Investigating the Iridium Satellite Network (38c3)

What this episode covers

The Iridium satellite (phone) network is evolving and so is our understanding of it. Hardware and software tools have improved massively since our last update at 32C3. New services have been discovered and analyzed. Let's dive into the technical details of having a lot of fun with listening to satellites. We'll cover a whole range of topics related to listening to Iridium satellites and making sense of the (meta) data that can be collected that way: - Overview of new antenna options for reception. From commercial offerings (thanks to Iridium Time and Location) to home grown active antennas. - How we made it possible to run the data extraction from an SDR on just a Raspberry Pi. - Running experiments on the Allen Telescope Array. - Analyzing the beam patterns of Iridium satellites. - Lessons learned in trying to accurately timestamp Iridium transmissions for future TDOA analysis. - What ACARS and Iridium have in common and how a community made use of this. - Experiments in using Iridium as a GPS alternative. - Discoveries in how the network handles handset location updates and the consequences for privacy. - Frame format and demodulation of the Iridium Time and Location service. Licensed to the public under http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0 about this event: https://events.ccc.de/congress/2024/hub/event/investigating-the-iridium-satellite-network/

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