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A Surprising Amount of Satellite Traffic Is Unencrypted - Schneier on Security [schneier.com]:

A Surprising Amount of Satellite Traffic Is Unencrypted

Here’s the summary [ucsd.edu]:

We pointed a commercial-off-the-shelf satellite dish at the sky and carried out the most comprehensive public study to date of geostationary satellite communication. A shockingly large amount of sensitive traffic is being broadcast unencrypted, including critical infrastructure, internal corporate and government communications, private citizens’ voice calls and SMS, and consumer Internet traffic from in-flight wifi and mobile networks. This data can be passively observed by anyone with a few hundred dollars of consumer-grade hardware. There are thousands of geostationary satellite transponders globally, and data from a single transponder may be visible from an area as large as 40% of the surface of the earth.

Full paper [ucsd.edu]. News article [gizmodo.com].

Posted on October 17, 2025 at 7:03 AM [schneier.com] • 9 Comments [schneier.com]

Original Submission