Comment by wyager
1 day ago
I see no issue with the satellite backhaul itself being unencrypted; anyone using the satellite provider should assume they're hostile and encrypt+authenticate everything they send anyway. I don't trust my ISP's fiber to be snoop-resistant just because they nominally have some shitty ONT encryption.
Obviously the specific examples of end-users failing to encrypt are bad, but that's not really a problem with the satellites.
If someone is browsing the internet on in-flight wifi, and their DNS requests get leaked this way, I don't really think its the casual airline user's fault for not encrypting their DNS traffic. Modern cell phone data traffic (4G/5G) is all encrypted, so the same unencrypted DNS requests can't just be passively sniffed. Something similar should happen here.
I'd blame the airline or their ISP provider for sending unencrypted traffic through the air like this. Not the satellite, but its top level customer. There's a big difference, IMHO, between your ISP being able to sniff your fiber traffic, and your traffic being observable from ~30% of the globe.
It is the fault of the end user software not protecting them. This is why we have encrypted SNI (promoted by Cloidflare, for example).
I don't know if you've ever tried to actually use in flight wifi, but any traffic not subject to inspection is heavily throttled to the point of being unusable.
ESNI is also a technology in search of a problem. It does not provide any meaningful security benefits.
This. Bytes on every medium can be snooped. Internetworking means that your bytes go on mediums you don't know about and don't control. There's no such thing as a link where encryption is not needed, except localhost.