The massive satellite network the government uses is accidentally blasting out people's private passwords in plain text for anyone to see.
arXiv · March 13, 2026 · 2603.12062
Why it matters
After reverse-engineering the proprietary protocols of the 2.5-million-subscriber constellation, researchers discovered that almost all communications are open to interception. They demonstrated that off-the-shelf radio tools can be used to clone satellite devices and eavesdrop on private messages worldwide.
From the abstract
The Iridium Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellite constellation remains a unique provider of global communications for critical industries, governments, and private users, serving over 2.5 million active subscribers despite recent market competition. In contrast to terrestrial wireless standards such as 3GPP, Iridium protocol specifications are proprietary and have not undergone rigorous, public, and systematic security evaluation. In this work, we present the first comprehensive security analysis of