Jiska Classen (Hasso Plattner Institute, University of Potsdam), Alexander Heinrich (TU Darmstadt, Germany), Fabian Portner (TU Darmstadt, Germany), Felix Rohrbach (TU Darmstadt, Germany), Matthias Hollick (TU Darmstadt, Germany)

Apple has integrated satellite communication into their latest iPhones, enabling emergency communication, road- side assistance, location sharing with friends, iMessage, and SMS. This technology allows communication when other wireless services are unavailable. However, the use of satellites poses restrictions on bandwidth and delay, making it difficult to use modern communication protocols with their security and privacy guarantees. To overcome these challenges, Apple designed and implemented a proprietary satellite communication protocol to address these limitations. We are the first to successfully reverse-engineer this protocol and analyze its security and privacy properties. In addition, we develop a simulation-based testbed for testing emergency services without causing emergency calls. Our tests reveal protocol and infrastructure design issues. For example, compact protocol messages come at the cost of missing integrity protection and require an internet-based setup phase. We further demonstrate various restriction bypasses, such as misusing location sharing to send arbitrary text messages on old iOS versions, and sending iMessages over satellite from region-locked countries. These bypasses allow us to overcome censorship and operator control of text messaging services.

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Sofia Celi (Brave Software), Alex Davidson (NOVA LINCS & Universidade NOVA de Lisboa), Hamed Haddadi (Imperial College London & Brave Software), Gonçalo Pestana (Hashmatter), Joe Rowell (Information Security Group, Royal Holloway, University of London)

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Yuejie Wang (Peking University), Qiutong Men (New York University), Yongting Chen (New York University Shanghai), Jiajin Liu (New York University Shanghai), Gengyu Chen (Carnegie Mellon University), Ying Zhang (Meta), Guyue Liu (Peking University), Vyas Sekar (Carnegie Mellon University)

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Rui Xiao (Zhejiang University), Xiankai Chen (Zhejiang University), Yinghui He (Nanyang Technological University), Jun Han (KAIST), Jinsong Han (Zhejiang University)

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