Satellite Internet plays an increasingly important role in geopolitical conflicts. This notion was affirmed in the Ukrainian conflict escalating at the beginning of 2022, with the large-scale deployment of the Starlink satellite Internet service which consequently demonstrated the strategic importance of a free flow of information. Aside from military use, many citizens publish sensitive information on social media platforms to influence the public narrative. However, the use of satellite communication has proven to be dangerous, as the signals can be monitored by other satellites and used to triangulate the source on the ground. Unfortunately, the targeted killings of journalists have shown this threat to be effective. While the increasing deployment of satellite Internet systems gives citizens an unprecedented mouthpiece in conflicts, protecting them against localization is an unaddressed problem. To address this threat, we present AnonSat, a novel scheme to protect satellite Internet users from triangulation. AnonSat works with cheap off-the-shelf devices, leveraging long-range wireless communication to span a local network among satellite base stations. This allows rerouting users' communication to other satellite base stations, some distance away from each user, thus, preventing their localization. AnonSat is designed for easy deployment and usability, which we demonstrate with a prototype implementation. Our large-scale network simulations using real-world data sets show the effectiveness of AnonSat in various practical settings.

翻译：卫星互联网在地缘政治冲突中扮演着日益重要的角色。这一观点在2022年初升级的乌克兰冲突中得到证实——星链卫星互联网服务的大规模部署展示了信息自由流动的战略意义。除军事用途外，许多平民通过社交媒体平台发布敏感信息以影响公众舆论。然而，卫星通信的使用已被证明存在风险，因为信号可能被其他卫星监测并用于三角定位地面信号源。不幸的是，针对记者的定点清除行动已表明这种威胁的真实有效性。尽管卫星互联网系统的广泛部署在冲突中赋予了公民前所未有的发声渠道，但保护其免受定位追踪仍是一个未被解决的问题。针对这一威胁，我们提出了AnonSat——一种保护卫星互联网用户免遭三角定位的新型方案。AnonSat兼容廉价商用设备，利用长距离无线通信在卫星基站间构建本地网络。该方案可将用户通信路由至距离用户一定距离的其他卫星基站，从而防止用户位置被定位。AnonSat的设计注重易部署性与可用性，我们通过原型系统实现了这一方案。基于真实数据的大规模网络仿真证明了AnonSat在多种实际场景中的有效性。