An American Lion

UHF Satellite

This surprised me.

A ne plus ultra of cyberpunk high-tech lowlife.

We don’t have encryption on our sensitive communication satellites to prevent this sort of thing?

A satellite dish used for “hacking” into our satellite communication systemOn the night of March 8, cruising 22,000 miles above the Earth, U.S. Navy communications satellite FLTSAT-8 suddenly erupted with illicit activity. Jubilant voices and anthems crowded the channel on a junkyard’s worth of homemade gear from across vast and silent stretches of the Amazon: Ronaldo, a Brazilian soccer idol, had just scored his first goal with the Corinthians.

It was a party that won’t soon be forgotten. Ten days later, Brazilian Federal Police swooped in on 39 suspects in six states in the largest crackdown to date on a growing problem here: illegal hijacking of U.S. military satellite transponders.

“This had been happening for more than five years,” says Celso Campos, of the Brazilian Federal Police. “Since the communication channel was open, not encrypted, lots of people used it to talk to each other.”

The practice is so entrenched, and the knowledge and tools so widely available, few believe the campaign to stamp it out will be quick or easy.

Much of this country’s geography is remote, and beyond the reach of cellphone coverage, making American satellites an ideal, if illegal, communications option. The problem goes back more than a decade, to the mid-1990s, when Brazilian radio technicians discovered they could jump on the UHF frequencies dedicated to satellites in the Navy’s Fleet Satellite Communication system, or FLTSATCOM. They’ve been at it ever since.

Truck drivers love the birds because they provide better range and sound than ham radios. Rogue loggers in the Amazon use the satellites to transmit coded warnings when authorities threaten to close in. Drug dealers and organized criminal factions use them to coordinate operations.

Today, the satellites, which pirates called “Bolinha” or “little ball,” are a national phenomenon.

You would think someone would have done something about this if it was really that bad. Apparently, it is tolerated. That’s the only conclusion I can come away with. Understanding what constitutes a hacker is tough for older folks like myself. It’s not so much an uber-geek with fancy hardware. It’s really more of a phenomenon where people with a little bit of knowledge find some crack in the edifice in which to thrive and do strange, weird, or wonderful things. Of course there are criminals and sociopaths at work as well. Thankfully, we’ll never run out of those.