Inside the Sky Shield: How Secure Is Your Satellite Internet?
Satellite internet data travels from your dish to a satellite, then to a gateway and onto the internet, with traditional GEO orbits at about 35,786 km and newer systems like SpaceX Starlink using low Earth orbit swarms and inter-satellite laser links. Geostationary (GEO) latency is roughly 500–700 ms for a round trip, while Starlink’s low Earth orbit (LEO) latency is about 20–40 ms, impacting secure handshakes such as TLS. Signals require line-of-sight, and because satellite beams cover broad areas, adversaries can jam or disrupt links from within the footprint with a powerful transmitter. Unencrypted satellite downlinks can be intercepted since