How a joke domain purchase turned into geopolitical warfare
A joke domain purchase turned in geopolitical warfare
In 2017, the author started tracking weather balloons as a hobby. A joke redirect site, sondehub.org, evolved into SondeHub, a community-run radiosonde tracking service. As the service grew, it attracted attention from government agencies, the military, and even the FAA. The author recounts how reverse predictions accidentally mapped artillery sites, how the service survived a DDOS attack possibly linked to the Ukraine conflict, and how a $439,000 missile was used to shoot down an amateur balloon. The story also covers requests from the US Office of the Secretary of War and the NTSB, highlighting the unexpected consequences of a hobby project.
It is incredibly important that the http request data is not distributed. It is also important that the source AWS account is not blocked, rate limited or terminated - loss of life could occur.