Brazilians hijack US military satellites

[Sarad AV]

now, how many of these birds are there in the sky without access control?
Since they are in geosynchronous orbit is its coverage area as wide as Brazil?
Sarad.

--- On Tue, 4/21/09, Peter Gutmann <pgut001 at cs.auckland.ac.nz> wrote:
> From: Peter Gutmann <pgut001 at cs.auckland.ac.nz>
> Subject: Brazilians hijack
US military satellites
> To: cypherpunks at al-qaeda.net
> Date: Tuesday, April
21, 2009, 3:25 PM
> The whole story's at:
> 
>
http://www.wired.com/politics/security/news/2009/04/fleetcom
> 
> it appears
that Brazilians wanting to communicate on the
> cheap are using US
> FLTSATCOM
links to talk to each other.  This works
> because "the communication
>
channel was open, not encrypted, lots of people used it to
> talk to each
other"
> (later they talk about hearing encrypted military voice
> comms, so I
assume
> they mean that there's no access control, not necessarily
>
encryption).
> Truckers use it because you get better quality voice than
>
with CB. Drug
> dealers use it to coordinate operations, rogue loggers use
>
it to warn of raids
> by the authorities.  As the story says "Until [they
>
get upgraded to use
> crypto], the military is still using aging FLTSAT and
UFO
> satellites - and so
> are a lot of Brazilians".
> 
> Peter.