According to a report from Ukrainian website Defense Express, Russian drones are now actively using Starlink hardware for “unlimited” communication over Ukraine’s territory. This past week, Kyiv’s defense forces shot down 28 drones sent as part of Russia’s attack on the Kharkiv region, and some Starlink-branded equipment was seen among the wreckage for the first time.
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It’s very difficult for Starlink to stop this from happening while still allowing the capability for Ukraine to do it. If Russia obtains SL systems through intermediaries and then uses them over Ukrainian territory there’s realistically no way for SL to know whether it’s Russia or Ukraine using the service.
It’s really not all that difficult from a technical perspective. All that Ukraine or Starlink would need to do is keep track of the MACs in use, blacklisting those which have been lost or destroyed. Some would slip through, but it’s better than not doing it at all.
Of course, with Musk being pro-Russian, I don’t expect Starlink to help Ukraine out any more than they have to for optics.
It’s really not all that difficult from a technical perspective.
I’ll go ahead and reply to you, @[email protected] and @[email protected] at the same time since you all three had the same idea.
All that Ukraine or Starlink would need to do is keep track of the MACs in use, blacklisting those which have been lost or destroyed.
A whitelist of authorized MAC addresses is easy from a “technical” prospective. It would simply be a looong list of 48 bit addresses but you are ignoring the massive challenge of managing that list.
Making this work would require the Ukrainian Government to setup an official StarLink registration process for every StarLink system in the country, including the ones that are privately owned. Then once a SL system was registered with the Government SL would have to setup a whole separate system to process those registrations.
Now you also need the opposite. Every time that a registered system shouldn’t be used because it was destroyed or someone stopped paying their bill the Ukrainian Government would have to process that and send it StarLink to have it de-authorized.
So no it’s not at all difficult from a “technical” perspective but doing this would require stomping privacy rights into a mudhole and without perfect execution across a warzone the size of a nation it will do little to nothing to solve the problem.
If this was a practical solution Ukraine would have already requested that StarLink make it happen. The fact that the really smart people in Ukraine haven’t asked for this means that they’ve already dismissed the idea as unpalatable, unworkable or both.
As I said in my other comment, Ukraine is under martial law. Privacy rights are low on the list at the moment due to Russians invading and killing citizens. It doesn’t need to be perfect, it just needs to save lives.
Couldn’t they just spoof the MAC of the Ukrainian link?
I’d hope that Starlink devices have attestation to prevent MAC spoofing.
Maybe I don’t know what I’m talking about but wouldn’t starlink know the serial numbers or Mac addresses of the dishes they gave to Ukraine? Couldn’t they easily filter that region so only those work?
They probably can do that, but a lot of the connections Ukraine are using will have been donated by third parties, rather than directly purchased by the Ukrainians. How do they tell the difference between those, and someone claiming to be doing that then shipping the dishes to Russia?
Have the Ukrainian government submit their MAC addresses?
Which would mean that every single StarLink system in Ukraine would have to be registered with the Government, even the ones owned by private citizens. They’d have to be in person registrations as well because any automated system, such as a website, could be used by Russia to get their own gear registered.
Why would private ones need to be registered?
Mobile GPS is artificially disabled above a certain ground speed to prevent them being used as bootleg missile guidance systems.
Just put a speed limit on Starlink dishes, and then if you want to permit one side to use them simply whitelist those MACs. Perhaps the real reason is that a private company doesn’t want to be seen as choosing sides or maybe there are implications for international rules of war.
Ukraine is under martial law, so privacy rights (especially involving something like MAC addresses which Starlink already has, not to mention that most citizens still in country can’t afford it in the first place) are far down on the list. It’s an unfortunate cost of Russia’s invasion. The Ukrainians have already done similar things with cell-based devices, it’s not some massive undertaking that would be new to them. It’s not like they’d make it front page news, either.
Really, it’s not even just Ukraine that could do something. Starlink can too, but because maintaining lists has no ROI they won’t until they’re forced.
Just a thought, and I may be way off because admittedly I don’t know a lot about how it works - wouldn’t Ukraine have legitimately registered their SL gear? If it’s not registered by Ukraine and it’s in Ukraine, can’t they kill the uplink?
