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Illegal Starlink terminals helped Russia advance at front line, particularly in capturing Vuhledar. (www.pravda.com.ua)

submitted 2 months ago by [email protected] to c/world

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Kyiv and Washington face difficulties solving the problem of Russian use of Starlink, analysts have said, especially ... the technical challenge of denying access to the Starlink network without affecting Ukrainian troops.
SpaceX ... said it deactivates terminals if used “by a sanctioned or unauthorized party.”

Not that I like Musk, but, this really seems like a tough case of whack-a-mole rather than Starlink deliberately helping Russia or looking the other way. Also,

Interrupting the software update process and tweaking GPS settings can get it working in Russia, said a Ukrainian drone pilot operating there.

So even using a whitelist of IDs may not be enough if the Russians are good enough to register a terminal in the EU and then forge the GPS to make it look like the terminal is still somewhere in the EU.

Basically it seems like Starlink is trying to cooperate but it's just not a simple fix.

To activate a device, users need a foreign phone number, email and bank account to pay the monthly subscription fee, prompting suppliers to seek out people willing to lend their identities. Users in “client support” Telegram chats say it is easy to buy and register Starlink kits abroad. Most are obtained in Europe and transported through the United Arab Emirates. One page warns not to activate the terminal in Russia.

Wow, they are really going quite a long way to avoid detection!

[–] Squizzy 1 points 2 months ago (2 children)

Turn them all off except the ones explicitly tied to Ukraine military and government.

[–] chaospatterns 1 points 2 months ago (1 children)

They're forging the GPS to look like it's in the EU. Do we turn off all the EU terminals too?

I'm a little surprised they can't identify spoofing by comparing the incoming signal to the proposed location. They already have antennas that can be steered using the phased array.

[–] Squizzy 1 points 2 months ago

You answered your owm question right there.

No we dont shut off the eu, we shut off any terminals picked up by sattelites over ukraine and Russia. They have multiple satellites and could discern position from which satellites see them when.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Across the whole wide world? So only Ukraine's military and gov't can use them? (And maybe a few related exceptions, e.g. for US gov't and military.)

That would do the trick, I think (except for the rare case of the Russians capturing a terminal from a Ukraine unit and then using it before Ukraine can notify Starlink to deactivate it).

Probably a major money losing proposition for Starlink, but on the other hand, does Musk really need any more money?

[–] Squizzy 1 points 2 months ago (1 children)

In the conflict area you could ban all terminals that are not tied to Ukraine. Not worldwide. As satellites enter conflict area they will receive traffic from new terminals, check are these terminals registered to the good guys and turn off all others.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago

I think that's what they were trying to do with the GPS tracking, and why the Russians started spoofing the GPS location. So the illegal terminal would think it's in Poland or some other part of the EU rather than being in the conflict area.

I wonder though if GPS is the end here though. The actual signal from the terminal to the Starlink satellites itself - that can probably be triangulated. Perhaps with less accuracy than GPS but ... so do all the things you said, plus: if the triangulated signal somehow doesn't match the GPS coordinates by too big a difference, shut the terminal down.

There still remains the case of Russian military units killing a Ukraine unit and stealing the terminal before they have a chance to deactivate it. However, first eventually HQ will realize that the unit is unaccounted for and cancel it so it only has a limited window to be used, and second it would cost the Russians quite a bit in human life to acquire terminals in this manner, hopefully high enough that they won't be willing to pay it at all.