A shadowy network of black market traders, some in the United Arab Emirates, has been selling SpaceX Starlink kits to Sudanese rebels and Russian forces in Ukraine.
The clandestine trade in these Elon Musk-made satellite dishes, which provide broadband Internet access in low Earth orbit (LEO), has strengthened American enemies abroad, according to members of the US Congress, Ukrainian intelligence and a series of new research reports.
Starlink internet smuggling has helped militants operate spy drones and coordinate attacks everywhere from the civil wars in Yemen and Sudan to Russian-occupied regions in eastern Ukraine, such as Donetsk and Crimea.
In North Africa, paramilitaries allied with the Russian-backed Rapid Support Forces (RSF) in Sudan have ordered hundreds of Starlink terminals, according to third-party sellers and Sudanese military officials.
The new reports corroborate claims made by Ukraine’s intelligence chief, Lt. Gen. Kyrylo Budanov, last February, who said Russian troops have secretly hacked into Starlink systems “for quite some time.”
Some industry experts believe Musk should be able to shut down smuggled Starlink kits, but his SpaceX has not responded to their pleas, officials said.
Ukraine’s military intelligence chief alleged in February that Russian troops in Ukraine are using thousands of Starlink satellite communications terminals. Lt. Gen. Kyrylo Budanov said Russian troops have been communicating via Starlink “for quite some time.”
Low-level ‘e-commerce’ websites, with names like strlnk.ru and shopozz.ru, have been linked to the sales, purchasing Starlink kits as third-party resellers to evade sanctions, according to a new report published today by the Wall Street Journal.
Many of these Russian distributors do not hide their sale of the hardware, but instead publish the ads as integrated eBay listings, sometimes linking directly to US citizens selling their old Starlink terminals.
Technically, Starlink customers are prohibited from reselling access without the company’s authorization, according to a user agreement available on Starlink’s website.
The SpaceX subsidiary, which owns and operates a global constellation of around 5,400 LEO satellites, has said it reserves the right to discontinue service to any illicitly acquired or used terminal, but has not done so in practice.
The company, owned by Musk, is itself prohibited from selling Starlink terminals in both Russia and China, due to SpaceX’s role in the US defense sector, including a rumored new spy satellite project, first made public by Reuters last month.
And the sanctions imposed by the United States also prohibit Starlink sales in several countries, including Venezuela, although there is also a strong illicit trade in the company’s mobile Internet terminals there, according to Bloomberg.
Russia already has several space-based military assets. These include co-orbital anti-satellite (ASAT) weapons, ASAT direct ascent missiles and Starlink communication satellites that it has obtained for its war against Ukraine. But at the beginning of the Ukraine conflict its coverage was limited.
“What’s driving the use of Starlink is the need to have secure communications,” said national security expert Thomas Withington of the Royal United Services Institute in London, “from the tactical edge of operations to headquarters.”
In the early phases of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, according to Withington, Putin’s forces first tried, but failed, to expand their own local satellite network.
“In principle, Russia is already practically blind in orbit,” said Bart Hendrix, a Brussels-based expert on Russia’s space activities. Radio Free Europe.
With limited satellite coverage of their own over Ukraine, including a likely defunct system called Condor launched in 2014, Russian troops spent the early days of the conflict turning to radio channels vulnerable to jamming and eavesdropping.
“As a result, they started talking less to each other,” Withington explained.
Last month, Congressman Jamie Raskin of Maryland and Robert Garcia of California sent a letter to SpaceX demanding that the company improve its monitoring of illegal trade in Starlink terminals, particularly in Russian-occupied eastern Ukraine.
“We are concerned that you do not have appropriate security measures and policies in place,” Raskin and GarcÃa wrote in their letter, obtained by the Washington Post.
Above, a Russian military blogger who supports the Russian invasion showing the unboxing of the Starlink terminal
Recent investigations have uncovered new details that Sudanese rebels backed by the Russian mercenary Wagner Group have also profited from black market Starlink terminals.
Sudan’s government has been fighting with the rebel group, which the United States has accused of war crimes and ethnic cleansing, since April last year.
Early in the conflict, RSF leader Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, known to have strong ties to Russia’s Wagner Group, was alleged to have struck a military support deal with the Moscow-linked mercenary company in exchange for access to Sudanese gold mines.
Ukrainian forces are now also operating in Sudan, making the nation a proxy front in the West’s conflict with Russia.
Sudanese officials said Starlink’s portable Internet access has not only helped rebels coordinate their attacks, but also serves as a recruiting tool amid a conflict in which both sides have eliminated Internet access and telecommunications of your opponent.
SpaceX, according to Sudan’s government, has ignored its pleas for help regulating Starlink smuggling connections, even though the company has promised to reduce its misuse in global war zones.
SpaceX, according to the Sudanese government, has ignored its pleas for help regulating Starlink smuggling connections, although the company has promised to reduce its misuse in global war zones (above).
Although SpaceX’s contract to provide LEO broadband internet across Ukraine came about through Pentagon assistance to the country, neither SpaceX nor the US military have revealed whether they are coordinating to identify bad actors at Starlink. Above, a Starlink terminal in Ukraine
“If SpaceX becomes aware that a Starlink terminal is being used by a sanctioned or unauthorized party, we investigate the claim and take action to disable the terminal if confirmed,” the company said. published in X in February, when Ukrainian intelligence officials began publicly discussing the issue.
“SpaceX does not do business of any kind with the Russian government or its military,” its subsidiary Starlink said.
But the following month, the Intelligence Directorate (GUR) of Ukraine’s Defense Ministry released intercepted audio of what it said was a Russian soldier offering to buy Starlink equipment from an Arab supplier for 200,000 rubles ($2,200) each.
“The Arabs bring us everything: cables, Wi-Fi, routers,” the soldier is heard explaining to another Russian soldier. ‘Then I’ll ask for it, won’t I?’
As with the Sudanese Starlink smuggler, Musk and SpaceX have not acted quickly to monitor who is using their network.
“There needs to be more accountability,” Candace Johnson, director of Montreal-based NorthStar Earth & Space Inc., said after these reports, “to your country, your company, your shareholders and your stakeholders.”
Johnson, whose company operates satellites designed to identify and track objects in space, said SpaceX should be able to disable any Starlink operated by the enemy given that “basically every single transmitter can be identified.”
But other cybersecurity experts believe it would be a challenge for the company to identify smuggled Starlink terminals in conflict zones such as eastern Ukraine or war-torn Sudan.
Clayton SwopeFellow at the Washington DC-based think tank the Center for Strategic and International Studies, has suggested that a pre-emptive approach by Starlink, with an ‘allow list’, would be easier for the company to control than retroactively hunting down the bad actors who have slipped into their network.
Although SpaceX’s contract to provide LEO broadband internet across Ukraine came about through Pentagon assistance to the country, neither SpaceX nor the US military have revealed whether they are coordinating to identify bad actors at Starlink.
Moscow, for its part, has claimed ignorance on the issue, denying any formal involvement with any of the Starlink terminals.
‘This [Starlink] It is not a certified system between us,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters.
“Therefore, it cannot be officially supplied here and is not officially supplied.”