Russian Spy Satellites Have Intercepted EU Communications Satellites (arstechnica.com) 85
European security officials believe two Russian space vehicles have intercepted the communications of at least a dozen key satellites over the continent. From a report: Officials believe that the likely interceptions, which have not previously been reported, risk not only compromising sensitive information transmitted by the satellites but could also allow Moscow to manipulate their trajectories or even crash them.
Russian space vehicles have shadowed European satellites more intensively over the past three years, at a time of high tension between the Kremlin and the West following Moscow's full-scale invasion of Ukraine. For several years, military and civilian space authorities in the West have been tracking the activities of Luch-1 and Luch-2 -- two Russian objects that have carried out repeated suspicious maneuvers in orbit.
Both vehicles have made risky close approaches to some of Europe's most important geostationary satellites, which operate high above the Earth and service the continent, including the UK, as well as large parts of Africa and the Middle East. According to orbital data and ground-based telescopic observations, they have lingered nearby for weeks at a time, particularly over the past three years. Since its launch in 2023, Luch-2 has approached 17 European satellites.
Russian space vehicles have shadowed European satellites more intensively over the past three years, at a time of high tension between the Kremlin and the West following Moscow's full-scale invasion of Ukraine. For several years, military and civilian space authorities in the West have been tracking the activities of Luch-1 and Luch-2 -- two Russian objects that have carried out repeated suspicious maneuvers in orbit.
Both vehicles have made risky close approaches to some of Europe's most important geostationary satellites, which operate high above the Earth and service the continent, including the UK, as well as large parts of Africa and the Middle East. According to orbital data and ground-based telescopic observations, they have lingered nearby for weeks at a time, particularly over the past three years. Since its launch in 2023, Luch-2 has approached 17 European satellites.
click bait title? (Score:4, Insightful)
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It's the same click bait slop title from the Arstechnica story, nothing new from them.
Re: click bait title? (Score:2)
And the same lax "editing" which is nothing new for slashdot.
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So did they intercept the communications satellites, or did they intercept the communications OF THE satellites? If the latter, fix your title op.
I'd first like you to differentiate between your requests first.
The FUCK are you talking about here. And I mean specifically and exactly.
Let me try to clarify what I think retrobunnies said.
"intercept the communications satellites" means that the Russians intercepted the satellites physically (i.e., captured and held them) or operationally (i.e., hacked their control systems.)
"intercept the communications OF THE satellites" means the Russians hacked the communication stream of the satellites and revealed the information they were conveying.
Does this help?
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It's a big difference. One is an act of war, the other is a radio.
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The former, which is why TFS talks about space vehicles and "risky close approaches", rather than ... whatever language might be appropriate for snooping on transmissions.
Re:click bait title? (Score:5, Interesting)
Yes its a clickbait title.
The US also does this - check out the Orion/Mentor satellites, or the JUMPSEAT satellites. Public astronomers have tracked satellites launched by US launchers moving into position behind other countries communications satellites, where they can capture the overspill of the transmissions sent to those satellites - they have huge dishes for just that purpose.
But oh noes, Russia or China is doing it, must call them out on it!!
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I suggest you read up on the actions of MENTOR 4, launched in 2009, and the satellite that it replaced, MENTOR 2, before claiming that Im "full of shit".
https://www.thespacereview.com... [thespacereview.com]
At what point did actually being able to have a reasonable discussion about things end, and jumping to insults and vitriol become the norm? Why did you feel that you had to immediately be abusive in your response, rather than ask for more details and ... you know, actually have an adult conversation?
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Yes its a clickbait title.
The US also does this - check out the Orion/Mentor satellites, or the JUMPSEAT satellites. Public astronomers have tracked satellites launched by US launchers moving into position behind other countries communications satellites, where they can capture the overspill of the transmissions sent to those satellites - they have huge dishes for just that purpose.
But oh noes, Russia or China is doing it, must call them out on it!!
Yep, terrible headline for something we know has been happening since we started forming governments. Their spies spy on us, our spies spy on them, their spies are spying on our spies spying on their spies spying on our spies spying on us.
The big question is how successful they are at it? Russia has traditionally been quite good at spying but that's because they were able to find people to turn easily, techwise they usually couldn't get anything working.
Re: Eh (Score:5, Informative)
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Re: Eh (Score:2)
Yes. If your billion dollar strategic asset can be taken out with a five cent paperclip, you've made an error.
In fact, if your billion dollar strategic asset can only be taken out by a billion dollar weapon, but your enemy is sufficiently well-resourced to crank those weapons out at will, while you are not capable of reciprocating, you have also made an error.
The former is a caricature. The latter is a pretty good analogy to the Japanese experience during the second world war.
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A bad actor doesn't have to be competent at troublemaking to be dangerous. In addition, Russian electronic warfare systems are known to be generally decent unfortunately.
Historically Russia has been terrible at electronic warfare and espionage. Ukraine would give evidence that is still the case.
Russia's espionage was good because they were extremely good at managing the human element (whilst western nations were pretty bad at it). They were able to set up spy networks undetected and were good at finding people to flip. Western powers usually ran rings around them on electronic surveillance and cryptography.
The biggest threat to the west from Russia (or anyone else) is
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A bad actor doesn't have to be competent at troublemaking to be dangerous.
Generally true.
In addition, Russian electronic warfare systems are known to be generally decent unfortunately.
False. Russian electronic technology as always been some of the worst shit available.
However, it's like saying just because Russia got a hold of some encrypted database of secrets they are good at electronic warfare even though they don't have the ability or know-how to crack it open. Russia probably didn't succeed at anything during these close encounters.
Re:Eh (Score:5, Insightful)
Not just that, given the state of the Russian army and how it's struggling to just hold on to Ukraine, there is nothing they could do even w/ all the information they that NATO had to offer. They've hollowed out much of their country except for Moscow and St Petersburg. This is worse than it was during Operation Barbarossa. At least that time, the Soviet Union was invaded. Today, this is a war Russia started, and one they can stop anytime, if saving Putin's face is not on the agenda
If 1990 exposed Saudi Arabia as a paper tiger during Operation Desert Shield, 2022 did the same for Russia in Ukraine. Tomorrow, if the PLA wanted, they could just walk into Primorsky and Krasnoyarsk and annex them. Heck, they could easily overrun and conquer all of Russia from the Urals to the Bering Sea
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I heard Russia is out of missiles and Russian soldiers are having to fight with shovels because they don't have guns. But they're so tough that they're going to invade Germany and France next.
> If 1990 exposed Saudi Arabia as a paper tiger during Operation Desert Shield
Did you mean Iraq? I don't remember the US attacking Saudi Arabia but maybe I've flipped timelines again.
Re:Eh (Score:5, Informative)
No, I meant that after the 1990 Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, it was expected that Saudi Arabia would be next. Prior to that, it was thought that the Saudis were a regional military heavyweight. But instead, it was the US that had to scramble to put military assets in place in Saudi Arabia, so that Saddam didn't go on to invade them. That is what exposed Riyadh as a paper tiger - a country that theoretically looked formidable, but in reality, couldn't even have defended themselves if their lives depended on it
We've actually seen it more recently as well. In 2020, when Saudi oil installations and even Riyadh airport were being hit by Houthi missiles, there was no retaliation by Riyadh. One thing I've heard was that after spending billions on US military toys, the Saudis are extremely protective of those assets, and would rather lose personnel than those things they paid good money for. When they can't even intimidate the Houthis, the less said about their military capabilities, the better
Re: Eh (Score:3, Interesting)
Different mentality in that part of the world, up and down.
Interacted with some saudi and other arab grad students and postdocs many years ago when I was in school.
Definitely a more Eastern mindset: save face and focus on perfecting the form, substance is an afterthought. Lots of egotists in the west of course, but they play up or embellish accomplishments. Over there, producing verbiage in the correct style for the project report matters more than having come up with any kind of technical solution at all.
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Eastern mindset?
We've fought Korans, Vietnamese, Japanese, and Chinese.
Does it get more eastern than them? They're not fucking around, and it was that much worse for us.
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I've seen a version of it in Chinese-from-China grad students too. Not as pervasive, and not quite the same (they'll work their asses off on a dead end for the sole purpose of showing they work hard, rather than merely appearing to look good), but there's definitely something there that doesn't happen with Americans or Europeans.
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I heard Russia is out of missiles
My sarcasm detector is faulty, so I'm not sure if this was a genuine assertion or snark. In any event, I'm sure the people of Kiev and elsewhere in Ukraine can attest that Russia is most definitely not out of missiles [bbc.com].
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Tomorrow, if the PLA wanted, they could just walk into Primorsky and Krasnoyarsk and annex them. Heck, they could easily overrun and conquer all of Russia from the Urals to the Bering Sea
You don't think Russia's nuclear arsenal would still serve as a deterrent against that sort of thing? (Not that I have a whole lot of confidence in Russia's ICBMs actually working, but China would probably have to assume at least some of them would, and that losing some cities would be a bad thing for them)
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Russia may be a dilapidated shithole, but their missiles are dropping in Kyiv and going boom just fine.
At the same time, they've done so much nuclear saber rattling, that one is curious what it would actually take for them to push the button.
One thing is certain though- in a nuclear exchange between China and Russia, China is vastly better off.
It'd take very few warheads to literally knock t
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Your cartoon perception of a State military apparatus is pretty amusing, though.
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History is pretty irrelevant here in the current context.
I couldn't disagree more.
It's not going to be Napoleon or Hitler marching towards Moscow. If anything is a cartoon, it's the Russian military that's been shown to be that, when they have to bribe people from the Bering Sea to Smolensk to join what's supposedly one of the world's top militaries
And this is why I say history is not your strong suit.
It wasn't the Russian military that defeated Napoleon, and with just a single asterisk, it wasn't the Russian military that defeated Hitler either. Sure, they were wearing the uniforms of the Red Army, but only half of them were armed, and 2 weeks prior, they were peasants.
Multi-thousand-km overland supply lines render even the strongest army impotent.
Even the Wehrmacht, which vastly outperformed the Red Army, was a dead arm
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Yeah, it may not have been the Russian armies that defeated Napoleon or Hitler. But the French and the Germans did send land troops into Russia, and in the case of the French, occupied Moscow. The Russians had places to retreat
But if one paradropped troops into Russian cities w/ today's air forces, they could be captured, depending on the resistance. One doesn't need to roll tanks or humvees into their territory. Also, just bombing from the air Russian troop installations would destroy them, and unlik
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One relevant question would be how many missiles does Russia have stocked in Siberia, rather than in west of the Urals? To target the US & Canada, if one traverses the longitude from New York, DC or Toronto to the North Pole and beyond up to Russia, I suspect that it would touch Russia at its northern tip. That's where I'd expect Russian missiles to be based, since their targets would presumably be the US, rather than China
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During the era of ground wars. Not when all one needs to do is lob missiles at them, and knock them out
I do agree that Beijing right now sees Putin as a vassal, and so wouldn't bother. Plus they have their own internal unrest, according to some reports. But if they had their act together, they could easily defeat Russia in a air war, given what we've seen from the latter in Ukraine
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You should be a General.
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they could just walk into Primorsky and Krasnoyarsk and annex them. Heck, they could easily overrun and conquer all of Russia from the Urals to the Bering Sea
I suspect the Chinese are not stupid enough to try... having, well, read history books.
Know what the Russians did when Napoleon's army was approaching Russia? They abandoned it. We could almost say they... hollowed it out.
You should be a General.
Also a statistician. Never before did I realize that a 0.2% reduction in something could so drastically reduce it.
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Vladivostok or Khabarovsk are nearer to Beijing than they are to Moscow. Also, the PLA could paradrop troops into those 2 cities and seize them, and then just sweep over Primorsky and Khabarovsk Krais. They would have the manpower to completely overwhelm the Russians. They also don't have to do that deep into winter: they can time it appropriately for their plans, if that's what they wanted to do
I do agree w/ you that the Chicoms wouldn't, but not b'cos of stupidity. It's just that Putin is already gi
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The claim I'm objecting to is the following:
Heck, they could easily overrun and conquer all of Russia from the Urals to the Bering Sea
That's a Fallout plot device, not something that's going to happen in real life.
Any attempt at that, by any military in the world, would likely end in that military's complete destruction. Mostly merely by nature itself.
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Had Russia been a densely packed country, like China or India, even in the areas not under permafrost, you'd have been right. B'cos there would have been plenty of people to resist, and make it hell for any occupying army
But none of the cities in that region have big populations. Russia's #3 & 4 cities - Novosibirsk and Yekaterinburg - have populations around 1.5M each, but other Siberian cities are relatively pretty empty. So are most of Russia's neighbors, except China. It's been that way throug
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Assuming the signals are encrypted, at most Russia will know when and from which geographical area the signals came from.
If the sats are transmitting/recieving white noise randomly when not in use, even that may not be possible.
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Re:Eh (Score:5, Informative)
The Russians don't currently have the capability to transport humans to orbit and back.
Re: Eh (Score:2)
Just to be clear, you mean the *same* humans who go out come back in. I'm sure they could shoot a warm body into space, and I'm equally sure they could cause someone to come back...perhaps unexpectedly.
It's the sequence that matters, you see.
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Also, in space, no trajectory is unexpected.
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I guess you missed the part where they broke their only current human Soyuz launch facility and haven't fixed it yet.
https://meduza.io/en/feature/2... [meduza.io]
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No, we are not. We choose to use their rocket engine hardware, but we do not use any of the rocket's electronic control systems, because they are fucking ass.
Sounds Very Sinister And James Bondish (Score:5, Insightful)
This sounds quite sinister and James Bond-ish. Is Ernst Stavro Blofeld behind the satellite interceptions?
But when we read the article we see things like this:
European officials believe Luch-2 is a signals intelligence 'interceptor' and are concerned that sensitive, unencrypted information is being accessed by Russia.
What the actual fuck?! If it is sensitive information, then why is it unencrypted?
I'm going to have to assume that the fault here is in the article's author. They have to have fucked up the details. Surely, European officials aren't that fucking stupid.
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Surely, European officials aren't that ... stupid.
We hope.
Re: Sounds Very Sinister And James Bondish (Score:3)
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What the actual fuck?! .....
way to be professionally offended by stuff
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A $32million dollar Reaper drone also had unencrypted video feeds for quite a while.
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There's a difference between "Spy on South Moscow at 3pm" and "Our King is in the Epstein Files."
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What the actual fuck?! If it is sensitive information, then why is it unencrypted?
Because it's very old, and non-military.
It really is unencrypted.
The sensitivity of the information is in that the command and control protocol can be derived since it's in the clear, and the satellites can then be maliciously commanded. Right now, there's really only a threat of a state actor doing this, so it wasn't a huge concern.
I don't find this that strange for an old GEO sat.
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Europe stopped sharing intelligence information (Score:5, Insightful)
So I have no doubt that Russia is going to have to start going back directly to the source to get intelligence information on Europe. Since their asset can only do so much.
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In point of fact- they always have, and vice versa.
The amount of restricted intelligence is higher than it used to be, and Trump's volatility is a factor in that for sure, but they're not idiots. They know what kinds of things to be concerned about leaking, and what things not to be.
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With America shortly after Trump was elected because it kept getting leaked, again.
So I have no doubt that Russia is going to have to start going back directly to the source to get intelligence information on Europe. Since their asset can only do so much.
I believe that Israel would have done that as well, given the new found love that Trump has for their topmost enemies - Turkey and Qatar. Even if they're working closely w/ the US when it comes to Iran
So? (Score:4, Insightful)
command data (Score:2)
"sensitive information—notably command data for European satellites—is unencrypted, because many were launched years ago without advanced onboard computers or encryption capabilities."
Pretty surprising that the command data isn't encrypted, that's a severe vulnerability. I don't know how old those satellites are but it wouldn't take a very "advanced onboard computer" to implement some basic encryption.
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Re: command data (Score:4, Insightful)
Cryptographically secure communication was a thing 30 years ago. In fact SSLv1 is 30 years old and ran fine on 90s computers. Stuff that went into space 25 years ago could have and should have had this capability.
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Cryptographically secure communication was a thing 30 years ago. In fact SSLv1 is 30 years old and ran fine on 90s computers. Stuff that went into space 25 years ago could have and should have had this capability.
The person managing the budget couldn't figure out why cryptography was important, so it was shelved. Nepotism strikes again.
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Cool. Rad hardened CPUs were way slower than their desktop counterparts.
Every version of SSL from back then has been pwn3d so hard that it may as well be in clear text.
No encryption in 2019?! (Score:4, Interesting)
TFA says Intelsat39, launched in 2019, is a "typical example." And I think they mean a typical example of a satellite "launched years ago without advanced onboard computers or encryption capabilities."
No crypto in 2019? I know these things are planned and designed many years in advance, so they might contain dated components, but even so... wow.
Re:No encryption in 2019?! (Score:4, Interesting)
The Lanteris 1300 [wikipedia.org] satellite platform dates back to the 1980s. It has been updated several times since then, but it is unclear how much they changed or whether they fixed design flaws like that. I could very easily see a 40-year-old satellite design not using encryption.
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Re:No encryption in 2019?! (Score:5, Informative)
Plausible; but in that case, you would do what you could to avoid using that platform for "sensitive" data, right? Mundane stuff, sure; no big deal. Confidential stuff: no.
For communication *through* the satellite, the communication platform just passes data. The data can be encrypted whether the communication platform supports encryption or not. An Ethernet cable doesn't support encryption either, and no one cares.
The issue is communication *to* the satellite — commands to, for example, tell it to move to a higher or lower orbit, to change which way its antennas are pointed, or to begin a de-orbit or graveyard orbit burn. They're saying *that* is not encrypted. If true, then it's not that the platform can't be used for sensitive data so much as that you can't trust that someone won't inject their own signal and tell it to launch itself into a graveyard orbit 200 miles higher up and render the satellite useless, to power down all of its transponders, or to crash into a nearby satellite.
If true, that's deeply disturbing. It seems more likely that there is some encryption, but that it is weak or thoroughly broken.
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Why would the satellite need crypto chips to recieve encrypted stuff if it's just supposed to send the same signal back in a different trajectory? Are they supposed to have some sort of compute facility on the satellite so they have to decrpt, do stuff to the data, encrypt and transmit?
If the commands to the satellite are also encrypted, they can just have a lower capability chip to decrypt the commands. Presumably commands to the satellite will not exceed 1kbps or so line rate(fire thruster X for Y secs a
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My whole point is that if the article is to be believed, then as recently as 2019 (!?) they didn't have even this "lower capability chip." If we were talking about 1959, I'd understand, but 2019? You and I can theoretically order that satellite to turn on a thruster?! That's amazing.
So amazing, that I can't help but wonder if the article is mistaken. But there's enough dumbness in the worl
We welcome Russia to 1974 (Score:2)
Welcome to the club Russia. We've been intercepting satellites on a full time basis since the ECHELON project.
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Not just satellites. Every piece of communication equipment.