On February 4, pro-war military bloggers reported that Russia’s frontline troops had lost access to Starlink satellite Internet. While Ukrainian forces have had official access to Starlink since the start of the full-scale invasion, many Russian units have relied on contraband devices as a key element of their battlefield communications. Until now, Elon Musk’s SpaceX has appeared willing to turn a blind eye to Russia’s unauthorized use of Starlink. Previous system failures that were mistaken for targeted outages turned out to be false alarms, and Ukrainian officials warned that cutting off Starlink access in Russian-occupied territories would be “catastrophic” for Kyiv’s frontline drone warfare. This time, however, the outage is not accidental: it comes after Russian troops started equipping their own drones with Starlink en masse and carrying out attacks on the Ukrainian army’s rear positions. Now, Kyiv and SpaceX face the challenge of engineering a Starlink blackout for the Russian side without hampering the Ukrainian military.
Other than the title being the most meaningful comment in this matter, this article explains the broader context of starlink on the front and possible alternatives.
It doesn’t answer the question, possibly because it does not have the evidence to confirm that it’s because the Kremlin now can afford some other alternative. Time will tell.
so in the best probable condiditions there is an ability to shut down network services in real time.
I think you’re right about this. Shutting down in real time if they think the dish is compromised should be possible, but whitelisting them requires more overhead to verify authenticity, especially for civilians.
The most problematic aspect to this, is that red button is in the hands of Starlink, so Musk, a pretty uncooperative person who wouldn’t give it away.
It seems ukrainian defence forces doesn’t have many choices there. If the service allows whitelisting select stations (or rather promotes this option), they are pushed to work with it, unless they can demand a better ruleset for themselves.
But as with all fucking whitelisting, there is a problem that an unreliable third party provider has pointers on the map on registered users with their identity glued to it. One ketamine nazi gets a nearly realtime info on ukrainian positions supplied with his company’s stations that he or a hacker can leak anytime. And that’s an insane vulnerability they are made to put up with.
I am kind of curious what the SpaceX / DoD deal was once the DoD finally took things over back in 2022 or 2023 or whenever it was. Did they just hand off all decision making of what is/isn’t allowed, or did they actually hand off some form of control that lets them manage things?
It’s possible, but unlikely, that SpaceX is helping with the whitelist, but only the DoD can see it, or at least, only the DoD can see it in the simplistic form all laid out without having to do any extra work.
But given the current government… that doesn’t really help in terms of leaks/hacks and the data being considered safe.
I think you’re right about this. Shutting down in real time if they think the dish is compromised should be possible, but whitelisting them requires more overhead to verify authenticity, especially for civilians.
The most problematic aspect to this, is that red button is in the hands of Starlink, so Musk, a pretty uncooperative person who wouldn’t give it away.
It seems ukrainian defence forces doesn’t have many choices there. If the service allows whitelisting select stations (or rather promotes this option), they are pushed to work with it, unless they can demand a better ruleset for themselves.
But as with all fucking whitelisting, there is a problem that an unreliable third party provider has pointers on the map on registered users with their identity glued to it. One ketamine nazi gets a nearly realtime info on ukrainian positions supplied with his company’s stations that he or a hacker can leak anytime. And that’s an insane vulnerability they are made to put up with.
Wars in the TikTok era are fucking absurd.
I am kind of curious what the SpaceX / DoD deal was once the DoD finally took things over back in 2022 or 2023 or whenever it was. Did they just hand off all decision making of what is/isn’t allowed, or did they actually hand off some form of control that lets them manage things?
It’s possible, but unlikely, that SpaceX is helping with the whitelist, but only the DoD can see it, or at least, only the DoD can see it in the simplistic form all laid out without having to do any extra work.
But given the current government… that doesn’t really help in terms of leaks/hacks and the data being considered safe.