Security News
Last night's launch of six Pentagon missile-detection satellites was well timed as fears mount that Russia is considering putting nuclear weapons into space. The US Department of Defense confirmed its payload included two satellites for the Missile Defense Agency's Hypersonic and Ballistic Tracking Space Sensor, and the final four Tranche 0 satellites for the Space Development Agency's Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture communications constellation.
Researchers from Ruhr University Bochum and the CISPA Helmholtz Center for Information Security in Saarbrücken have assessed the security mechanisms of satellites currently orbiting the Earth from an IT perspective. They analyzed three current low-earth orbit satellites and found that, from a technical point of view, only some modern security concepts were implemented.
A North Korean satellite allegedly designed for reconnaissance was not viable for its alleged intended purpose, according to South Korea's military on Wednesday. North Korea attempted to put the satellite into orbit on May 31, but it instead plunged into the sea soon after it was launched.
In roughly two months, five teams of DEF CON hackers will do their best to successfully remotely infiltrate and hijack the satellite while it's in space. The goal of Moonlighter was to move offensive and defensive cyber-exercises for space systems out of an on-Earth lab setting and into low Earth orbit, according to project leader Aaron Myrick of Aerospace Corp. Not only that, but the satellite needs to be able to handle multiple teams competing to seize control of its software without losing or damaging the whole thing and ruining the project.
Boeing said on Tuesday its anti-jam ground-based satellite communications system had passed the necessary tests to validate it for use in the U.S. Space Force's Pathfinder program. The tests proved PTW was resistant to jamming but also validated hardware and software integration between PTES and the Department of Defense's satellite communications architecture.
Residents of Northwestern parts of the U.S. and Canada were baffled at seeing a bright trail of lights-almost like a train flying through the skies over the weekend. Over the weekend, stargazers in parts of Washington, Oregon, British Columbia, and nearby areas could spot a trail of lights blazing through the sky in a motion akin to a flying train.
A security researcher has shown how to, with physical access at least, fully take over a Starlink satellite terminal using a homemade modchip. Lennert Wouters, a researcher at the KU Leuven University in Belgium, walked through his methodology during a talk at Black Hat in Las Vegas this week.
The guide categorizes the protection requirements of various satellite missions from "Normal" to "Very High" with the goal of covering as many missions as possible. "High" is high-consequence damage that "Can significantly limit the operation of the satellite system." As for "Very High," the attack could result in shutdown and "Reach an existentially threatening, catastrophic extent for the operator or the manufacturer."
The Five Eyes nations comprising Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the U.K., and the U.S., along with Ukraine and the European Union, formally pinned Russia for masterminding an attack on an international satellite communication provider that had "Spillover" effects across Europe. The cyber offensive, which took place one hour before the Kremlin's military invasion of Ukraine on February 24, targeted the KA-SAT satellite network operated by telecommunications company Viasat, crippling the operations of wind farms and internet users in central Europe.
The European Union formally accused Russia of coordinating the cyberattack that hit satellite Internet modems in Ukraine on February 24, roughly one hour before Russia invaded Ukraine. One week after the attack, Viasat confirmed that the satellite modems hit in the cyberattack were wiped using AcidRain data destroying malware.