SignalsEverywhere Podcast: Satcom Piracy Interview

Corrosive from the SignalsEverywhere YouTube channel has released a new episode of his podcast. In this episode Corrosive interviews an anonymous informant who has an interesting story about his involvement with the UHF Military SATCOM pirate radio scene in Brazil. Corrosive also explains a bit further about what SATCOM is and why it's so susceptible to piracy. He also notes that piracy on Inmarsat L-band frequencies is also becoming more common.

The UHF-SATCOM band is anywhere between 243 - 270 MHz and contains fairly strong signals from many several US satellites that can be received with a simple antenna and any UHF radio/SDR. Many of the satellites are simple repeaters without security, and pirates from Mexico and South America often hijack the satellite for their own personal use. In the past, and possibly even still today hijackers involved in drug trafficking and other illegal activities made use of these insecure military satellites for long range communications. Reception of these satellites is generally available in Canada, US, Mexico, South America, Europe and Africa.

Subscribe
Notify of
guest

5 Comments
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments
Mario

I enjoy his videos very much, he is a fountain of information on SDRs. Excellent work, keep those videos coming and thanks.

rlwsdr

I listened to most of the podcast. Perhaps I missed the part where Corrosive warned against trying this. I hope so.

Don’t even think of messing around with DoD satellites. For those within the US, your position will get triangulated *very* quickly, the FCC with support from the US Marshals will raid your location, seize your equipment, hit you with a hefty fine, and you will probably spend some time in jail.

For those outside of the US, your position will be provided to your spectrum enforcement agency. Depending on the country, they might not be quite as forgiving as they are in the US.

Greg

No thanks. I’m not going to listen to an idiot who doesn’t even know that “underground” is one word.

Val

It actually makes a lot of sense for US military to keep those satellites “unprotected”. Isn’t it good for them that they can follow communications of drug smugglers and even approximately know their locations?

Alex

Sounds more like people in remote villages talking to their friends and family to me, although I’m not good at Portuguese