  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.
