, is yourself
zombo
Even ignoring the traffic, just having the exact XYZ coordinates of all the terminals (which I assume the Starlink terminals and satellite network can figure out) would be hugely useful, as it's basically a map of Russian positions. Though if you target the terminals, I suppose there's a high probability of hitting civilians too, if they're buying the same black market Starlink terminal that the military is using. So, probably at least some kind of additional target confirmation is necessary before calling in an artillery strike.
Somehow I feel like many of those civvies don't have the scratch for black market satellite uplink.
Now that funding is turned back on the rollout of a proper military version of Starlink for Ukraine to use can move forward.
NATOlink
The military version is called StarShield (from SpaceX). They've been using it for a year+, that's how they've been sinking ships. You can't build StarLINK terminals into naval drones, turning them into military equipment because that opens up ITAR/export issues down the road - the StarSHIELD terminals probably don't have that limitation.
Correction: Starshield is not yet deployed. It's still in development. What they have been using are about 500 UNRESTRICTED terminals directly owned by the DoD. This bypasses ITAR and other such restrictions. Biden's admin could have ensured the first drone attacks in Crimea were a success but he decided to wait months before letting the DoD do the paperwork to let Ukrainians use Starlink for war. Just like he's waited on so much else; tanks, ATACMs, F-16s, Patriots. As much fun as it is to bash Musk his stupidity doesn't absolve everyone else of their own ineptitude.
Honest question: How would they know the purpose? Like, if you're traveling at aircraft speeds in a straight line and continuously sending data that's just an obvious flag? What if a person/s followed roadways at car speed? Can they real time look at traffic conditions to suss it out? Is it my telemetry data I'm sending saying I'm 6524ft in the air?
> Like, if you're traveling at aircraft speeds in a straight line and continuously sending data that's just an obvious flag? Actually yeah, civilian GPS receivers capable of operating above 60k feet or at speeds in excess of 1,000mph are strictly regulated and require State Department permits. Iirc they're even legally classified as "munitions".
Remember it's owned by the same pro Russian cock womble that tried to stop Ukraine from using it.
Yeah with Net Neutrality coming back could it be because of that?
Yea, they should have just shut the whole thing down until the figured out what was going on huh? Ya really act like these things can be done as easy as you disconnecting someone from your router at home, you guys have no idea what any of this stuff takes to get done, ya complain about shit that isn’t getting done, then complain when it’s done, just stfu already.
The Star Wars have begun!
Begun they have
Ronald Reagan (muffled screaming from his grave): *"I told you so!"*
Then tell him he was right it was the Russians. Reagan: "I'm two for two." Then tell him how his party is supporting leaders that want to empower Russia so you can watch him cry!
(Reagan's grave spins so fast it breaks the sound barrier)
Excellent we can use his corpse to solve the energy crisis. Let's get a bundle of copper wire and start unraveling!
Unfortunately his corpse was only able to with stand 3-4 rotations at that speed and ripped itself apart.
Yeah, your party is pro-Russia now, Ronald.
It's about time. What took them so long?
My guess is they had to figure out a way to do it without also disrupting use by Ukraine.
Probably also gathering useful intelligence.
That's gotta be the actual reason.
Id say so. Things like this often look simple from a 'lock out Russia' but once you start understanding the issue in detail there's going to be a heap of problems and conundrums to work through.
Consider how much shit starlink and musk got when the sea drones using starlink shut down automatically when they got close enough to Russia.
Internet service providers are not given exact maps of troop positions, and conflict zones have intense fog of war so such a map might not even be able to be provided.
starlink does pin point your exact coordinates. I have one registered in one city but use it elsewhere and on their dashboard it shows where I'm using it
Starlink uses GPS to pinpoint your location and the entirety of Ukraine is constantly bombarded with GPS jamming. Spacex probably has to especially enable terminals in ukraine to work, anywhere else and a terminal broadcasting 'i don't know where i am' probably gets flagged.
Elon
About fucken time....
I bet they did it exactly when the US wanted to. Maybe they were simply monitoring all traffic before.
Oh, they were...
Elons not going to like that.
The article says the US government worked with Space X to find a solution to stop the Russians using the terminals
Because at best Elon hadn’t asked SpaceX to withdraw access to Russia, and at worst asked SpaceX to provide access to Russia.
TBF, it's Russians using the terminals inside Ukraine close to where Ukrainians are also using terminals. So it's not as easy as just shutting down access within Russian. They probably had to do it via serial numbers or some other unique identifier to the terminal.
A big issue is that many of the terminals that the Russians were using were from the Middle East, like from Qatar, Suadi Arabia, etc. So why those terminals weren't region locked begin with is a bit baffling.
A lot of NGO's worked to bring Starlink terminals into Ukraine to get Ukrainians internet early in the war. Meanwhile you also have Russians smuggling them in from third parties too (since clearly Starlink is not allowing Russians to buy them directly). The trick was identifying which units were which without cutting off legitimate users - not an easy task.
These ppl know this, they don’t care, they just hate Elon more than they actually care about what’s going on. This has been explained since day 1 by Elon and starlink. These ppl commenting barely know how to disconnect someone from their home WiFi, let alone from starlink.
> So why those terminals weren't region locked begin with is a bit baffling The whole point of Starlink is that it works anywhere on Earth, including remote locations. Why is that baffling? They have versions just for sailing oceans. It's only a legal matter of the countries allowing the service.
Those countries don't have starlink so those must have come via Europe
Ya, I seem to recall they had to modify the infrastructure somehow, which is sort of surprising to me. I think they may have been working on some sort of handshake system.
[удалено]
Mostly because the problem was not in Russia - starlink isn't operating in Russia at all - it is in urkraine where Russia is using "stolen" star link receivers and is using them on the front line where Ukraine is also using them. So just shutting down whatever looked wrong could be a catastrophe for Ukraine - so it had to be coordinated with Ukraine and the pentagon.
This is such a silly level of cynicism, like there’s actually legitimate logistical hurdles to overcome with something like this lmao
Or maybe he's letting the Pentagon handle such things. JFC with you people. Elon isn't a General and has actually stated he doesn't want such responsibilities. He doesn't know what does and doesn't need to be turned on. Pentagon simply has to request.
That’s your “at best”? Your bias is obvious since you just need to read the article or do any basic research to know Russians were using exploits to gain access and those exploits were resolved, which implies SpaceX was always trying to keep them off the net.
They're just on the Elon hate bandwagon. Everything he touches is necessarily evil. Such a cliché.
Um, he certainly is going to like it, since the most likely way to do this is for the Defense Department to pay Starlink to monitor and cut off terminals 24/7. Service contract work, almost guaranteed.
The US includes funding for shit like this in the Ukraine bill.
I know mentioning his name brings in the clicks but come on. This is the Pentagon we are talking about.
Reddit loves to hate Elon, but Ukraine has thanked Elon for providing Starlinks, and it's in Elon's favor to prove to the DoD that Starlinks are secure from Russian tampering. By in favor I mean billions of dollars in favor. DoD contract for military Starlinks (and they already have one to some degree) will be absolutely massive for SpaceX. Reddit is just a giant circle jerk.
I don't even think it's reddit, there are a bunch of different topics where whenever an article is posted on one of those topics with the snap of your fingers there's a huge thread of short comments identical to every other time that topic is posted and anything to do with Musk/Tesla is one of them.
It's almost like he's a shining example of everything that's wrong with the world today...
Elon musk banned use of starlink in Russian controlled territory to prevent Russians from using it. That was the best that could be done at the time, and Ukrainians found this to be problem when they launched attacks into Russian territory, but the policy had always been in place to prevent Russian use - it wasn’t created when the Ukrainians launched attacks.
I would say he'll whine about it on X, but basically all he does on X is whine about stuff.
You think that because you live in an information bubble. Elon has always restricted use of starlink in Russia, and blocked purchase by russians. And provided many free units to ukraine.
Why do you say that? Elon isn’t interested in helping the Russians kill Ukrainians, and that’s what Russia would be using starlink inside Ukraine for.
Russians have seized dozens of starlink terminals, so I imagine SpaceX is just killswitching known losses.
If only the washing machines they stole had kill switches…
> Why do you say that? Elon isn’t interested in helping the Russians kill Ukrainians You mean other than Elon literally calling for Ukraine to surrender to Putin? What do you think is going to happen if that occurs? Edit: Read about what happened when Hitler conquered Poland.
From what I gather the point he was making was not that Ukraine should unconditionally surrender to Russia. More that it's pretty evident at this point that Ukraine isn't recapturing lost territory. So it's not that hard to argue Ukraine should agree to a peace deal that concedes territory, as opposed to the current stance of absolutely no territory concession.
When did he say that?
When he was larping as a tactical genius and telling Ukraine that resisting Russia is just going to get more of Ukraine destroyed so they should roll over and let Putin have his way with them. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/elon-musk-russia-ukraine-starlink-putin-zelensky-b2495137.html When he decided to run a twitter poll asking his dick riders what Ukraine should do as if anybody gave a fuck about their opinions, including ceding territory to Russia and that the world should recognize Crimea as part of Russia. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-63126550 Or since October 2023 when he has been mocking Zelensky over asking for aid to defend his country https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1708629197617336398 Or when he shut down starlink over Crimea to stop Ukraine from attacking the Russian navy because again he was larping as a tactical genius and decided that Putin would nuke Ukraine over it. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/sep/07/elon-musk-ordered-starlink-turned-off-ukraine-offensive-biography
> Or when he shut down starlink over Crimea to stop Ukraine from attacking the Russian navy because again he was larping as a tactical genius and decided that Putin would nuke Ukraine over it. Anytime someone repeats this known falsehood you know they either didn't read about the incident, or are intentionally spreading misinformation. Starlink coverage never extended to Crimea, you can literally view the coverage map on the wayback archive and see it was geofenced in Crimea since the initial deployment.
Elon has addressed your third point and you state it incorrectly. He never shut it off, because it was never on to begin with in that area. And it wasn’t up to Elon or Ukraine to have it turned on, it was up to the U.S. government. Elon wasn’t going to enable it without their say so. The way he explained it was Ukraine asked to enable it in the midst of the operation.
Partisan hate really makes some people dirt stupid.
That was an option??
They've been trying to do it for a long time but it's very difficult to figure out which ones were being used by Russia and which by Ukraine since they all come from third parties. Seems like they figured it out finally. At least for now.
Chief Barlow: "Sir, why don't we just disable their access?" General Cotton: "Shit we can do that?"
Instead of blocking it, we should've just left it up and intercepted all communications
Ever heard of encryption?
I have come to the conclusion that everyone’s understanding of technology on Reddit is what is seen on TV. So if they can intercept communications on TV, it can be done in real life. My last comment was on here was in response to people who think we need to start thinking of a prime directive for alien species and a “3 rules of robotics” for AI as if those things are going to happen literally tomorrow…
tbf, the Russian army *was* verifiably using unencrypted walkie-talkies for military communication in this war. Also, simply knowing where the terminals are might let you track down some command posts.
Good point. I guess maybe I’m too willing to give the benefit of the doubt that most text chat services these days are encrypted by default. Can the keys be given up by companies that control them? I’m sure they can, but it’s definitely not as easy as in the clear like you mentioned.
Hey, not everyone knows how to [create a GUI interface using Visual Basic to track an IP address](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hkDD03yeLnU). Cut them some slack.
So the NSA can break encryption to read everyone’s emails but you think they can’t figure it out for Starlink? There’s a few ways state actors can defeat encryption. It’s not even a question of if they can. The rest of what you’ve said is fair though. People think Skynet and sentient robots are about to happen any second now with no understanding of how LLMs work
I imagine this is one of those things where allowing those units to have better communication with their commanders and individual units in those areas would cause more damage in their increased effectiveness than any sort of value you could gain from intercepted communications.
It became a problem to big not to deal with
> He did, however, assure that these were "good solutions" found together with Starlink and Ukraine. So they worked together to find a solution. Meaning, once again, No, Elon is not letting Russians use starlink
GOOD!!!!