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Distance between Cyprus and Syria is < 200km. How much money would it take to setup a wireless link between the two? Wikipedia tells me it's possible (http://en

Distance between Cyprus and Syria is < 200km. How much money would it take to setup a wireless link between the two? Wikipedia tells me it's possible (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_Range_WiFi#Italy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_Range_WiFi#Italy)

rdl 14y ago
Why not just use Turkey, Iraq, or Jordan, which are approximately 0km from Syria, and hate Assad too. And are already serving as basing, conduits for personnel and materiel (particularly Iraq and Turkey), etc.?
krisoft 14y ago
I guess the cost of securing your 'bridgehead' would dwarf any cost associated with the actual link technology. And then, what did you achieved? You have your packages going back and forth, but how will you distribute the connection? Will you hijack the presumably uncooperative ISP's network, or just use sneakernet? If you choose the last, then you might as well ferry the information via boats. (Not saying that's easy, just it seems easier.)
- rdl 14y ago
  This is actually a great application for UAVs, and I think there is some DOD and/or DOS money to do it (not for Syria specifically, but the general application.)
  - Derpsec 14y ago
    Syria would blow it out of the sky. They also are targeting all satellite signals in their borders with mortar shelling. That's how all those French journalists got owned, they turned on the cameras, set up the uplink and 30 seconds later bam here's a face full of explosive censorship enjoy. They simply locked on to the signal and shelled it not caring who was there. They've also been targeting wireless uplinks across borders and adhoc cell towers. Syria levelled an entire apartment building full of kids in Turkey to destroy a suspected adhoc cell tower they claimed was being used by "terrorists". This is serious business, no piratebay UAV drone solution is going to work. Mesh networking is also certain death, any building with a mesh router on it is going to have all its inhabitants dragged out of their apartments and shot in the street so they've been using good old walkie talkies and bouncing signals all over the place to confuse the syrian army, and in most cases simply stealing Syrian army comsec devices and pretending to be them talking in slight code with each other to avoid suspicion. Al Jazeera ran a story with some smugglers who used gps disabled cellphones but changed the IMEI every couple of hours to avoid being found
    - rdl 14y ago
      They would be more able to go after terrestrial radio and L-band portable satellite systems (e.g. Thuraya DSL, thuraya sat modems, various forms of BGAN/RBGAN/etc., which is what journalists tend to use) than Ka or Ku band satellite. I haven't kept up on Syria or Libya (I wasted 2003-2010 on this stuff in Iraq/Afgh/etc., and am trying to do a "normal" tech startup now), but while I think Syria (and Libya) had better European gear than Iraq or the Taliban, it isn't on par with the US, UK/FR/DE, RU, CN, etc. It's basically "good commercial equipment designed for law enforcement", which is very heavily cellphone focused. The #1 vulnerability with satellite systems remains "operator assistance to the adversary", or "network configured in a way which relays location data of connected terminals to everyone in the footprint", both of which can be addressed if you control the network.

rdl 14y ago

Why not just use Turkey, Iraq, or Jordan, which are approximately 0km from Syria, and hate Assad too. And are already serving as basing, conduits for personnel and materiel (particularly Iraq and Turkey), etc.?

krisoft 14y ago

I guess the cost of securing your 'bridgehead' would dwarf any cost associated with the actual link technology. And then, what did you achieved? You have your packages going back and forth, but how will you distribute the connection? Will you hijack the presumably uncooperative ISP's network, or just use sneakernet? If you choose the last, then you might as well ferry the information via boats. (Not saying that's easy, just it seems easier.)

rdl 14y ago
This is actually a great application for UAVs, and I think there is some DOD and/or DOS money to do it (not for Syria specifically, but the general application.)
- Derpsec 14y ago
  Syria would blow it out of the sky. They also are targeting all satellite signals in their borders with mortar shelling. That's how all those French journalists got owned, they turned on the cameras, set up the uplink and 30 seconds later bam here's a face full of explosive censorship enjoy. They simply locked on to the signal and shelled it not caring who was there. They've also been targeting wireless uplinks across borders and adhoc cell towers. Syria levelled an entire apartment building full of kids in Turkey to destroy a suspected adhoc cell tower they claimed was being used by "terrorists". This is serious business, no piratebay UAV drone solution is going to work. Mesh networking is also certain death, any building with a mesh router on it is going to have all its inhabitants dragged out of their apartments and shot in the street so they've been using good old walkie talkies and bouncing signals all over the place to confuse the syrian army, and in most cases simply stealing Syrian army comsec devices and pretending to be them talking in slight code with each other to avoid suspicion. Al Jazeera ran a story with some smugglers who used gps disabled cellphones but changed the IMEI every couple of hours to avoid being found
  - rdl 14y ago
    They would be more able to go after terrestrial radio and L-band portable satellite systems (e.g. Thuraya DSL, thuraya sat modems, various forms of BGAN/RBGAN/etc., which is what journalists tend to use) than Ka or Ku band satellite. I haven't kept up on Syria or Libya (I wasted 2003-2010 on this stuff in Iraq/Afgh/etc., and am trying to do a "normal" tech startup now), but while I think Syria (and Libya) had better European gear than Iraq or the Taliban, it isn't on par with the US, UK/FR/DE, RU, CN, etc. It's basically "good commercial equipment designed for law enforcement", which is very heavily cellphone focused. The #1 vulnerability with satellite systems remains "operator assistance to the adversary", or "network configured in a way which relays location data of connected terminals to everyone in the footprint", both of which can be addressed if you control the network.