[tsally]

If a bunch of impoverished Brazilians can use these satellites to communicate, is a Denial of Service possible if organized by a well funded group? I admit I don't know as much about this type of technology as I would like. I assume they could saturate every frequency?

Also, a thought to fix this problem. How much money do you think the US is going to spend to try to crack down on the hijackers? How much money do you think it would take to build a decent infrastructure to remove the motivation of hijacking? The numbers certainly are not equal, but they're probably closer than you'd think.

[forinti]

Impoverished? Brazil is actually a middle-income country, with the South and Southeast rapidly approaching european income levels. Brazil has 190 million people and 150 million cellphones. Most of the population lives near the Atlantic coast in large metropolitan areas.

[tsally]

I'm very well aware of Brazil's economic status as a country. I wasn't seeking to comment on the country as a whole, simply the segment of the population hijacking signals. I stand by my statement that this segment of the population has very little resources in the grand scheme of technical attacks. Seems as if you were looking for something that wasn't there.

[rbanffy]

Believe if I say the Brazilians who are doing this are not "impoverished". They just found a freebie and many of them don't even know they shouldn't do it.

As for the military implications, I don't know why the hell those birds were not DoS'ed before. If a couple clever civilians figured that out, I can't believe no bad guy ever tried that.

How effective a DoS on those satellites would be on denying US-Navy fleetwide communications?

Actually, I assume badguys are already using those satellites for short bursts of encrypted data that looks an awful lot like navy traffic sent via very narrow beams the satellite (and ground people) have no hope of finding where it came from.

Perhaps, instead of cracking down, the Navy should call the NSA and listen more carefully to what is being transmitted.

[forinti]

I dunno, you don't have to be Wozniak to use a blue box...

[Rod]

I think tsally made a very good point, and I think you're reacting emotionally. His comment was not an attack against Brazil.

I don't think tsally's point was that Brazilians are impoverished. The point he was trying to make was that if someone in the Amazon can buy radio equipment for less than $500 and use it to hack the U.S. Navy's satellites, then there's a problem here. These guys are looking for freebies, and they are most likely harmless. But just imagine what would happen if the U.S. goes to war and the enemy deliberately carries out a DoS attack against the U.S. Navy satellites? That's not such an unlikely scenario...

On the other hand, after decades of misguided foreign policy that has fostered hatred towards the U.S. all over the world, I doubt the police forces abroad will be very eager to protect the interests of the U.S. Military.

[forinti]

I didn't think it was an attack at all. But he did show ignorance of what Brazil is. So do you, in fact. Manaus is in the middle of the jungle and is a very large industrial centre. So buying radio equipment in the Amazon is not really that amazing. Walk into any indigenous camp and you are very likely to find a satellite dish.

I'm not angry nor emotional, I just find it silly that it would seem so amazing to some people that this could happen in Brazil.

[Rod]

Dude, I am half-Brazilian and I have lived in Brazil when I was a kid. Yes, there are a lot of ignorant yanks out there, but I am not one of them.

My point has little to do with Brazil or Brazilians. The point is that people with little technical know-how and few resources are hacking the U.S. Military satellites. If the satellites' comm systems had been designed properly, this should NOT happen. If amateurs can do it, then imagine what the enemy could do in case of war.