Researchers from a digital defense firm have found that an alleged Israeli tech company is responsible for targeting Starlink’s satellite internet services in an effort to spy on them.
As reported by Reuters citing the six sources familiar to the matter, Israeli company Discover-Tech has been engaged in malicious activities through digital ads shown to Starlink’s users. And the motive behind showing ads is to geolocate and surveil them, as per the report of TrendAI, a unit of Tokyo-based cybersecurity company Trend Micro.
The researchers also discovered that Discover-Tech has emerged as a top global bidder for advertising targeted at Starlink users.
Significantly, it ranked as the top bidder for Starlink traffic in over 100 countries, including several where Starlink is officially restricted or banned.
Speaking about the mechanism, this ad technology and ad bidding processes leak user data back to bidders. Over time, the collection and merging of data allow companies to de-anonymize users, track them online and set them up for spyware delivery.
Governments are seeking ways to track Starlink users because satellite internet bypasses national telecom regulations and local blocks.
Starlink is important for operations in hostile environments and battlefields, such as Ukraine’s military communications and drone strikes.
TrendAI also issued a report on October 15, highlighting this suspicious surveillance bidding by using the codename Shadow-Earth-79 and sources confirmed that this refers to Discover-Tech.
In May, Haaretz and Intelligence Online reported that Israeli businesses were pitching clients on tracking Starlink users via ad-data exploitation.
And this spy firm is also outed by watchdog Citizen Lab and Confiant for exploiting the ad bidding process for running targeting campaigns on sensitive networks.
Elon Musk’s SpaceX has not yet responded to this report.
