Slashdot is powered by your submissions, so send in your scoop

 



Forgot your password?
typodupeerror
×
Communications The Internet

'High' Probability of Russian Attacks On Starlink In Ukraine, Says Musk (arstechnica.com) 108

SpaceX CEO Elon Musk yesterday warned that Starlink user terminals in Ukraine could be targeted by Russia and advised users to take precautions. Ars Technica reports: "Important warning: Starlink is the only non-Russian communications system still working in some parts of Ukraine, so probability of being targeted is high. Please use with caution," Musk tweeted. When asked for specific advice, Musk said people in Ukraine should turn Starlink on only when it's needed, place the antenna "as far away from people as possible," and "place light camouflage over [the] antenna to avoid visual detection." A thin layer of spray paint would work if there are no metal particles in the paint, he wrote. One Twitter user asked Musk if Starlink could face a cyberattack from Russia similar to the one that affected Viasat satellite service. Musk responded, "Almost all Viasat Ukraine user terminals were rendered permanently unusable by a Russian cyberattack on day of invasion, so... yes."

As previously reported, Ukraine Vice Prime Minister Mykhailo Fedorov asked Musk to activate Starlink in Ukraine shortly after Russia's invasion of the country disrupted Internet service. Musk responded in the affirmative, and two days later, Fedorov tweeted a photo of a truck full of newly arrived Starlink terminals. It's not clear exactly how many Starlink terminals are available in Ukraine, but Fedorov tweeted to Musk, "We will keep you posted as we roll out more Starlinks across the country."
In another tweet, he said, "SpaceX reprioritized to cyber defense and overcoming signal jamming. Will cause slight delays in Starship and Starlink V2."
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

'High' Probability of Russian Attacks On Starlink In Ukraine, Says Musk

Comments Filter:
  • by stikves ( 127823 ) on Saturday March 05, 2022 @02:24AM (#62328453) Homepage

    Just run a very long cable to the terminal. If putin's forces triangulate and bomb, they will waste arms shelling and empty field. Actually they will destroy that antenna, but it is a much more acceptable loss.

    Or do one better, run a wireless repeater at that point, and use a directional antenna at your own location. Slow internet is better than no internet.

    • by storkus ( 179708 )

      As an aside, I keep marvelling as a ham radio guy how many people, including other hams, do not comprehend the concept of radio silence. It is basic strategy and tactics for over a century! Low Probability of Detection / Intercept is the extension of this that a lot of money & thinking has been poured into over the decades (and isn't just for radar).

      Spread Spectrum was one of the first tech to try to send a signal without being spotted, but as much of today's broad-band tech actually requires it to wo

      • I wonder if SpaceX couldn't implement for Ukraine some kind of LPI mode in the dish firmware. Like, sacrifice uplink bandwidth for decreased probability of detection? Admittedly this is where a phased array fails. A parabolic dish would suppress side emissions much better.
        • by Cyberax ( 705495 )

          I wonder if SpaceX couldn't implement for Ukraine some kind of LPI mode in the dish firmware.

          They already did exactly that. There's a new low-power mode that also allows the dish to be powered from a car lighter's socket. Prior to that update the startup and operating power use usually tripped most car lighter fuses.

          • Prior to that update the startup and operating power use usually tripped most car lighter fuses.

            Most of them are at 15A, so let's just call it 12V and say over 180W. Yowza. IIRC the final design wound up with a cheap phased array with one axis of motor steering so most of that has to be RF...

            • by Cyberax ( 705495 )
              Yep. Right now it draws about 150W on startup and during the initial positioning (which is enough to trip my car's fuse). It then goes down to about 100W. The emitted RF power is 4.03W according to the FCC certification documents.
              • Thanks for the numbers.

                Cigarette lighter socket circuits are typically pathetic in every way. Might be not just more convenient but actually wise to run a dedicated circuit. XT30 or Anderson Powerpole connectors would be cheap and way better than that lighter socket crap, too.

        • by Agripa ( 139780 )

          I wonder if SpaceX couldn't implement for Ukraine some kind of LPI mode in the dish firmware. Like, sacrifice uplink bandwidth for decreased probability of detection? Admittedly this is where a phased array fails. A parabolic dish would suppress side emissions much better.

          I have defeated beam based radio direction finding before by modulating the power with low frequency flicker noise, but I suspect that an anti-radiation missile would be too sophisticated to be deceived by that.

          Other methods for LPI require greater changes which the existing hardware is unlikely to support like coherent detection of a much wider spread spectrum signal.

      • by Rei ( 128717 )

        They can, but if you're throwing a $300k anti-radiation missile against a $500 Starlink terminal, that's probably not a winning strategy in the long term.

    • by Jzanu ( 668651 )
      Your proposal is actually a very good one. Historically many German army battlefield communications during war were conducted by cables manually laid in forested and overgrown regions. While these could be disrupted by area bombing, the only really effective countermeasure was for allied soldiers to track the communications group troop movements and use infantry to cut the lines. Of course interception was more useful in many cases but aside from that, the technique provided reliable communications that co
    • If you can run wireless repeaters, why not just use the wireless repeaters to deliver the Internet along with some combination of fiber-optic cables and plain old microwave to connect to the outside world or the still fairly conflict-free parts of the country? Does the Ukraine have a difficult topography that makes satellite-based systems an attractive option?
  • by CaptQuark ( 2706165 ) on Saturday March 05, 2022 @02:30AM (#62328457)

    There are a few things people could do to camouflage their antennas: a few light coats of paint, patterned contact paper, shelf paper, lightweight fabric, place it next to a few other round objects like garbage can lids, set a pizza box over it, pretty much anything with a low moisture content to help it blend it.

    Musk also wrote that mobile roaming [has been] enabled, so [the] phased array antenna can maintain signal while on [a] moving vehicle. It sounds like keeping these mounted on a mobile platform would also keep them from being destroyed as easily, but they would be a little harder to disguise. Perhaps in the back of a truck with a thin tarp over the back would keep them out of sight.

    • Musk also wrote that mobile roaming [has been] enabled, so [the] phased array antenna can maintain signal while on [a] moving vehicle.

      If he'd do that here in the US, I'd sign up immediately. That would be a killer feature.

    • There are a few things people could do to camouflage their antennas: a few light coats of paint, patterned contact paper, shelf paper, lightweight fabric, place it next to a few other round objects like garbage can lids, set a pizza box over it, pretty much anything with a low moisture content to help it blend it.

      Do you think they'll be looking for it visually or detecting the radio waves it emits?

      • by Cyberax ( 705495 )

        Do you think they'll be looking for it visually or detecting the radio waves it emits?

        Apparently Russia doesn't have a lot of missiles anymore, so it's indeed likely that they would get a visual confirmation first.

        • Yea, I see a lot of artillery but not a lot of missiles. For a while I thought they were saving those for backup but then thought as fast as he is pushing his forces in the country, he might just not HAVE any cruse missiles. I know he doesn't have airpsace control yet after all this time, so does that mean he doesn't have any anti air either?
          • Russia is starting to look like a 3rd rate military these days, it brings into question most of their claims to Western civilization technology

          • Artillery is cheap and can't be countered like missiles, We have at least 1 report of a missile being shotdown and if nothing else I don't think Russia wants to give the US a chance to prove their missile defense technology in action.
        • by Sloppy ( 14984 )

          Apparently Russia doesn't have a lot of missiles anymore

          Any day now, we're going to find out that this whole grand drama was just Finland manipulating Russia into expending all their resources, for the upcoming invasion to take back territory lost in the Winter War.

      • by Agripa ( 139780 )

        There are a few things people could do to camouflage their antennas: a few light coats of paint, patterned contact paper, shelf paper, lightweight fabric, place it next to a few other round objects like garbage can lids, set a pizza box over it, pretty much anything with a low moisture content to help it blend it.

        Do you think they'll be looking for it visually or detecting the radio waves it emits?

        If Russia decided not to use an anti-radiation missile after detecting it, then visual identification would be desired before further action, and I sure would not want to be on the receiving end of a raid intended to capture prisoners.

    • Just place the antenna on the roof of a building. You'd not be able to tell them apart from the sea of dishes and antenna that are typical of both eastern and southern European countries.

  • Referring to his need to insert himself into things when something is really happening.

    I wonder when he will start to call Putin or somebody else names.

    • I wonder when he will start to call Putin or somebody else names.

      You mean names like "crooked", "sleepy", "rocket man"...?

    • who the hell does not do name calling to Putin?

      Biden had "ok'ed" the taking of the separatist regions, instead Putin tries to get into the whole Ukraine and fuels the hatered towards russia by orders of magnitude, extends his military forces, faces sanktions, and fertilizes the ukrainian soil by blood of russian soldiers.

    • At least on this occasion his contribution can actually be useful.

    • Watch him as he goes...
    • Musk is seizing this chance to pose as a hero and to inflate his self-importance. He must be loving this situation.
      • by gweihir ( 88907 )

        Musk is seizing this chance to pose as a hero and to inflate his self-importance. He must be loving this situation.

        Just like any self-important cretin...

      • Sure, because _anybody_ can enable a region with satellite coverage

    • by drinkypoo ( 153816 ) <drink@hyperlogos.org> on Saturday March 05, 2022 @08:14AM (#62328841) Homepage Journal

      Referring to his need to insert himself into things when something is really happening.

      Per TFS and prior slashdot story, Navalny literally explicitly asked Musk to activate Starlink.

      I wonder when he will start to call Putin or somebody else names.

      Yeah, "pedo guy" was the moment I fell out of geek love with Musk. But let's not pretend that this doesn't completely validate the concept of Starlink providing alternate communications in crisis situations, or that it's not a good thing. Would he have done it if it wasn't good PR? Maybe, maybe not. Probably not, even. But let's not shit on him for it. There will surely be some good reason to do so soon enough.

      • by gweihir ( 88907 )

        Yeah, "pedo guy" was the moment I fell out of geek love with Musk.

        Well, that was the moment I realized he is a cretin. I never had any "geek love" for him. I mean he is not an engineer or scientist, just a business person with delusions that got very lucky.

        • Good lord, it must be hard on you to not be able to admire grotty humans, what with their simple faults and all

        • Yeah, "pedo guy" was the moment I fell out of geek love with Musk.

          Well, that was the moment I realized he is a cretin. I never had any "geek love" for him. I mean he is not an engineer or scientist, just a business person with delusions that got very lucky.

          Yeah, the NASA geniuses are not doing reusable rockets because they're too easy for them.

          • by gweihir ( 88907 )

            Yeah, the NASA geniuses are not doing reusable rockets because they're too easy for them.

            NASA is a government bureaucracy. That comes with some advantages, but generally it comes at a huge price.

        • I never had any "geek love" for [Elon Muak]. I mean he is not an engineer or scientist, just a business person with delusions that got very lucky.

          If you read Ashlee Vance's warts-and-all biography of Musk, you will discover that Musk has a double degree in Physics and Economics, and that he has taken an active role in designing and engineering activities in both Tesla and SpaceX.

          • by gweihir ( 88907 )

            I never had any "geek love" for [Elon Muak]. I mean he is not an engineer or scientist, just a business person with delusions that got very lucky.

            If you read Ashlee Vance's warts-and-all biography of Musk, you will discover that Musk has a double degree in Physics and Economics, and that he has taken an active role in designing and engineering activities in both Tesla and SpaceX.

            I know what degrees he has. They are on his wikipedia page. His supposed "active role" is not on the engineering side. He cannot do that. His "double degree" (sounds impressive, doesn't it?) is on the very lowest level you can have and does not include any engineering. On that level it is pretty easy to get these. All they do is to allow him to somewhat understand the actual experts. That Tesla and SpaceX designs work is a clear indicator that Musk has made no important contributions at all on the engineeri

            • His "double degree" (sounds impressive, doesn't it?) is on the very lowest level you can have and does not include any engineering. On that level it is pretty easy to get these. All they do is to allow him to somewhat understand the actual experts.

              Being able to understand the experts and willing to listen to them puts him ahead of the majority of people with piles of money. It doesn't make him a good person, nor a genius, but it does make him effective — obviously. His money has accomplished what nobody else's money has accomplished recently (if we want to put it honestly, and not give him the credit) so clearly there's something there.

              I think the man is an ass, but I also want to see him continue to drive space development. I wish we could hav

            • I never had any "geek love" for [Elon Muak]. I mean he is not an engineer or scientist, just a business person with delusions that got very lucky.

              If you read Ashlee Vance's warts-and-all biography of Musk, you will discover that Musk has a double degree in Physics and Economics, and that he has taken an active role in designing and engineering activities in both Tesla and SpaceX.

              I know what degrees he has. They are on his wikipedia page. His supposed "active role" is not on the engineering side. He cannot do that. His "double degree" (sounds impressive, doesn't it?) is on the very lowest level you can have and does not include any engineering. On that level it is pretty easy to get these. All they do is to allow him to somewhat understand the actual experts. That Tesla and SpaceX designs work is a clear indicator that Musk has made no important contributions at all on the engineering side.

              It does not matter what Musk's "active role" is supposed to be, there are lots of anecdotes (supplied by people other than Musk) in his biography that indicate he has repeatedly placed an active engineering role. If you would read the biography I mentioned then you would know this.

      • It seems that even evil technologies like energy-sucking cryptocurrencies and potential space junk satellites can be put to good use. I beginning to think maybe even guns can be put to a good use here.
    • So a few days ago when he first announced this everyone on /. was saying that the power was too low to be a target. Well, looks like we have it from the horses mouth that putting one up puts a bullseye on you. And he did not know this a few days ago? As you say, he like a few others simply have to be the headline or they start to get night shivers. Kanye comes to mind as another. As someone else mentioned, it would have been far safer to ship SW radios (receive only) so people could get info. No Ack packets
      • A SW receiver also radiates. It has a local oscillator, if you were wondering.
        • by gweihir ( 88907 )

          Only the "Super-Het" design. You can do traditional designs for short-wave. You can also simply shield that Super-Het well, something that is done _anyways_ or it can cause interference with other systems.

          • by Agripa ( 139780 )

            Only the "Super-Het" design. You can do traditional designs for short-wave. You can also simply shield that Super-Het well, something that is done _anyways_ or it can cause interference with other systems.

            Local oscillator leakage is only reduced to the point where it meets FCC part 15 requirements or similar, but the level is still too low to track from any significant distance. A couple of times during transmitter hunts, I tracked the transmitter's local oscillator while it was in receive mode so that I did not have to wait for the transmitter to come back on, but that was at 100s of yards at most with a gain antenna. Once the hiders of the transmitters figured out what I was doing, it became routine to c

  • Meantime someone in India decided this is the right time to test some Brahmos Missiles !
    Astrologically auspicious time I guess.

    Or maybe all 25,000 Indians in ukraine/russia are back so now the govt feels free to so anything.

    The way 5-6 senior Ministers went to ukraine overnight and brought back stranded Indians was a bit unprecedented.

    Specially Air India as well as Air Force C17s flying around in Ukraine Ru airspace when either side could have shot them down by mistake or to create more confusion. Like the

    • I think it didn't have much to do with it. Looks like they just christened one of their new Cruiser "INS Visakhapatnam" on Feb 21, so it might of just been pre scheduled to do weapons testing. Not saying they didn't move up the "long range" variant, but I am saying they are trying to sell this thing to, someone? I mean its a fairly good missile system and cheap, but its not the kind of thing you slap on a jeep and call it a day.
  • A parabolic dish will have far less lateral emission to begin with, but you could put the dish in a barrel too and line the sides with microwave absorber for relatively little cost. That's going to be a very weak source when you aren't in the line of sight of the dish.

    • You still would have to setup the dish though to maintain line of sight with the satellite though, or am I missing something?

      • As I understand it, since Starlink satellites are in a low orbit and basically whizzing around all over the place (in aggregate, especially compared to geosync), you can just point the antenna kinda anywhere vaguely upwards.

        In theory, as long as there's open sky to point at, there will always be at least 1 or 2 satellites within the antenna's "field of view" and within communications range, simply due to how many there are/will be in orbit. Since they're supposed to have a really good hand-off protocol as

      • Yes, but a geostationary satellite is stationary. The dish only needs a very small stationary view cone. You can pull tricks to minimize scattering in other directions which would be infeasible with a phased array aiming antenna for LEO satellites, which needs to see far more of the sky.

        A phased array might not scatter too much from an efficiency point of view, but a couple percent is more than enough for an adversarial detector even if it's irrelevant for efficiency.

    • Its a phased array. Lateral spread is minimal when you steer the beams... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
    • yes, that will not work

      the receiver needs a wide horizon to pick up and drop satellites as the cross the sky

      it is the same reason that satellite phones suck on canyons and large cities

      • Geostationary satellites don't cross the sky, that's why they are better for covert communication, you can engineer a structure with a stationary small view cone and very little scatter.

    • Geostationary (Viasat) is the one that got attacked and shut down.
  • Defenders on Bataan built fake planes out of plywood or whatever scrap they had. The defenders, who I absolutely compare to those defending Ukraine and Thermopylae, got a kick out of all the bombs wasted on these targets before the Japanese eventually figured it out.

    Patton had a ghost army made of fake equipment in southern England before the Normandy invasion which did not draw fire because it was in safe England, but did hint at another landing area.. BTW 40% of the Bataan death march survived the w
    • Putin has revealed that Russia is fielding a third rate army

    • by Jzanu ( 668651 )
      That is another excellent point. The other angle to this notice where modifications can change these receivers back into useful tools, it allows them to be used to create fake command post lures to bait the Russians to waste their few remaining missiles. Take 10 of these things and put them on full power in a remote area with observers all around at safe distances, wait for the missiles to fire revealing where the launcher is, and then to make it "was" when a Bayraktar drone or infantry with Javelin removes
  • Set it out in a yard, and cover it with a box. or a blanket.

    It's not a big device.

  • I have a good friend in Ukraine and I have been in regular contact with him though facebook messenger since the invasion began. He's not personally involved with fighting, just trying to hunker down and take care of his family. But the internet is working over there fine.

    • by mi ( 197448 )

      My friends in and around Kyiv are all online too (when they aren't patrolling the streets). Same goes for Kharkiv.

      What's really needed, reportedly, are:

      Anti-tank and anti-aircraft portable missiles
      Ukrainians are putting them to very good use, but Russians continue to present hundreds of targets.
      Military aircraft
      Ukrainians don't publish figures, but they certainly have lost some craft. Former Warsaw Pact countries still have Soviet-made MIG- and SU-planes, which Ukrainian pilots could fly now. Don't hog the
  • by AlanObject ( 3603453 ) on Saturday March 05, 2022 @11:22AM (#62329055)

    It is amazing to me how many postings on this topic there are without mentioning the possibility of decoys. There are a lot of cheap devices you can program to look like an intermittent Starlink base station to a radiation seeking finder (either handheld or on a missile) and they can be battery powered. You can scatter thousands around your operating area.

    Then it is just a matter of updating the software to keep ahead of the enemy's detection improvements. But the real base stations will be safe enough as long as they aren't high duty cycle.

  • The Russians have taken over one of the main power plants in the country and I imagine will take over more. Then just flip the switch and send the country into darkness...

    • It's not about what Russia CAN do neither is it about what NATO can do. It is about exactly how far Russia can push things without escalating the international response beyond what they can manage. Russia's timeline already appears to have blown-out and as Europe starts to warm Russia's ability to cut of energy supplies to Europe stops being an immediate threat.
  • The current invasion of Ukraine by V. Putin is the same kind of humanitarian operation that the invasion of Manchuria was from 1931 to 1945.
  • Mobile internet is apparently working fine in Ukraine, Starlink terminals are very few and while useful are not required .... ...Elon inserting himself into a crisis again ...

    • Elon inserting himself into a crisis again ...

      After he was asked to by Ukraine Vice Prime Minister Mykhailo Fedorov. It's right in the article, for the love of pete.

The truth of a proposition has nothing to do with its credibility. And vice versa.

Working...