A company which is based in and operating out of Cyprus has developed technology capable of revealing the locations and identities of people who use South African billionaire Elon Musk’s satellite-based internet service, Starlink, according to reports.

Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported that the company, named as TargetTeam, “has developed a system called Stargetz that, according to sales materials, can track close to one million Starlink terminals worldwide”.

It added that the company was founded by former employees of Israeli cyber intelligence firms, such as Rayzone and Cognyte, while fellow Israeli newspaper the Jerusalem Post reported that the same company also possesses a “VPN de-anonymising tool”.

The tool, named “VPNz”, allows its users to discern the true identities of people accessing the internet via virtual private networks, which typically hide their true identities and locations online.

According to the Jerusalem Post, TargetTeam “does not intercept communication traffic or breach Starlink’s encryption in order to identify the system’s users”, with TargetTeam as such believing that they will “avoid legal and public disputes over its tool’s usage”.

Haaretz, meanwhile, reported that the technology is “sold to governments”, and that instead of breaching encryption, it “maps the locations of Starlink terminals across the globe, exposing the location of those connecting to the internet through the devices”.

It added that the tool “uses the data fusion to not just map the terminals, but also tries to identify the actual users connecting through them”.

With it being governments which are electing to buy and use the technology, Amnesty International’s security lab’s head Donncha Ó Cearbhaill stressed that satellite-based internet services are becoming vital for people in areas of the world which face internet shutdowns and conflicts.

“For people living under internet shutdowns, blockades, and active conflict – from Sudan, to Myanmar, to Iran – satellite services like Starlink are often the last remaining channel to call for help, document rights violations, and tell the world what is happening,” he told Haaretz.

As well as being used to locate civilians, the newspaper also reported that those marketing the technology have also suggested a military purpose for it, pointing out that it could be used to locate naval vessels which turn their transponders off.

“The ship can hide, but the crew still needs porn and TikTok,” one salesman was quoted as having said.

The newspaper was also offered a live demonstration of the Stargetz technology, and reported that an interactive map displayed terminals “across the Middle East, the Arabian peninsula and Gulf, India, Russia, and China”, in addition to “offshore clusters in the Arabian Sea and the Bay of Bengal”, which were likely ships.

It said that the system was “monitoring one million terminals” which were providing internet services to 5.5 million devices. A fifth of those terminals had been “deanonymized”, with the newspaper saying that it understood this term to mean that it had identified details regarding the devices or the people using them.

Starlink is available across Cyprus, but in the north, accessing the internet via a satellite is punishable by up to six months in prison. However, this has not yet been enforced.