When Satellites Attack: Satellite-to-Satellite Cyber Attack, Defense and Resilience
Gregory Falco
Abstract
The United States is increasingly reliant on space systems for civil and military operations. Therefore, it is no surprise that adversaries are interested in compromising these systems via cyber attack. This paper describes a new class of satellite-to-satellite cyber attacks. While such attacks were previously limited to a select group of nation-states, low-cost cubesats and ground station cloud services make these attacks increasingly feasible and accessible to adversaries. There are no publicly documented instances of satellite-to-satellite cyber attacks occurring at the time of publication, but the technical feasibility is described herein along with proposed defense and resilience techniques. Policy recommendations to help manage the risk of satellite-to-satellite attacks are also discussed.