this post was submitted on 14 Oct 2025
312 points (98.4% liked)

Technology

76640 readers
2843 users here now

This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.


Our Rules


  1. Follow the lemmy.world rules.
  2. Only tech related news or articles.
  3. Be excellent to each other!
  4. Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
  5. Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
  6. Politics threads may be removed.
  7. No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
  8. Only approved bots from the list below, this includes using AI responses and summaries. To ask if your bot can be added please contact a mod.
  9. Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
  10. Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.

Approved Bots


founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 

https://archive.md/QMvAI

With just $800 in basic equipment, researchers found a stunning variety of data—including thousands of T-Mobile users’ calls and texts and even US military communications—sent by satellites unencrypted.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] treadful@lemmy.zip 16 points 3 weeks ago (6 children)

“Generally, our users choose the encryption that they apply to their communications to suit their specific application or need,” says a spokesperson for SES, the parent company of Intelsat. “For SES’s inflight customers, for example, SES provides a public Wi-Fi hot spot connection similar to the public internet available at a coffee shop or hotel. On such public networks, user traffic would be encrypted when accessing a website via HTTPS/TLS or communicating using a virtual private network.”

Can't decide the side of the fence I am on for this. Of course the vast majority of Internet traffic across the world is unencrypted. Anyone could be on the line between me and this Lemmy instance, just as they could if there was a satellite between us. However, you're also broadcasting it to like 25% of the globe and not even making any kind of physical infrastructure efforts.

Quest can't entirely guarantee nobody will snoop a fiber line, but they do bury them.

[–] Dekkia@this.doesnotcut.it 59 points 3 weeks ago (4 children)

vast majority of Internet traffic across the world is unencrypted.

In 2023 between 80% and 95% of web traffic was encryted. Unencrypted web traffic is getting pretty rare.

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/12/year-review-last-mile-encrypting-web

[–] treadful@lemmy.zip 7 points 3 weeks ago (3 children)

I should've been more clear, I didn't mean the data, but at the protocol level it's all open.

Same with the Internet traffic through these satellites.

[–] Natanael 5 points 3 weeks ago

You should be clear with the difference between link encryption and application encryption here

load more comments (2 replies)
load more comments (2 replies)
load more comments (3 replies)