Satellite eavesdropping of 802.11b traffic
Arnold G. Reinhold
reinhold at world.std.com
Fri May 28 07:56:30 EDT 2004
At 9:19 PM -0400 5/27/04, Perry E. Metzger wrote:
>"R. A. Hettinga" <rah at shipwright.com> writes:
>> At 12:35 PM -0400 5/27/04, John Kelsey wrote:
>>>Does anyone know whether the low-power nature of wireless LANs protects
>>>them from eavesdropping by satellite?
>>
>> It seems to me that you'd need a pretty big dish in orbit to get that kind
>> of resolution.
>>
>> The Keyholes(?) are for microwaves, right?
>
>Dunno if it would work in orbit,, but you can get surprising results
>right here on earth using phased arrays.
>
>Vivato is selling very long range phased array equipment as long
>range/high quality 802.11 basestations, but you could do precisely the
>same trick to eavesdrop instead of to communicate. With enough
>computing power, one device could listen in on every 802.11
>communication in a very large radius.
>
>I don't know how practical it would be to set up some sort of large
>scale phased array in orbit -- I suspect the answer is "not practical
>at all" -- but the principle could apply there, too.
>
I would say quite practical. A huge advantage for the attacker is
that 802.11b/g is in a fixed frequency band. A half-wave dipole is
6.25 cm long. A large phased array could be assembled out of printed
circuit board tiles, each with many antennas.
The outdoor range for 802.11 is up to 100 m. Low earth orbit is
about 150 km. That is a factor of 1500. Power attenuation is the
square of that, which works out to a 64 db loss. Throw in another 10
db for slant range, building attenuation, etc. The loss has to be
made up by a combination of antenna gain, improved receiver
performance and better signal processing. That doesn't sound undoable.
A single LEO satellite would only have a few minutes of visibility
per day over any one location on Earth. That suggests an active
attack, where the satellite looks for files or even changes data. The
satellite's ability to transmit at much higher power levels is an
advantage.
A third option is spot jamming. Here high power means one can get
away with a smaller antenna, perhaps wrapped around a cheaper spin
stabilized satellite. Such a system could be used to briefly disable
802.11-based security systems, perhaps allowing a spy to gain access
to a building.
Other interesting possibilities include long endurance
remotely-piloted aircraft, balloons and small receiving stations that
could be planted by spies or even parachuted into position. I'm sure
802.11 has given the SIGINT community much joy.
Arnold Reinhold
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