Elon Musk secretly ordered Starlink engineers to disrupt Ukraine counter-attack on Russian fleet

[sqlrob]

Found on Fark:

[anothernewbbaccount]

both Ukraine and Russia have an interest in killing him—but not until the war ends.

Why wait? With Lone Skum dead, Ukraine might expect control of Starlink to maybe pass to someone slightly more rational.

@choodude

Not if you consider the theory that the Saudi’s invested so much in Elon’s takeover of the Blue Bird so that one of the principle communication channels used during the Arab Spring events would be destroyed available to them to get inside dirt on who was posting what, from where, and track them down.

[Kilkrazy]

Well, thanks Elon for taking it on yourself to freelance US foreign policy and help prolong the war.

Real people really are dying in Ukraine while you dick around blaming everyone else but yourself for the mess you’ve made of your latest toy.

[awfulhorrid]

@danimagoo

one of the differences between a millionaire and a billionaire

Q: What do billionaires call millionaires?
A: The poor.

[Mister44]

This is why the Pentagon is looking to create their own version of Starlink. Something that they have control over and can grant access to allies etc.

Also, maybe Gwynne Shotwell should make it so Musk doesn’t have any operational control at Space X. At least not with out going through them first.

[Mitchell]

@anon61221983

mass media from the start has been just that double-sided. Yes, it can be a means of organizing against oppression, but it has always been effectively used as a means of furthering oppression.

Exactly. All mass media does is give people, ideologies and organisations greater reach than they’ve had in earlier times - whether they’re using that reach to lift people up or to choke them.

[anon61221983]

Which is precisely why they would not want it shut down…

@Kilkrazy

Real people really are dying in Ukraine while you dick around blaming everyone else but yourself for the mess you’ve made of your latest toy.

He really doesn’t care about those lives. He cares about power and that’s it.

@Mitchell

All mass media does is give people, ideologies and organisations greater reach than they’ve had in earlier times - whether they’re using that reach to lift people up or to choke them.

[jeddak]

Dirtbag.

[smulder]

… even if we have to have a system where one guy gets to act like a global superpower all by himself

Elon Musk should not be that guy

[anon72357663]

What I want to know is how did he even know when and where to shut off service?

[anon61221983]

He had the people who can do that, do it…

[anon72357663]

What I mean is that I imagine an operation like what was described would be carried out in secret. Were Musk or other Starlink employees monitoring the location and movement of the terminals? Is its encryption backdoored and communications monitored?

If so, did someone (Putin) ask him to do so?

Was Ukraine working with Starlink to ensure that service was on in the target area, and Musk changed his mind/double crossed them?

Or is this a case where he got it in his head (or had it put in his head) to shut off Starlink around Crimea ‘just in case?’

I don’t know how to phrase this next part, because it seems villainous either way…but it feels like it may be important to learn whether he shut service off in response to this sneak attack that no one should have known about or whether the service had been shut off earlier in an area that Ukraine didn’t know was a dead zone.

[anon61221983]

@atteSmythe

What I mean is that I imagine an operation like what was described would be carried out in secret.

Sure…

@atteSmythe

Were Musk or other Starlink employees monitoring the location and movement of the terminals?

I doubt Musk was, but I’m sure he has employees who do that job…

@atteSmythe

Is its encryption backdoored and communications monitored?

No idea? What is the industry standard for such things?

@atteSmythe

did someone (Putin) ask him to do so?

Probably, yeah.

@atteSmythe

Was Ukraine working with Starlink to ensure that service was on in the target area, and Musk changed his mind/double crossed them?

Seems like he did, yeah.

@atteSmythe

Or is this a case where he got it in his head (or had it put in his head) to shut off Starlink around Crimea ‘just in case?’

Just in case for what though? But he has not made any secret of his political views on the war. He’s fine with imperialists and authoritarians.

@atteSmythe

but it feels like it may be important to learn whether he shut service off in response to this sneak attack that no one should have known about or whether the service had been shut off earlier in an area that Ukraine didn’t know was a dead zone.

I’m not sure it matters, either way, though. He’s made his position on the war crystal clear.

[smulder]

@atteSmythe

Musk changed his mind/double crossed them

… doesn’t sound like him at all _/s

[fuzzyfungus]

Starlink cells are pretty small; so (even if the user terminal doesn’t cooperate at all, or has its GPS receiver spoofed or altered) it would be pretty hard to hide the location of a user terminal from the operator.

I’ve not found any specifics on how the user terminal authenticates to the network; but, if only for billing purposes, it presumably allows terminals to be uniquely identified, just as cellphones can, (the teardown shows an STSafe-A110 which looks like the plausible candidate for unique keying material, however it’s done in detail).

Between having a fairly tight location and a unique user terminal ID the operator has a pretty strong inferential attack on hand.

What that doesn’t tell us; and what seems likely to be a juicier question, is what led them to go looking: fairly specific information about Ukrainian drones? Just a broad sense that any potentially Ukrainian user terminal in that area is clearly endangering longtermism? Someone at SpaceX doing dragnet data-scientist stuff to all their customers to look for interesting things who noticed a bunch of user terminals in places without ship traffic and raised an eyebrow? Someone at SpaceX quite specifically following the career of Ukrainian user terminals to see what they get up to?

I’m not sure if there even are satellite options where you can avoid the operator knowing which device is phoning in, and from where(certainly none of the commercially available ones); but that data only gets acted on if someone has a much more specific interest.

[BakaNeko]

Elon Musk has sparked outrage with one of his companies’ ‘horrifying’ new...

[hecep]

@MikeR

Today he’s acting on a whim against Ukraine

Smells like much more than a whim. Quid pro quo perhaps. What does Musk gain.

[anon77190095]

Russian bot factories upvoting his posts?

[kamikrazee]

strong textMusk has willingly become a partisan in the war. He is operating from the United States and is dragging this country into the conflict, (on a side that we do not want to be on). He should have his assets seized, be stripped of citizenship and deported.

(and yes, I meant to shout!)

[Terry_Ward]

Around the time of the Manhattan Project, quite a few scientists divulged their countries’ atomic secrets to the Russians in order to ‘promote peace’.

That went well.