A top Pentagon official said Elon Musk’s Starlink has fended off a Russian hack and did it faster than the US Military could have.
Among other things, Elon Musk owns Starlink (through SpaceX), a ‘constellation’ of satellites providing internet access to several countries across the globe.
Musk has made Starlink available in Ukraine to help the population stay online since the start of the ongoing Russian invasion.
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Dave Tremper, director of electronic warfare for the Office of the Secretary of Defense, said “Starlink had slung a line of code and fixed it” and the attack was suddenly “not effective anymore”.
“How they did that was eye-watering to me,” he added.
“There’s a really interesting case study to look at the agility that Starlink had in their ability to address that problem,” said Tremper.
“The way that Starlink was able to upgrade when a threat showed up, we need to be able to have that agility.”
Being a Pentagon official, the details on the actual hack are as non-existent as you would expect.
But what we do know is a few weeks back, the world’s richest man Elon Musk tweeted:
“Some Starlink terminals near conflict areas were being jammed for several hours at a time. Our latest software update bypasses the jamming. Am curious to see what’s next.”
Why is Starlink in Ukraine?
When Russia invaded Ukraine in February, the Deputy Prime Minister Mykhailo Fedorov took to Twitter and pleaded for Musk to activate SpaceX’s Starlink satellites in Ukraine.
Musk, always a fan of the tweets, tweeted in response: “Starlink service is now active in Ukraine. More terminals en route.”
