While the space domain is increasingly targeted by cyberattacks, satellite providers are ramping up their defense mechanisms to protect their ground segment as well as the space segment.
In the early days of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, for example, Russia-aligned hackers targeted the ground-based segment of Viasat’s satellite communications network, taking Internet modems offline throughout Europe. Soon after, Russia also targeted the distributed satellite Internet service Starlink, which could withstand the attack.
As stated in the article Space Race: Defenses Emerge as Satellite-Focused Cyberattacks Ramp Up (darkreading.com), “We will see more automation on the spacecraft, and therefore we will need more on-board autonomous cyber protection,” says Brandon Bailey, a senior project leader for the Cyber Assessments and Research Department at The Aerospace Corp. “This means integrating items like segmentation, authentication, encryption, and intrusion detection [and] prevention on-board the spacecraft will be a must in the future.”
The US are answering to the increased cyberattacks with two separate cybersecurity frameworks: The NIST Cybersecurity Framework for the Satellite Ground Segment (NIST-IR-8401) builds on a common approach to cyber-defense that includes five major functions: the identification of assets and their cyber-risks, the development of technologies and procedures to protect those assets, the capability to detect attacks, the infrastructure needed to respond to any incident, and the ability to recover from attacks. The Sparta framework aims to cover cyberattacks on the space-based components, such as satellites, spacecraft and other systems.
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