7/26/2023 0 Comments Homemade cb radio boxWhen the investigators inspected his radio gear, they found a transceiver programmed to a FLTSAT frequency, connected to an antenna in the back of his house. In February of last year, FCC investigators used a mobile direction-finding vehicle to trace rogue transmissions to a Brazilian immigrant in New Jersey. While Brazil may be the world capital of FLTSATCOM hijacking, there have been cases in other countries - even in the United States. That's how the Defense Department got the coordinates to feed Brazilian authorities in March's raids. When the user's location is stable, the signal can be triangulated. Sometimes loggers refer to the approach of authorities by saying, "Santa Claus is coming," says Brochi. In one intercepted conversation posted to YouTube, a man alerts a friend that he should watch out, because things are getting "crispy" and "strong winds" are on their way. When real criminals use these frequencies, it's easy to tell they're hiding something, but it's nearly impossible to know what it is. "What if he's trying to call for help and two truckers are discussing soccer? In an emergency, that soldier won't be able to remember quickly how to change the radio programming to look for a frequency that's not saturated." "If a soldier is shot in an ambush, the first thing he will think of doing will be to send a help request over the radio," observes Brochi. "I saw it more than once in truck repair shops," says amateur radio operator Adinei Brochi (PY2ADN) "Nearly illiterate men rigged a radio in less than one minute, rolling wire on a coil."īrochi, who assembled his first radio set from spare parts at 12, has been tracking the Brazilian satellite hacking problem (.pdf) for years.īrochi says the Pentagon's concerns are obvious. Taught the ropes, even rough electricians can make Bolinha-ware. Ads on specialized websites offer to perform the conversion for less than $100. All the gear can be bought near any truck stop for less than $500. That lets the radio stretch into the lower end of FLTSATCOM's 292- to 317-MHz uplink range. To use the satellite, pirates typically take an ordinary ham radio transmitter, which operates in the 144- to 148-MHZ range, and add a frequency doubler cobbled from coils and a varactor diode. While the technology on the transponders still dates from the 1970s, radio sets back on Earth have only improved and plummeted in cost - opening a cheap, efficient and illegal backdoor. Until then, the military is still using aging FLTSAT and UFO satellites - and so are a lot of Brazilians. ![]() Navy contractors are working on a next-generation system called Mobile User Objective System beginning in September 2009. Today, there are two FLTSAT and eight UFO birds in geosynchronous orbit. armed forces and the White House for encrypted data and voice, typically from portable ground units that could be quickly unpacked and put to use on the battlefield.Īs the original FLTSAT constellation of four satellites fell out of service, the Navy launched a more advanced UFO satellite (for Ultra High Frequency Follow-On) to replace them. Their 23 channels were used by every branch of the U.S. The suspects face up to four years and jail, but are more likely to be fined if convicted.įirst lofted into orbit in the 1970s, the FLTSATCOM bird was at the time a major advance in military communications. Among those charged were university professors, electricians, truckers and farmers, the police say. Department of Defense and confirmed by Anatel, Brazil's FCC. Police followed coordinates provided by the U.S. ![]() The crackdown, called "Operation Satellite," was Brazil's first large-scale enforcement against the problem. "It's impossible not to find equipment like this when we catch an organized crime gang," says a police officer involved in last month's action. "Since the communication channel was open, not encrypted, lots of people used it to talk to each other." "This had been happening for more than five years," says Celso Campos, of the Brazilian Federal Police. Ten days later, Brazilian Federal Police swooped in on 39 suspects in six states in the largest crackdown to date on a growing problem here: illegal hijacking of U.S. It was a party that won't soon be forgotten. Jubilant voices and anthems crowded the channel on a junkyard's worth of homemade gear from across vast and silent stretches of the Amazon: Ronaldo, a Brazilian soccer idol, had just scored his first goal with the Corinthians. Navy communications satellite FLTSAT-8 suddenly erupted with illicit activity. ![]() * Photo: Divulgação/Polícia Federal * CAMPINAS, Brazil - On the night of March 8, cruising 22,000 miles above the Earth, U.S. Navy satellites into their personal CB radios. Brazilian satellite hackers use high-performance antennas and homebrew gear to turn U.S.
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