Security News
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. The attack targeted the KA-SAT consumer-oriented satellite broadband service operated by satellite communications provider Viasat.
Tens of thousands of Viasat satellite broadband modems that were disabled in a cyber-attack some weeks ago were wiped by malware with possible links to Russia's destructive VPNFilter, according to SentinelOne. In a statement, Viasat said the researchers' hypothesis was "Consistent with the facts in our report ... SentinelLabs identifies the destructive executable that was run on the modems using a legitimate management command as Viasat previously described."
A newly discovered data wiper malware that wipes routers and modems has been deployed in the cyberattack that targeted the KA-SAT satellite broadband service to wipe SATCOM modems on February 24, affecting thousands in Ukraine and tens of thousands more across Europe. Used to wipe satellite communication modems in Ukraine.
US satellite communications provider Viasat has shared an incident report regarding the cyberattack that affected its KA-SAT consumer-oriented satellite broadband service on February 24, the day Russia invaded Ukraine. Today's incident report comes after the KA-SAT satellite network - "Used intensively by the Ukrainian military" - was affected by a cyberattack that triggered satellite service outages in Central and Eastern Europe.
In a joint security alert, the US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency and FBI "Strongly encourage" critical infrastructure operators, along with SATCOM network providers and customers, to put in place a series of mitigation steps to shore up their networks. Security teams suffer from alert fatigue with the financial sector being hit the hardest, according to a new Orca Security report.
In a warning to aviation authorities and air operators on Thursday, the European Union Aviation Safety Agency warned of satellite jamming and spoofing attacks across a broad swath of Eastern Europe that could affect air navigation systems. The warning came in tandem with a separate alert from the FBI and the U.S. Cybersecurity Infrastructure and Security Agency that hackers could be targeting satellite communications networks in general.
Russia will consider any cyberattacks targeting Russian satellite infrastructure an act of war, as the country's space agency director said in a TV interview. Dmitry Rogozin, the current head of the Russian Roscosmos State Space Corporation, added that such attempts would also be considered crimes and investigated by Russia's law enforcement agencies.
New Zealand's Government Communications Security Bureau - the nation's signals intelligence and infosec agency - will retire its Waihopai satellite communications interception station because it's no longer needed. "The nature of telecommunications has changed, and other needs and capabilities have overtaken the sort of satellite communication interception that has been done at Waihopai," said Andrew Little, the minister responsible for the GCSB. "The GCSB's own statement on the matter reads"Changes in global telecommunications and information technology mean the interception of satellite communications from Waihopai has declined over the years to the point where dish use is now virtually obsolete.
A sophisticated telecommunications satellite that can be completely repurposed while in space has launched. Because the satellite can be reprogrammed in orbit, it can respond to changing demands during its lifetime.
The USA and India have struck a new defence pact that will see the two nations share high-quality spatial data and satellite images. Doing so means that India can, in theory, be more precise should it act in neighbouring trouble spots.