

Someone is jamming BBC broadcasts in the Middle East - finnw
http://www.bbc.co.uk/mediacentre/statements/transmission-interference.html

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jgrahamc
This isn't that hard to do. You just need a dish, a suitable power source and
point it at the satellite. Because of the, in general, wide area that a
satellite is looking down on the transmitter can be anywhere in quite a wide
area (even when you are talking about the relatively narrow uplink antenna).

Given that these satellites are geostationary they can be seen from a very
wide area on the ground. Back in 2003 Telstar-12 was jammed from a station in
Cuba apparently run by Iran
(<http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/EH22Ak03.html>) to block
transmissions to the Americas and Europe.

~~~
ovi256
You seem to describe satellite uplink jamming: perturbing the link going from
the content provider to the satellite. I would expect this uplink would be
redundant and encrypted in some way. Maybe even using optical communication
for it, which would enable having a very narrow uplink receiver.

Thinking about it, jamming the downlink in a large area to get the same effect
seems to be much harder than jamming the uplink.

~~~
jcr
To jam the downlink, you'd need to be between the satellite and the ground
receiving dish, or have line-of-sight to the receiving dish and a ton of
power. This only disrupts the one receiving dish, so the attack is isolated.

Jamming the uplink is much easier. All you have to do is over-power the signal
from the transmission station(s) up to the satellite. Encryption doesn't do
you any good. Having redundant uplinks also doesn't do much good since the
resources of the satellite are limited, and the amount of power you can get
here on the ground is more or less unlimited by comparison. There are multiple
uplink transponders (chunks of spectrum used as carrier frequencies), and you
can allocate them in a redundant fashion, but it's expensive due to the
limited resources on the sat.

The interesting, and undisclosed, question is whether or not the attack is
only affecting the BBC? If so, then it's a more sophisticated attack targeting
just the carrier frequencies (uplink transponders) being used by the BBC. A
high power wide-band attack is crude but easier to perform, and would jam all
of the channels broadcast from the satellite since it would over-load all of
the uplink transponders.

Sadly, there are still a lot of old and poorly designed satellites still in
use; it's kinda like finding unfixable Win95 systems on your network infected
with malware. Since they're in orbit and cost a whole lot of money, fixing or
replacing them aren't a viable options.

The only good news for older satellites is both the uplink (to satellite) and
the downlink (to ground receivers) often have somewhat adjustable footprints.
If you can identify the ground location of the jamming signal, you _might_ be
able to exclude its region from the uplink footprint. The trouble is, if the
satellite is also being used for things like sat-phones, then you just cut off
all customers in the excluded area of the uplink footprint.

By the fact that this was made public, there's probably nothing that can be
technically done about the jamming.

~~~
recursivity
> _...if the satellite is also being used for things like sat-phones..._

And, reading between the lines, that right there is possibly your biggest
clue. Beyond the juvenile intrigue of someone breaking something just to see
if they can, or even some chintzy politically motivated anti-propaganda
operation, another motive might lie in assisting/disrupting (depending on
whose side your on) clandestine operations in a specific geographic area.

It's tempting to wonder if maybe it's just some Greek crypto-anarchists
horsing around, but more likely it'd be someone with heavy-weight resources
and know-how like CIA/GRU agents operating in Syria.

From the article: "...together with a number of other broadcasters, is
experiencing deliberate, intermittent interference to its transmissions to
audiences in Europe and the Middle East."

~~~
peripetylabs
I think you hit the nail on the head. This is very interesting in light of
Turkey intercepting "radar" equipment from Russia to Syria.

If the jamming is coming from Syria, I'd say it's the government trying to jam
the encrypted satellite radios of the rebels. (Some of the aid to the rebels
from the US and Europe was for secure comms.)

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trotsky
In unrelated news, the EU forced persian TV channels off these transponders a
few days ago, citing the "targeted" sanctions intended to prevent Iran from
drifting further afield.

~~~
kps
The word ‘persian’ there is a little misleading. The European satellite
providers stopped carrying the Iranian government's channels, not Persian-
language channels in general.

~~~
fleitz
Apparently the BBC opposes the removal of the iranian/persian channels as
well. From the article "we strongly condemn any practice designed to disrupt
audiences’ free access to news and information."

~~~
tankenmate
It maybe true that the BBC opposes this, but at the same time the BBC is
beholden to UK and EU law; i.e. follow the law or be fined and/or loose all
your licenses.

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thepumpkin1979
Since I'm not a native English speaker, I had to google what "Jamming" was
about and found this article in Wikipedia where actually explains the
difference between Jamming and Interference.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_jamming>

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kadjar
Looks like it's coming from Syria:

[http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5hXpzxDWlS...](http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5hXpzxDWlSkzvnoluujHCSgaus50w?docId=CNG.b7490d699f872ba1c830ddc9ac429b95.d21)

~~~
aes256
That link is dead for me, but here's an article from The Telegraph with the
same allegation citing "sources within broadcasting companies".

Apparently Syria sought Iranian assistance to disrupt the signals.

[http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/syria/9...](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/syria/9618937/Syria-
accused-of-blocking-BBC-broadcasts.html)

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citricsquid
Does anyone have any information on how this could be done? Does this require
high tech broadcasting equipment to intercept the transmissions (government
sponsored?) or is it something that _anyone_ could do?

~~~
trotsky
anyone can do it, for some values of "anyone" that includes having a good
power source, some rf equipment and a few books. mostly the problem involves
defending the equipment when people unhappy about said behavior arrive.

~~~
brador
How would you track or locate such a jamming device? is it possible?

~~~
jff
If you'd like a good demonstration of how a jamming device could be found,
simply buy a high-power 10 meter radio transciever and set it up to constantly
transmit music at 28.400 MHz. You'll effectively monopolize the frequency over
a large distance, and within a very short period of time the FCC will arrive
to demonstrate their RF tracking techniques.

And to levy a huge fine. Do not do this.

~~~
dsl
The FCC won't care, but a bunch of angry HAMs will be riding their rascal
scooters around your neighborhood with directional antennas.

Calling channels are defined by the ARRL, not the FCC.

~~~
jff
The FCC will care if you are transmitting without a license, broadcasting
(rather than performing 2-way communications), and sending music--all three of
these are violations of FCC regulations. Once they determine that it's an
ongoing disruption, they will come out with a direction-finding rig, as they
have in the past for "pirate" operators causing disruption.

Oh, and HAM is not an acronym, it's just ham.

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denzil_correa
Isn't the title a bit misleading? I think Europe should be included as well.

~~~
adaml_623
That's really curious I don't know why anyone would write just Middle East
rather than Europe and the Middle East. Finnw care to comment?

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coin
This is not as bad as when NATO bombed Libya's TV station during its attack on
Gaddafi.

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bitcartel
"We strongly condemn any practice designed to disrupt audiences’ free access
to news and information."

The identity of the culprit should be obvious!

<http://www.tvlicensing.co.uk/>

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balancdreviews
Shortwave radio to the rescue.

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taybin
Or something...!

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zupreme
I have to wonder why the BBC would release this. What is the motivation?

Obviously whoever is "jamming" them is not going to read this, say, "My bad"
and just stop.

I am really wondering who their real audience, in this case, is. Is this an
attempt to influence government actions in the U.K. or the EU itself? Is this
part of a public opinion swaying operation to sway the British people so that
more of them will support the idea of military action in Syria?

It's all speculation at this point, but I do wonder.

~~~
marshray
If you were a global international media company and someone were jamming your
signal over a region of the planet wouldn't you put out a short, factual press
release too?

If nothing else, it will help some of the affected viewers know to quit
smacking their televisions on the side.

