Elon Musk’s company, once hailed for aiding the besieged country, now appears to be helping its invaders as well.

Russia is using SpaceX’s Starlink satellite devices in Ukraine, sources say::undefined

  • KairuByte@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
    6·
    9 months ago

    Russia has operatives worldwide. Just like every other country with any sort of intelligence agency. The idea that they aren’t able to come up with a credit card with a Ukrainian name that looks 100% legitimate to a billing company is farcical.

    Let me just ask you point blank, do you think the CIA could manage to purchase a Starlink, activate it, and use it, without anyone having any idea it was the CIA that did all that? Because if so, it’s just as easy for Russia to do it.

    Hell, I could likely do it.

      • KairuByte@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
        8·
        9 months ago

        Really? Let’s see…

        • Purchase a prepaid Visa card from somewhere without cameras, preload it with $1k.
        • Using a library computer, order a Starlink device to a post office, general delivery under a pseudonym.
        • Pick up said order using a fake ID with the pseudonym previously mentioned.

        Congrats! You are now the proud owner of a Starlink dish, under a fake name, with no traceable evidence left behind of who you actually were.

    • rdri@lemmy.worldEnglish
      14·
      9 months ago

      The idea that they aren’t able to come up with a credit card with a Ukrainian name that looks 100% legitimate to a billing company is farcical.

      I see you don’t know how credit card numbers work. You may also not be aware of the fact that credit cards aren’t working in Russia for almost 2 years.

      Let me just ask you point blank, do you think the CIA could manage to purchase a Starlink, activate it, and use it, without anyone having any idea it was the CIA that did all that?

      Just one or two is easy to manage. A dozen is much more difficult already, provided Starlink manages some security and has access to metadata (data that ultimately can’t be faked such as location, accounts, device id).

      • KairuByte@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
        4·
        9 months ago

        … meaning that one of their many worldwide operatives could just get a credit card. Like, say, in Ukraine.

        You’re focused way too hard on “following the law and doing things by the book” without realizing Russia is more of a “do what it takes.”

        • rdri@lemmy.worldEnglish
          14·
          9 months ago

          Yeah okay. Let’s say we covered the billing. What about devices id, their origin and location? Those are not purchased through Ukraine and Starlink is ought to know that.

            • rdri@lemmy.worldEnglish
              12·
              9 months ago

              They can’t be. Ukraine must have them under full control because they rely on them too much.

              Also it’s much easier to assume that these modules, like any other modern tech these days are bought by Russia through other countries who it still does business with like China, Turkey etc.

                • rdri@lemmy.worldEnglish
                  11·
                  9 months ago

                  Welp, Musk clearly isn’t even interested in exploring the possibility and just calls it fake news. I guess you won the argument by essentially saying “Nobody knows and no one needs to try”.

                  • KairuByte@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
                    11·
                    9 months ago

                    Not at all my point. My point was that it can be unknowable. And we have no idea if anyone has tried.

          • fatalError@lemmy.sdf.orgEnglish
            2·
            9 months ago

            Since when can you not spoof any of that? Grab a used android phone from local used market. Put any rooted rom on it. Spoof the gps… Device id is irrelevant at that point. As for origin, not sure what you mean by that, you can just order the starlink equipment to a random address in a different country, it will look legit. As others said, it’s trivial to bypass/spoof all that metadata.

            Once you got the connection up and running you just use a vpn to hide everyrhing.

            The only thing they could do is block starlink for a whole region, that would affect everyone in there. But you still couldn’t distinguish who is using the service.

            • cole@lemdro.idEnglish
              1·
              9 months ago

              you don’t even need to root to spoof gps, you can just do that on android

            • rdri@lemmy.worldEnglish
              12·
              9 months ago

              Since when can you not spoof any of that? Grab a used android phone from local used market. Put any rooted rom on it. Spoof the gps… Device id is irrelevant at that point.

              Starlink modules are not Android devices.

              Device ids should be required for pairing with the satellite from my understanding. Same with IMEI on smartphones - except it should be useless to try to fake it as the number of devices is magnitudes lower than smartphones and it should be possible to pin-point any misbehaving device.

              Spoofing GPS is not exactly useful. Starlink satellites are very low-orbit so again misbehavior should be detectable. I mean you can connect to some satellite but if you report location that should be served by a different satellite then you got yourself caught.

              you can just order the starlink equipment to a random address in a different country

              Starlink is shipping devices to Ukraine directly for the military it seems. It should know the difference between these and others that are shipped all over the world by anyone.

              Once you got the connection up and running you just use a vpn to hide everyrhing.

              VPN is out of scope for this I think. It’s about locating the device physically by the provider, not about specific sites trying to watch actual internet activity.

              they could do is block starlink for a whole region

              They are already doing this but not the whole region. Occupied territories of Ukraine are selectively blocked according to their own availability map.