Ukraine gets Starlink satellite Internet and warning about safety

Ukraine gets Starlink satellite Internet and warning about safety
March 1, 2022, 9:57 am

Satellite communication (File photo; Pixabay)

The Arab News reported, citing Reuters, Ukraine on Monday said it had received donated Starlink satellite Internet terminals from SpaceX, but an Internet security researcher warned these could become Russian targets.

“Starlink — here. Thanks, @elonmusk,” Ukraine’s vice prime minister, Mykhailo Fedorov, tweeted, days after asking SpaceX’s billionaire chief executive officer Elon Musk for help. Fedorov’s tweet included a picture of the back of a military-looking truck, loaded with terminals.

Musk tweeted back, “You are most welcome.”

The terminals look like home satellite television dishes and can provide relatively fast Internet service, by residential standards, by connecting to a fleet of satellites in low orbit.

But John Scott-Railton, a senior researcher at the University of Toronto’s Citizen Lab project, took to Twitter to warn the terminals could become Russian targets.

He tweeted: “Re: @elonmusk’s starlink donation. Good to see. But remember: if #Putin controls the air above #Ukraine, users’ uplink transmissions become beacons ... for airstrikes."

He added in a series of 15 tweets detailing the risks: “#Russia has decades of experience hitting people by targeting their satellite communications."

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Musk said on Saturday that Starlink is available in Ukraine and SpaceX is sending more terminals to the country, whose Internet has been disrupted due to the Russian invasion.

Fedorov thanked Ukraine’s ambassador to the United States for helping to swiftly approve the activation of Starlink in Ukraine.

Tim Farrar, a consultant in satellite communications said that one of the challenges is to install end-user terminals, which require a clear view of the sky to connect to Starlink.

He said that as high-rise buildings can block the service, one has to go to the top of the highest building nearby to set up the antenna, adding “that’s a fairly vulnerable place to be.”

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He said: “It is not going to be something that can offer a replacement for terrestrial Internet on a large scale."

SpaceX did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.

Source: arabnews

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