An American intelligence assessment found that the balloon used a commercially available U.S. network to communicate, primarily for navigation, U.S. officials say.
  • foggy@lemmy.worldEnglish
    17610·
    3 years ago

    This is what you get for not castrating them 25 years ago.

    Make internet a utility already, fuck.

    • Dead_or_Alive@lemmy.worldEnglish
      124·
      3 years ago

      This was probably the biggest intelligence coup of this century. Our intelligence agencies have extremely capable hacking capabilities. I’m sure they not only know the provider, they know the exact building down to the individual IP addresses of the PCs that data was transmitted to. If they get that, they will be able to trace all of the other activities that originated from that Chinese agency.

      On top of that when the US was done it still shot it down and now has the hardware to analyze.

  • paultimate14@lemmy.worldEnglish
    10111·
    3 years 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.worldBannedEnglish
      1743·
      3 years 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.

      • postmateDumbass@lemmy.worldEnglish
        4·
        3 years 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.worldBannedEnglish
          32·
          3 years 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.worldEnglish
            1·
            3 years 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.deEnglish
      54·
      3 years 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.

  • schmidtster@lemmy.worlddeleted by creatorEnglish
    394·
    3 years ago

    I thought the official announcement from the pentagon was it never sent any data?

  • Tier 1 Build-A-Bear 🧸@lemmy.worldEnglish
    281·
    3 years ago

    Wait, you mean US corporations will take money to do questionable things? Surprised Pikachu face.

    Maybe the US government shouldn’t have set the precedent that that was EXPECTED AND ENCOURAGED

    • Lazhward@lemmy.worldEnglish
      61·
      3 years ago

      Didn’t that turn out to be a weather balloon launched by an amateur meteorology club?

      • nrezcm@lemmy.worldEnglish
        112·
        3 years ago

        No that ended up being swamp gas from a weather balloon trapped in a thermal pocket which reflected light from Venus. Pretty common mistake.

  • deafboy@lemmy.worldEnglish
    229·
    3 years ago

    I’ll have a good laugh if it turns out the baloon was not chinese after all, it has just contained some iot device with previously unknown call home function to collect diagnostic data.

  • Kairos@lemmy.todayEnglish
    7·
    3 years ago

    Wow really they used infustructure in the United States to communicate with something in The United States instead of putting a super expensive and moving satellite dish on the thing???

  • Zoidberg@lemm.eeEnglish
    4·
    3 years ago

    The PCC must be feeling all smart about their spy balloon design choices. Just wait until they need to talk to Comcast customer support…