{"id":61137,"date":"2019-11-08T23:41:25","date_gmt":"2019-11-08T15:41:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/new-leo-satellites-bring-fresh-cyber-issues\/"},"modified":"2019-11-08T23:41:25","modified_gmt":"2019-11-08T15:41:25","slug":"new-leo-satellites-bring-fresh-cyber-issues","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/new-leo-satellites-bring-fresh-cyber-issues\/","title":{"rendered":"New LEO Satellites Bring Fresh Cyber Issues"},"content":{"rendered":"<\/p>\n
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A panel on LEO at CyberSat 2019. Photo: Mark Holmes<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>\n

The new generation of Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellites \u2014 thousands of which will be launched over the next few years \u2014 may be easier to secure from cyberattacks than current constellations, but in some ways they present a larger attack surface for hackers, according to a panel at CyberSat Friday.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s new things that need to be protected\u201d in a LEO constellation, explained Ronald Einhorn, the space programs lead systems engineer for Airbus Defense and Space<\/strong>. He cited the increased number of ground stations as an example.<\/p>\n

LEO systems also offer \u201cadditional points of entry\u201d for hackers seeking to disrupt the service a constellation was providing, he said. Because the terminals that connect to LEO constellations need to move in order to follow the satellites across the sky, they might be vulnerable to malicious code injection that misdirects their antenna, causing service interruption.<\/p>\n

The new generation of small LEO satellites are also becoming more complex than the simple \u201cbent pipe\u201d of traditional communications assets, Einhorn explained, with software-defined radio, beam-forming networks and other characteristics that hackers could try to attack.<\/p>\n

\u201cAll that added complexity \u2026 creates a larger attack surface,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

On the other hand, added Dennis Gatens, the chief commercial officer for Cloud Constellation<\/strong>, the new generation of software-defined satellites could be updated and patched on orbit, something that wasn\u2019t possible with legacy, hardware-based birds.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou can make them more secure today than the ones we\u2019ve had sitting in Geostationary Orbit (GEO) or Medium-Earth Orbit (MEO) for years,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Einhorn pointed out that LEO satellites also \u201cmay be more difficult to jam (than traditional GEO birds because) the beams are smaller so you don\u2019t have the wide area beams that can be jammed from geographically distant locations.\u201d<\/p>\n

He pointed to the \u201cindustrialization\u201d of satellite manufacturing, with much lower costs and orders of magnitude greater production rates than traditional satellite. \u201cIf you\u2019re building a satellite a day,\u201d any vulnerabilities that are found can be assessed, remediated and fixed \u201cwithin a few months, not decades\u201d as would have been the case with traditional production rates.<\/p>\n

The downside of the new, more commoditized or industrialized manufacturing process, he added, was the lower price point. \u201cWe\u2019re trying to make the satellites less expensive so there\u2019s not the resources to apply to any given satellite to put the state of the art, exquisite protection,\u201d that could have been included with traditional bespoke manufacturing.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe upside  is \u2026 with every (production) spiral, we\u2019re looking at what we can do to add value\u201d by improving the build. \u201cThat might be more cyber(security),\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

The orbit itself might make the new generation slightly harder to attack, added Ahsen Abbasi, senior technical manager for real time operations for Iridium<\/strong>. \u201cThe fact they\u2019re in LEO means that you don\u2019t have the same access time from the ground. You have to have more precise knowledge of location\u2026 you have to have the ability to track it,\u201d he explained.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m not saying it\u2019s insurmountable, but the barrier to entry (for hackers) is in some ways higher\u201d for LEO.<\/p>\n

And it was already very high for the satellite sector in general, Abbasi pointed out. \u201cThe cost of trying to hack a satellite is very high,\u201d he said. \u201cYou have to have a dedicated adversary that\u2019s willing to take the time and money and effort\u201d like a nation-state.<\/p>\n

But he added, as more networks begin to include space-based elements, non-state actors like cybercriminals who are currently attacking terrestrial networks might migrate to attacking satellites.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs we go forward as more and more of the capabilities and functions that we currently do exclusively terrestrially, move into space \u2026 it may motivate other actors that are not nation states to try to infiltrate these networks,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

One of the biggest challenges, Abbasi added, was just being in the communications business. \u201cWe have to allow users, external entities access to our system. They have to be able to inject their data into our network,\u201d he explained. Even without malicious intent, \u201cusers sometimes use the system in ways you did not expect.\u201d<\/p>\n

He gave an example of a customer \u201cA few years back\u201d who had been \u201cinjecting data with much greater frequency than users generally do,\u201d almost effectively mimicking a denial of service attack.<\/p>\n

Some things won;t change, even with the new LEO generation, concluded Einhorn. \u201cYou still have to protect the space segment, the ground segment, your earth to ground link and your networks,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A panel on LEO at CyberSat 2019. Photo: Mark Holmes The new generation of Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellites \u2014 thousands of which will be launched over the next few years \u2014 may be easier to secure from cyberattacks than current constellations, but in some ways they present a larger attack surface for hackers, according […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":61141,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-61137","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61137"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=61137"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61137\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/61141"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=61137"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=61137"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=61137"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}