Decoding Data from Iridium Satellites(rtl-sdr.com) |
Decoding Data from Iridium Satellites(rtl-sdr.com) |
So Iridium has been cracked, and no reactions so far? Am I missing something? This sounds like a Big Deal.
> You have reached the 310 airlift squadron C-37 aircraft, tail number 0028.
> To call the CSL press 1.
> To call secure telephone number one, press 2.
> To call secure telephone number two, press <missing>
> Satcom direct Inmarsat connection in progress, please hold while we attempt to connect your call.
> The approximate global connect time is <missing>
> <ringing>
I suppose that selecting to connect to the secure phones could trigger an encryption layer on top of the call.
Am I remembering that correctly ? I believe that got some journalists killed in Syria a few years ago ...
CCC Munchen wiki pages on Iridium: https://wiki.muc.ccc.de/iridium:start
GitHub for the Iridium decoder software: https://github.com/muccc/gr-iridium
I know newer entrants like Planet Labs run normal Linux on their satellites, and I assume use a normal SSH connection. What do the older platforms use? How do they move the key material around to the different ground stations?
I haven't worked in the space industry for almost 10 years now, but that was everywhere when I was there. And I'm hoping that the name will come to mind over the next few hours and I can edit this post :)
Edit: Success! ITOS: http://itos.gsfc.nasa.gov/index.php
These guys are great, this was an enjoyable presentation.
And the FTP upload seems to be for the Air Force Weather Agency.
Also, a Mandrake 9.2 install doing a PPP dialup via iridium voice?! The world is indeed stranger than fiction.
[1] https://www.iridium.com/network/iridiumnext
[2] https://www.iridium.com/company/industryleadership/iridiumpr...
Which I'm sure they're selling at absurd prices thanks to Sept 11.
Editorial retraction, mea culpa, #2 [conflated the hell out of ARSOF, again, see below. The economic analysis + usage of Iridium still holds.] C-37 is USAF aircraft - this dude seriously compromised his personal security by making this talk [and implicitly, his identity] public. He's going to have the pleasure of having SSSS scribbled onto every airline ticket he purchases from now on, I'd wager.
Iridium was such a brilliant buy. ROI at must be absolute insanity.
@Dasmoth - 64 billion dollars in grey-money was allocated for "Overseas Contingency Operations" by the Omnibus bill last December. I'm sure SAIC/Northrup/whoever gets the contract to 'fix this hole' is going to be enjoying the 800 million they secure from the Pentagon to basically modify transmissions/upgrade the firmware of the phones to use Diffie-Hellman handshakes and AES haha.
Iridium has some advantages. It has coverage at the poles, where GEO sats typically do not. The mobile units can be small(ish) and handheld. But it also has some significant limitations. Datarates are in the 2400bps range. Latency goes all over the place due to the way the calls get routed through the constellation. Dropped calls are common.
Inmarsat operates a service called BGAN (Broadband Global Area Network), which depending on your hardware delivers speeds in the 128kbps to 512kbps range. The latency is always bad (GEO is a long way away), but more consistent. The terminals are big bulky affairs that range in size from a briefcase up to a mini-fridge. You can't hang one on your belt like you can with an Iridium phone, and some require you to set the antenna up and point it at the satellite manually.
While it is true that the Iridium company bought the system for a song, it's also true that they bought a massively expensive maintenance liability. You can't just ignore a satellite and expect it to keep working, they require operators on the ground to regularly monitor each and every bird to insure that it doesn't drift off orbit and to handle conditions that arise. They also have to launch replacement satellites regularly as the old ones start to fail. Plus they're building out a whole new system. The ROI is no doubt positive (they've been doing this for years now), but maybe not as much as you might expect. Iridium's biggest problem was its tiny userbase.
Motorola's whole business model with the original Iridium was pretty insane. They saw the relatively sparse deployment of cell towers back in the AMP era as something that was going to last. The only way to fix it was satellite communications, but the phones needed to be small enough to be used like cell phones (admittedly, compared to a 1980s cell phone they really weren't too bulky), which means low power which means LEO, which means you need a ton of satellites to cover the globe. By the time they finally got them all launched cell towers were everywhere and people (especially businessmen) realized that they liked using them indoors (which Iridium was terrible at) and paying only pennies per minute (instead of dollars per minute). The target audience was small, and many of those people couldn't afford the system at all.
Huh? Military UHF TACSAT communications are single channel UHF networks via geostationary satellites. But the military also makes extensive use of Iridium and INMARSAT networks to fill in gaps of bandwidth/availability coverage.
SATCOM / INMARSAT is heavily based on Iridium
Huh? No. Iridium is cross-linked Low-Earth Orbit (LEO) architecture. UHF Military TACSAT is geostationary dedicated transponders for the military - and those satellites also carry EHF/SHF payloads as well. INMARSAT is also Geostationary in the L and C band areas.
What is SSSS? See the Wikipedia page:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secondary_Security_Screening...
So while at the very least I'm not sure you'd get GPS-quality data, if you monitored that data for awhile I'd think you could eventually get "good enough" accuracy.
Agreed, their original use case made some assumptions that have proven false. It's too bad Motorola sold off Iridium (and for that matter Motorola Mobility) because now with Project Ara we're finally to the point of single device satellite and terrestrial convergence. I.E. You could presumably purchase or rent an Iridium expansion for your handset much like you can rent Iridium handsets today.
I seem to recall the south pole base use multiple iridium phones in a aggregation setup as a backup data channel.
http://www.satphonestore.com/tech-browsing/iridium-nav/iridi...
Note that this solution also removes one of the nominal advantages of Iridium. You can't hang it from your belt, the antenna weighs 11kg and is the size of a large punchbowl. It also requires a separate rack mounted modem.
How much would your browsing habits changed if loading an average webpage[1] cost you $31.80?
The network access is also expensive--think $50+ per month, with a handful (literally, like...10) of text messages and voice minutes included, with ~$1 per extra minute/message. If you live and work in somewhere with a modicum of infrastructure, this also probably isn't worth it.
(FWIW: I think part of their initial pitch was to Important Executives who need to be in touch with the office 24/7, but that seems to have fallen by the wayside and it's increasingly targeted at people going/living/working in remote areas).
I gather it's gotten a lot better since then, though.
I know Iridium is illegal in Kuba, but works just fine there.
I don't recall any restriction in china, currently.
I went to the airport 3 hours early with no identification and told them the situation. They still printed my boarding pass and put SSSS on it. I went to the huge long line and I went around it entirely and went into the secondary screening room. They did a full patdown and entirely emptied my carry-on. It was no big deal and was done in 20 minutes, less time than I'd have stood in line. After that I boarded the plane and went home.
I've sometimes contemplated putting SSSS on my boarding pass with a red sharpie when there is a very long line just to get around it entirely.
Anyone that I'm aware has had issues, knew they were permanently of the SSSS list, knew what would happen, ignored it, and had minor issues; in case it's not clear to others, you got a one-time SSSS for not having an ID.
Clearly, given anyone might have issue and I've seen it happen, ("I swear, I was joking, I will never say that again; [as passenger walks away with law enforcement].")
Any rate, while I agree neither with the SSSS or for that matter, it's been shown that TSA offers no real protection via their owe audits - an SSSS flag has no meaningful impact yo my knowledge.
Most of the major conferences I'm sure have attendees listed (not a new practice - post-McCarthy's 'red scare' made it acceptable for both federal/local LEO to monitor protestors - but I'm sure it's way easier now and this dude basically painted a target on his body.)
My experience is that those with SSSS get through TSA screening faster and given they expect the search, don't have anything worth searching.
Clearly if you have an SSSS and create problems or provide surface for friction, then sure it's a pain, but then again, with or without an SSSS there's the potential you'll still have issues.