BRAZILIAN SATELLITE SQUATTERS

[spectre]

http://spectregroup.wordpress.com/2009/04/24/brazilian-satellite-squatters/

BUSTED
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iambfYX3PaU

http://mt-milcom.blogspot.com/2009/03/39-brazilian-milsatcom-pirates-arrested.html
http://www.metafilter.com/81074/This-is-Radio-Free-Brazil
http://www.wired.com/politics/security/news/2009/04/fleetcom
The Great Brazilian Sat-Hack Crackdown
BY Marcelo Soares / 04.20.09
Brazilian satellite hackers use high-performance antennas and homebrew
gear to turn U.S. Navy satellites into their personal CB radios

Campinas, Brazil — On the night of March 8, cruising 22,000 miles
above the Earth, U.S. Navy communications satellite FLTSAT-8 suddenly
erupted with illicit activity. 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. It was a party that
won't soon be forgotten. 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. military
satellite transponders. "This had been happening for more than five
years," says Celso Campos, of the Brazilian Federal Police. "Since the
communication channel was open, not encrypted, lots of people used it
to talk to each other."

The practice is so entrenched, and the knowledge and tools so widely
available, few believe the campaign to stamp it out will be quick or
easy. Much of this country's geography is remote, and beyond the reach
of cellphone coverage, making American satellites an ideal, if
illegal, communications option. The problem goes back more than a
decade, to the mid-1990s, when Brazilian radio technicians discovered
they could jump on the UHF frequencies dedicated to satellites in the
Navy's Fleet Satellite Communication system, or FLTSATCOM. They've
been at it ever since. Truck drivers love the birds because they
provide better range and sound than ham radios. Rogue loggers in the
Amazon use the satellites to transmit coded warnings when authorities
threaten to close in. Drug dealers and organized criminal factions use
them to coordinate operations. Today, the satellites, which pirates
called "Bolinha" or "little ball," are a national phenomenon. "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.
The crackdown, called "Operation Satellite," was Brazil's first large-
scale enforcement against the problem. Police followed coordinates
provided by the U.S. Department of Defense and confirmed by Anatel,
Brazil's FCC. Among those charged were university professors,
electricians, truckers and farmers, the police say. The suspects face
up to four years and jail, but are more likely to be fined if
convicted.

First lofted into orbit in the 1970s, the FLTSATCOM bird was at the
time a major advance in military communications. Their 23 channels
were used by every branch of the U.S. 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. As
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. Today, there are two FLTSAT
and eight UFO birds in geosynchronous orbit. Navy contractors are
working on a next-generation system called Mobile User Objective
System beginning in September 2009.

Until then, the military is still using aging FLTSAT and UFO
satellites — and so are a lot of Brazilians. 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. 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. That lets the radio stretch into the lower end of FLTSATCOM's
292- to 317-MHz uplink range. All the gear can be bought near any
truck stop for less than $500. Ads on specialized websites offer to
perform the conversion for less than $100. Taught the ropes, even
rough electricians can make Bolinha-ware. "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."

Brochi, who assembled his first radio set from spare parts at 12, has
been tracking the Brazilian satellite hacking problem for years.
Brochi says the Pentagon's concerns are obvious. "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. "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."

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. 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. Sometimes loggers refer to the
approach of authorities by saying, "Santa Claus is coming," says
Brochi. When the user's location is stable, the signal can be
triangulated. That's how the Defense Department got the coordinates to
feed Brazilian authorities in March's raids.

While Brazil may be the world capital of FLTSATCOM hijacking, there
have been cases in other countries — even in the United States. In
February of last year, FCC investigators used a mobile direction-
finding vehicle to trace rogue transmissions to a Brazilian immigrant
in New Jersey. When 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. Joaquim Barbosa was hit with a
$20,000 fine. A technician with Anatel, speaking on condition of
anonymity, says the chief problem with ending the satellite abuse in
this country is that U.S. and Brazilian authorities simply waited too
long to start. Thousands of users are believed to have the know-how to
use the system. After a bust, the airwaves always go quiet for a
while, but the hijackers always return.

One week after the "Operation Satellite," Brochi met with Wired.com at
a gathering of amateur radio enthusiasts in a bucolic square in
Campinas, about 60 miles north of Sao Paulo. Brochi switches on his
UHF receiver and scans through the satellite frequencies. It's
relatively quiet now on the satellite underground, except for the
static-like sound of encrypted military traffic. But eventually, a
lone creaky voice cuts through. It's a man in Porto Velho, the capital
of Rondônia, a day's drive north into the upper Amazon basin. He's
making small talk with a friend in Portuguese. The satellite pirates
are creeping back on the air.

FLTSATCOM (Fleet Satellite Communications System)
http://www.astronautix.com/project/satcom.htm
http://www.amsat.org/amsat-new/satellites/status.php
http://history.nasa.gov/SP-4217/ch8.htm
http://www.fas.org/spp/military/program/com/fltsat.htm

SPECTRUM ANALYSIS
http://wiki.radioreference.com/index.php/
http://www.radioreference.com/apps/db/
http://radioreference.blogspot.com/2008/10/vhfuhf-spectrum-analysis-using-rf-space.html

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TUrYwMK2V5s
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HS-YWnTaoW4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ItbCqS9YNRA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aLe-jU-lsx0
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vQe2oadzixM

AMATEUR SATELLITE USE
http://www.amsat.org/amsat-new/index.php
http://www.amsat.org/amsat-new/information/faqs/
http://www.amsat.org/amsat-new/information/faqs/langdon.php
http://www.qsl.net/vk3jed/easysatvk.html
http://projectoscar.wordpress.com/

BOLINHA TECH (poorly auto-translated from Portuguese)
http://www.py2adn.com/
http://www.py2adn.com/artigos/Satelite-Bolinha.pdf

"Satellites commonly known in Brazil as "Bolinha", are geostationary
American military satellites known as FleetSatCom or UHF SatCom. These
satellites were developed by RCA American Communications (RCA
Americom) and were launched between 1975 and 1992. From 1986, they
became controlled by General Electric American Communications (GE
Americom) and from 2001 by SES Americom.

Contrary to what many think, these satellites are not "abandoned", and
are still very active, with intensive use. Most official
communications are made in encrypted digital modes; there is minimum
official activities in analog mode (AM, FM, SSB). In August 2007, the
space shuttle Endeavor used the rate of 259,700 in AM. There are
British, Italian and Russian military satellites (called Gonets) also
in the band.

Information on the SatCom in Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satcom_1

Recent examples of audio from such satellites can be seen on the page:
http://www.uhf-satcom.com/sounds/

Manual of military operations of SatCom, 2004 edition
http://www.uhf-satcom.com/uhf/r3403g.pdf

official SatCom, defined by the standard MIL-STD-188-181 / A and B:
http://jitc.fhu.disa.mil/jtrs/procedures/181_181a_181b.pdf

An excellent explanation given by Mr Roland Zurmely in February 2008:
"For a geostationary satellite, one of the mandatory parameters is
that it is on the equator."
http://paginas.terra.com.br/lazer/py4zbz/teoria/orbitas.htm

"The Clarke Belt", the only place where geostationary satellites may
be, is already almost all busy! Theoretically, each satellite GSO
should be a "box" of 0.1 x 0.1 degrees, and as the belt is 360
degrees, there is room for only 3600 GSO satellites! Already has more
than 1500 seating! It is for this reason that many are up in Brazil,
as the Clarke belt is at the equator! Old satellites MUST be removed
from the belt and are normally placed in inclined orbit with respect
to GSO to give the "box" to a new GSO satellite. See more here:
http://paginas.terra.com.br/lazer/py4zbz/satdif.htm

Many illegal users of satellites are linked to organized crime,
especially drug trafficking. Some key words or subjects are used to
mask orders, delivery notes or scheduling of meetings. Most of the use
of these segments in the range of 250 MHz using transmission has
originated in the Brazilian Amazon, or in the southern part of
Colombia. However, due to the "meddling" of camioneiros
[truckdrivers?], sawmills and traders common in the region, who also
started to use this as "cheap" radio, organized crime is migrating
most of their communications for military satellites in geostationary
band of 6 GHz. The use of such satellites is illegal (Article 183 of
Law 9472/97). The U.S. military held a triangulation of signals with
high emission accuracy and passed the data to Brazilian authorities,
which has made dozens of seizures in this direction.

In São Paulo, transmission equipment for the "Bolinha Sat" (for his
great most transverters for use with VHF) were learned with almost all
the great "leadership" of the CCP who were arrested in the last two
years. Moreover, two radio amateurs "manufacturers" of transverters to
Sat Bolinha were arrested for provide equipment and technology to the
criminal faction (they knew what were doing and what to use).

By the year 2006 there were two lists of discussion in Brazil on the
SatCom Yahoo groups. After an operation of seizures triggered by
authorities Brazil, with support of the U.S. military intelligence,
the lists were closed, and before the arrests made, many arrived to
dismantle their equipment and to remove their antennas.

So if you have equipment that can send this track, taking full care!
Do not fall into the "temptation" to make any contact, because the
consequences can be very serious, difficult and complicated! However,
listening to radio broadcasts is not a crime, and for those who have
interest in only "owl" these frequencies, here are some interesting
links on the SatCom:
http://www.uhf-satcom.com/

For those who are interested in "owl" the frequencies of SatCom but
have no equipment, a cheap option is mounting a converter for use in a
radio or scanner for VHF. Page of Luciano Sturaro, PY2BBS has the
outline of a converter for the 220 MHz band, but it works very well at
260 MHz:
http://www.msxpro.com/py2bbs/ (projects - converter to 220 MHz)

For those who already have coverage in the range receiver with 250 to
260 MHz, here is a diagram of antenna:
http://www.uhf-satcom.com/uhf/uhfantenna.html

I have obtained good results in the reception of signals from the
satellites using a SatCom receptor IC-R10 receiver with a small Yagi
for 6 elements (diagram on the link above) but if we use more than one
meter of cable, the signal degrades. A solution is to use the antenna
"on hand" even with the smallest possible length of cable coaxial!

To facilitate the location of the satellite with a directional
antenna, leave the receiver in frequency of 244,125 MHz, where there
is a beacon, or 250,550 MHz, where there is a sign of continuous
telemetry.

And to optimize the reception of insensitive receptors, such as
receipt of HTS extended, where the range of 260 MHz is not very
sensitive or even low selectivity, may be the use of pre-low-noise
amplifier (LNA). Here is the diagram of a good pre-amp for this track:
http://www.uhf-satcom.com/uhf/uhfpreamp.htm

Good listening!
Adinei , PY2ADN
py2adn [arroba] yahoo.com [dot] br "