A joke domain purchase turned in geopolitical warfare
A joke domain purchase turned in geopolitical warfare
一次玩笑般的域名购买演变成地缘政治博弈
Strap in, this story involves a cheese fortune teller, the department of war, and nearly every other government department in between. In 2017 (I think?) I was introduced to weather balloon hunting by Mark VK5QI. At the time the Australian balloon chasing community was small. Only Melbourne and Adelaide radiosondes (the transmitter on weather balloons) were being tracked on a website called Habhub - high altitude ballooning hub. This site was designed for amateur balloons and not meteorological weather balloons. 系好安全带，这个故事涉及一位奶酪算命师、国防部，以及其间几乎所有的政府部门。2017年（我想是吧？），Mark VK5QI 向我介绍了气象气球搜寻。当时，澳大利亚的气球追踪社区规模很小。只有墨尔本和阿德莱德的无线电探空仪（气象气球上的发射器）在一个名为 Habhub（高空气球中心）的网站上被追踪。该网站是为业余气球设计的，而非气象气球。
Over time more and more radiosondes were tracked on Habhub and eventually Habhub admins introduced a default filter that removed weather balloons by default. A query parameter could be added to the URL to remove the filter and on 12th of May 2018 sondehub.org registered with a single purpose - a URL redirect to Habhub with a radiosonde specific filter. To be clear - this was more of a joke than a decision to run a radiosonde tracking service. You’d go to sondehub.org and it would redirect you to habhub.org. That was it. 随着时间的推移，越来越多的无线电探空仪在 Habhub 上被追踪，最终 Habhub 管理员引入了一个默认过滤器，自动移除了气象气球的数据。通过在 URL 中添加查询参数可以移除该过滤器。2018年5月12日，sondehub.org 注册了，其唯一目的就是将 URL 重定向到带有无线电探空仪特定过滤器的 Habhub。需要说明的是，这更像是一个玩笑，而不是为了运营无线电探空仪追踪服务。你访问 sondehub.org，它就会把你重定向到 habhub.org。仅此而已。
However Habhub was never designed for so many unique balloons each day. By July we decided to start proxying radiosonde ingestion data through SondeHub. This allowed us to capture more data as well (no longer rate limiting our selves). This went to a seperate OpenSearch cluster, however at this stage we didn’t use or expose this data. I was using this more as a toy - to play around with different Amazon Web Services (AWS) services and analytics platforms. 然而，Habhub 从未被设计用于处理每天如此多数量的独立气球。到了7月，我们决定开始通过 SondeHub 代理无线电探空仪的摄入数据。这也让我们能够捕获更多数据（不再限制我们自己的速率）。这些数据进入了一个独立的 OpenSearch 集群，但在现阶段，我们并没有使用或公开这些数据。我更多是把它当作一个玩具，用来尝试各种亚马逊云科技（AWS）服务和分析平台。
By 2019 the Habhub servers were really struggling - aprs.fi as well. We realised that we needed to run our own service and our initial plan was that we would build new APIs, and eventually new frontend. We then started getting information requests from government agencies regarding radiosonde data. For example we received a request regarding an insurance claim about a radiosondes hitting a horse, causing it to bolt through a fence. One of the reasons for this is because unlike official software at the time, our system tracked the radiosondes all the way to the ground. 到了2019年，Habhub 的服务器已经非常吃力了，aprs.fi 也是如此。我们意识到需要运行自己的服务，最初的计划是构建新的 API，并最终构建新的前端。随后，我们开始收到政府机构关于无线电探空仪数据的查询请求。例如，我们收到过一个关于保险索赔的请求，涉及一个无线电探空仪击中了一匹马，导致它受惊冲破了围栏。原因之一是，与当时官方的软件不同，我们的系统可以全程追踪无线电探空仪直到落地。
Also in 2019 we detected a drop in radiosonde launches. This lined up with the GPS rollover date - we thought our software was broken however it turned out to be issues with Vaisala’s equipment which prevented launches from occuring. Funnily enough our software handled the rollover ok. In 2020/2021 we ended up doing was building backwards compatible APIs for the Habhub frontend and started testing the Habhub frontend pointed at our backend. It mostly worked. We started receiving all the data rather than just partial data and providing open access to our data via S3. 同样在2019年，我们检测到无线电探空仪的发射量有所下降。这与 GPS 周数翻转日期吻合——我们以为是我们的软件坏了，但结果发现是维萨拉（Vaisala）的设备出现了问题，导致无法进行发射。有趣的是，我们的软件处理翻转问题时表现良好。在2020/2021年，我们最终为 Habhub 前端构建了向后兼容的 API，并开始测试将 Habhub 前端指向我们的后端。它基本能用。我们开始接收所有数据，而不仅仅是部分数据，并通过 S3 提供数据的开放访问。
We even started running our own predictor - which is used by my entities today. With our own predictor running Mark developed a system we call reverse predictions. This is where we take data from an already launched radiosonde and use the wind model to run the predictor backwards which determines a rough the launch location prediction. It works extremely well. We could detect a bunch of radiosonde launch sites that were poorly otherwise documented along with start assigning balloons to launch sites. 我们甚至开始运行自己的预测器——这在今天仍被我的实体所使用。随着我们自己的预测器运行，Mark 开发了一个我们称之为“反向预测”的系统。我们获取已发射无线电探空仪的数据，并利用风模型反向运行预测器，从而确定大致的发射位置。效果非常好。我们能够发现许多原本记录不佳的无线电探空仪发射点，并开始将气球归类到对应的发射点。
Our first taste of dealing with the military. Then in 2021 we received an email sensitive/military/… installation. As such, we really prefer that it is not explicitly marked on any map. The thing is though that wind data isn’t just used for predicting the weather. It’s also used to calculate artillery ranging. What we had started doing is accidentally mapping out artillery sites. We decided to keep reverse predictions but we delete launch sites on genuine requests. The reverse prediction system has also detected many number of military vessels in the ocean. 我们第一次接触军方是在2021年，当时我们收到了一封关于敏感/军事设施的邮件。他们表示，确实不希望该设施在任何地图上被明确标注。问题在于，风力数据不仅用于天气预报，还用于计算火炮射程。我们无意中开始绘制出火炮阵地的位置。我们决定保留反向预测功能，但在收到真实请求时删除相关的发射点。反向预测系统还探测到了海洋中大量的军用舰艇。
Lots more development happened on SondeHub with features like websockets and MQTT for live feeds. We disconnected Habhub backend from our proxy and with grant funding from ARDC we were able to setup a prototype amateur high altitude balloon version of SondeHub. Eventually Habhub was shutdown due to a lack of maintenance and we rushed together to migrate what we could to SondeHub. SondeHub 进行了更多的开发，增加了诸如用于实时数据流的 websockets 和 MQTT 等功能。我们断开了 Habhub 后端与我们代理的连接，并在 ARDC 的资助下，成功建立了一个业余高空气球版本的 SondeHub 原型。最终，Habhub 因缺乏维护而关闭，我们匆忙将能迁移的内容全部迁移到了 SondeHub。
$439,000 missile vs party balloon. All was going fine until the 2023 “China spy balloon” incident. SondeHub had a lot more traffic - but our architecture made it fairly manageable. Then Feb 11th 2023 the US allegedly used AIM-9X Sidewinder to shot down an amateur radio balloon. That morning I woke to high usage alarms in my inbox. SondeHub had been linked to on the Washington Post. Our site managed to handled the extra traffic reasonably well. 43.9万美元的导弹对阵派对气球。一切进展顺利，直到2023年“中国间谍气球”事件发生。SondeHub 的流量大幅增加，但我们的架构使其相当易于管理。随后在2023年2月11日，据称美国使用 AIM-9X“响尾蛇”导弹击落了一个业余无线电气球。那天早上，我被收件箱里的高负载警报吵醒。SondeHub 被《华盛顿邮报》引用了。我们的网站相当好地处理了额外的流量。
Since then we’ve many support requests from .mil and .gov addresses. We’ve also had requests from aviation industry / air control towers. In Dec 2024 - alarms in my inbox again. This time getting alarms for predictions. Someone decided to smash our api. This seemingly starts happening every week. 从那时起，我们收到了许多来自 .mil（军方）和 .gov（政府）地址的支持请求。我们也收到了来自航空业和空中交通管制塔台的请求。2024年12月，我的收件箱再次响起警报。这次是关于预测功能的警报。有人决定猛攻我们的 API。这种情况似乎每周都在发生。
Full scale invasion. We turn on logging. The requests coming from a single IP. We had some suspicions that a private company was using our backend to generate predictions. We poke their website to see - sure enough they are - an angry email to them. However they weren’t the problem. We ask some people. Lol. Totally not the case. Right? Probably just an AI LLM bot scrapper gone crazy. Lets plot some predictions. Note that the precision of these points has been intentionally been reduced. This data is also significantly old and does not show the entire dataset. This blog post has been delayed until balloon warfare was more common knowledge. Fuck. And Fuck Russia. (for time travellers and people in the future - in 2022 started a “special military operation” - aka a full scale invasion into Ukraine. The war continues at time of writing. Fuck Russia) 全面入侵。我们开启了日志记录。请求来自同一个 IP。我们怀疑有一家私营公司正在使用我们的后端来生成预测。我们查看了他们的网站，果然如此——于是给他们发了一封愤怒的邮件。然而，问题并不出在他们身上。我们询问了一些人。哈哈。完全不是那么回事，对吧？可能只是一个发疯的 AI 大语言模型爬虫。让我们绘制一些预测点。请注意，这些点的精度已被有意降低。这些数据也相当陈旧，并未显示完整的数据集。这篇博文一直推迟到气球战成为常识后才发布。去他的。还有，去他的俄罗斯。（给时间旅行者和未来的人们——2022年，俄罗斯发动了“特别军事行动”，即对乌克兰的全面入侵。在撰写本文时，战争仍在继续。去他的俄罗斯。）
Suddenly my mind was filled with ethic and legal questions. We also suspected they aren’t using the API correctly. However we didn’t know how to get in contact. We did eventually got some messages out via a contact “We work with mHAB’s as you know, but some other groups likely fly fixed-wing an 突然间，我的脑海中充满了伦理和法律问题。我们也怀疑他们没有正确使用 API。然而，我们不知道该如何联系他们。最终，我们通过一位联系人发出了一些信息：“如你所知，我们与 mHAB（移动高空气球）合作，但其他一些团体可能在飞行固定翼……”