Israeli spying on Starlink users...with an unexpected trick

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SpaceX's Starlink service faces a new kind of security challenge, with cybersecurity researchers revealing intense activity by an Israeli company specializing in advertising technology targeting service users in more than 100 countries.

Six informed sources confirmed that experts at a digital defense company recently discovered that an Israeli advertising technology company is intensively targeting users of the Starlink Internet service via satellite, in a possible attempt to spy on them, according to what Reuters reported.

The sources also said that researchers at Trend AI, a unit of the Tokyo-based cybersecurity company Trend Micro, concluded that the Israeli company Discover-Tech is one of the largest sources of digital ads shown to users of the Starlink service, and that these ads are likely used to determine their geographical locations or monitor them in other ways.

While the researchers, who based their findings on digital advertising data contained in the Trend AI remote data collection system, concluded that Discover-Tech has become one of the largest bidders globally for advertisements directed to Starlink users, and that it was the first bidder for data traffic over the Starlink network in more than 100 countries, including several countries in which the Starlink service itself has been blocked or restricted.

Note that the term “bidding” refers to the complex auction system that advertisers use to obtain space within users’ browsers and applications.

In addition, Trend AI issued a report in the middle of this month about targeting Starlink users, but it did not mention Discover-Tech by name. Rather, it said that the responsible party was “an entity specialized in advertising technology,” which it called “Shadow Earth-79.”

But the sources said that “Shadow Earth-79” is the code name used by Trend AI to refer to Discover-Tech.

While SpaceX did not respond to requests for comment. Discover-Tech and its CEO also did not respond to requests for comment over the past two weeks.

Trend AI also did not directly respond to questions about why Shadow Earth-79 was not explicitly named in its report, and said in a statement that the goal of its approach to assigning liability is to reduce the risk of errors and avoid “propaganda-driven designations” or “names of unstable actors that could mislead defenders, distort risk prioritization, and lead to inappropriate response actions.”

The Israeli newspaper Haaretz and Intelligence Online reported separately last May that Israeli-owned companies are offering their customers ways to identify and track Starlink users. Haaretz said that the exploitation of advertising data appears to play a major role in this process.

Finding ways to track Starlink users has become a new activity, as governments around the world try to control the spread of Internet stations via satellite. Because these stations route data via satellites operated by SpaceX, rather than nationally regulated telecommunications companies, they can circumvent local Internet restrictions, provide connectivity in hostile areas, or coordinate operations across battlefields.

Ukraine also uses the “Starlink” service for communications on the battlefield as well as drone operations, and imposing restrictions on this service via satellite led to the obstruction of the Ukrainian offensive and defensive drone missions carried out by Kiev against Russia, before US President Donald Trump intervened by requesting billionaire Elon Musk to lift the restrictions imposed on a military-use version of the satellite Internet service directed to Kiev.