Re:How Syria Turned Off the Internet
by rdl on Friday November 30, 2012 @01:10AM
(#4852094)
They would be more able to go after terrestrial radio and L-band portable satellite systems (e.g. Thuraya DSL, thuraya sat modems, various forms of BGAN/RBGAN/etc., which is what journalists tend to use) than Ka or Ku band satellite.
I haven't kept up on Syria or Libya (I wasted 2003-2010 on this stuff in Iraq/Afgh/etc., and am trying to do a "normal" tech startup now), but while I think Syria (and Libya) had better European gear than Iraq or the Taliban, it isn't on par with the US, UK/FR/DE, RU, CN, etc. It's basically "good commercial equipment designed for law enforcement", which is very heavily cellphone focused.
The #1 vulnerability with satellite systems remains "operator assistance to the adversary", or "network configured in a way which relays location data of connected terminals to everyone in the footprint", both of which can be addressed if you control the network.
I haven't kept up on Syria or Libya (I wasted 2003-2010 on this stuff in Iraq/Afgh/etc., and am trying to do a "normal" tech startup now), but while I think Syria (and Libya) had better European gear than Iraq or the Taliban, it isn't on par with the US, UK/FR/DE, RU, CN, etc. It's basically "good commercial equipment designed for law enforcement", which is very heavily cellphone focused.
The #1 vulnerability with satellite systems remains "operator assistance to the adversary", or "network configured in a way which relays location data of connected terminals to everyone in the footprint", both of which can be addressed if you control the network.