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A comment on There are sensitive internal links in the clear on GEO satellites [pdf]. Parent comment

Re:There are sensitive internal links in the clear on GEO sa... by mjevans on Monday October 13, 2025 @11:57PM (#45576117)
Why does Space need to decrypt a vast majority of the traffic? Flow can be just as brick not-smart as fiber optic cables under the sea.

Now, management, control, etc? Yeah those you need to decode in orbit.

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Re:There are sensitive internal links in the clear on GEO sa... by JumpCrisscross on Tuesday October 14, 2025 @02:50AM (#45576986)
> Flow can be just as brick not-smart as fiber optic cables under the sea

Wouldn't this still leak metadata for routing?

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Re:There are sensitive internal links in the clear on GEO sa... by etiennebausson on Tuesday October 14, 2025 @04:12AM (#45577468)
It would not be perfect, but it wouldn't be purposefully shooting oneself in the foot.
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Re:There are sensitive internal links in the clear on GEO sa... by lxgr on Tuesday October 14, 2025 @08:02AM (#45578997)
Depending on the spot beam size, the only thing you'd always learn is the ground station's rough geographic location.

Anything else could be masked by metadata encryption, rotating lower layer identifiers, and cover traffic. Not sure if any actual protocols do that though.

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