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U.S. intelligence officials determined the Chinese spy balloon used a U.S. internet provider to communicate (www.nbcnews.com)

submitted 7 months ago by return2ozma@lemmy.world to c/technology@lemmy.world

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[-] paultimate14@lemmy.world 90 points 7 months ago

I was having a hard time imagining which company this could be. Not that I'm a fan of Verizon or Comcast, but I think they know what side their bread is buttered on. Which one wouldn't?

Then I remembered Starlink exists.

[-] Linkerbaan@lemmy.world 169 points 7 months ago

Don't think they were colluding with the provider. They probably just put a burner sim card into a 4g module and sent data over a VPN to China whenever it had signal.

[-] paraphrand@lemmy.world 38 points 7 months ago

It could have even been one of those multi SIM router things that has network redundancy.

[-] postmateDumbass@lemmy.world 4 points 7 months ago

The blurb says primarily for navigation.

So it was using the starlink signals like gps signal and therefore they needed to correlate with the carrier to get a rough time sync.

I wonder what timing data is freely available on the starlink acquisition signal.

[-] Linkerbaan@lemmy.world 1 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

Why would they need data then? With GPS can get a 1metre accurate chip for like 20 bucks and it's way smaller. And no need for any carrier or subscription.

[-] postmateDumbass@lemmy.world 1 points 7 months ago

Mapping out network topology? Who knows.

Whatever the collected data was, it could have been sent to their satellites for long haul back home.

[-] Joker@discuss.tchncs.de 54 points 7 months ago

It’s a satellite provider. Cell networks don’t work at that altitude. Starlink was my first guess too but, after some more thought, it could be Hughesnet. They probably have wider coverage.

[-] Nurse_Robot@lemmy.world 29 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

Yeah, their coverage is hughe

[-] snausagesinablanket@lemmy.world 10 points 7 months ago

Y U G E N E T

[-] crsu@lemmy.world 7 points 7 months ago

So are their pings

[-] bionicjoey@lemmy.ca 3 points 7 months ago

Hugh Mungous

[-] Evilcoleslaw@lemmy.world 9 points 7 months ago

Probably Hughesnet or Viasat.

this post was submitted on 28 Dec 2023

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