At DEFCON 2023, “the U.S. military will stage a contest in which competing teams of white-hat hackers will, for the first time ever, try to penetrate and take over computer systems on a satellite actually in orbit. It took four years, but “this year, we are in space for real,” said Steve Colenzo, Technology Transfer Lead for the Air Force Research Laboratory’s Information Directorate in Rome, New York, and one of the contest organizers.” (1) The Hack-A-Sat 4 capture-the-flag contest is timely, satellite security emerged as a national security concern after a cyberattack of the Viasat KA-SAT European satellite network last year and a new hacking group attacked a Russian telecom satellite in support of Prigozhin’s Wagner Group last week.
“Industries from agriculture and mining to banking and insurance rely on space-based capabilities, he said. GPS, provided by a network of U.S. military satellites, is the best-known. GPS and its Chinese, European, Japanese, and Russian equivalents, give not just directions for clueless drivers, but controls for automated machinery on farms and the timing and location information that makes secure financial transactions possible online. Other space-based capabilities, such as earth observation satellites, which can show damage from extreme weather events, are increasingly used by insurance and other companies.
‘Everyone relies on space,’ said Colenzo. Traditionally, space technology was the purview of a handful of nation-states. And the hardware and software used in space systems such as GPS were boutique, unique, and specialized.
But now ‘space is democratizing,’ Colenzo said, with more countries and more companies able to build their own satellites and buy rides on launch vehicles to get them into orbit. ‘We need all of those new entrants to be thinking about cyber security and cyber hygiene … because in five years, we are all going to be relying on their capabilities’ the way we now rely on GPS.” (1)
“The project is a collaboration between the Aerospace Corporation, the Air Force Research Laboratory, and US Space Systems Command. In a so-called bug bounty program to be held at this year’s DEF CON, which will begin on August 10, five teams of hackers will face off to identify vulnerabilities and breach the satellite’s cybersecurity system so that the government can learn more about how hackers go about satellite cyberattacks. The first team to hack the satellite will receive a $50,000 grand prize.” (2)
The Moonlighter Cubesat Satellite
“Hack-A-Sat organizers realized that…they would have to launch their own satellite.”
Hack-A-Sat 4 is an attack/defend contest in which teams compete to hack each other’s systems while defending their own. It is being staged by the Air Force Research Laboratory and the U.S. Space Force. A total of 780 teams signed up for the qualification round in April, and the five top-scoring ones, which include contestants from Australia, Germany, Italy, and Poland, as well as the U.S., will participate in the finals at DEFCON.
Image Source: hackasat.com
“We always knew our objective was to do this in space,” Colenzo said. But when, back in 2020, organizers asked satellite operators if they could stage a hacking contest on their space assets, “The answer, and there was really no hesitation, the answer was always no.”
Hack-A-Sat organizers realized that, if they wanted to reach their objective of staging such a contest in space, they would have to launch their own satellite, Colenzo said.
The Moonlighter satellite was launched on a SpaceX rideshare rocket to the International Space Station on June 5 by the U.S. government-backed non-profit The Aerospace Corporation. It’s a foot-long toaster-sized cubesat satellite with extendable solar panels. (1)
The Hack-a-Sat competition started in 2020, after the secretary of acquisitions for the Air Force attended DEF CON. Since then, the Air Force has used the annual competition as an information-gathering project. But so far, all the competitions have been simulations — Moonlighter will be the first actual satellite involved.”
Finding the weak spots
Humans interact with space technology each day, yet there are ample vulnerabilities that hackers could use to bring these systems down. “There are a lot of different ways to hack into a satellite,” Myrick added. And the contest may reveal novel approaches to the industry: The techniques hackers use to break into Moonlighter’s cybersecurity systems will be mapped onto the SPARTA matrix, a framework intended to provide information to the space sector about how satellites can be compromised.
At the same time, designing security systems for satellites is challenging. “We don’t have direct access to our systems. We can’t just go up there and replace the hard drive in a cyber event,” explains Myrick. Satellites are also not in communication with the ground for the majority of their life. “You don’t necessarily know what’s going on with your system at all times,” he explains.
Moonlighter is equipped with cybersecurity software with known synthetic vulnerabilities (no cybersecurity software is foolproof). Via the Hack-A-Sat competition, researchers can look “at how these teams … analyze this system, how they would then go and exploit that synthetic vulnerability,” Aaron Myrick, a project coordinator at The Aerospace Corporation and the lead of the Moonlighter project, told SpaceRef.
At DEF CON, the hackers will be able to change where the satellite is pointing, but its orbit will remain fixed. That way, the competitors won’t be able to create an actual hazard in orbit — they’ll just demonstrate how a more malicious hacker might do so. (2)
From the Organizers of Hack-a-Sat
Hack-A-Sat is a Capture the Flag (CTF) competition designed to inspire the world’s top cybersecurity talent to develop the skills necessary to help reduce vulnerabilities and build more secure space systems.
In Hack-A-Sat 1, 2 and 3, the best of the best have been learning more about all the skills required to hack in space through physical flatsat hardware and digital twin simulation. But, this year, PRACTICE IS OVER, as Hack-A-Sat 4 presents the world’s first CTF competition IN SPACE. Five Finalist Teams will compete on Moonlighter, an on-orbit satellite. Moonlighter is the world’s first and only hacking sandbox in space, designed specifically to advance the cyber security community and secure space for us all. (3)
The European Space Agency OPS-SAT Hack
“…it took a team of four, working part-time, a full three months before they were able to seize OPS-SAT…”
[The DEFCON 2023 Hack-a-Sat] won’t be the first time white-hat hackers have successfully hacked a real satellite in orbit.
That honor was taken earlier this year by Brian Jouannic and his team of ethical hackers from French defense, space, and technology giant Thales. They were able, over a period of several months, to penetrate and take over the controls of a European Space Agency satellite called OPS-SAT. They were also able to doctor images produced by the satellite’s camera.
OPS-SAT was uniquely easy to hack, Jouannic told Newsweek, because it was designed as a platform to host experiments, called payloads, from multiple users. More than 100 companies and institutions from 17 EU member states registered with the European Space Agency to upload their software payloads to the satellite, which runs the ubiquitous Linux software, just like an Earth-bound IT system.
‘The attack on the satellite is more or less the same as an attack on a ground-based system,’ Jouannic said, ‘but in a much more challenging environment.’ The white-hat hackers could only communicate with the satellite for 10 minutes each day, as it passed overhead. So they would upload their code and then have to wait 24 hours to see if it had worked. ‘We had some good luck,’ he said, in finding exploitable vulnerabilities in the European Space Agency’s code. Nonetheless, it took a team of four, working part-time, a full three months before they were able to seize OPS-SAT’s control system and change its attitude.
What Next?
Cyberattacks on Satellites are Hybrid Warfare
U.S. wargames that seek to anticipate Chinese military strategy have long emphasized the possibility of a pre-emptive strike to take out U.S. space capabilities and impact U.S. forces fighting a war half a world away from their homeland. Such a strike would blind and deafen U.S. forces in the Indo-pacific theater, cutting off their communications with headquarters back in the U.S.
Now that China’s own economy is increasingly reliant on space as well, that pre-emptive strike will likely take the form of a cyberattack, according to a classified CIA assessment leaked by 21-year-old National Guard Airman Jack Teixeira and reported by the Financial Times. The leaked document said China was developing cyber weapons that allow it ‘to seize control of a satellite, rendering it ineffective to support communications, weapons, or intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance systems.'” (1)
Featured Images Source: Aerospace Corp.
In June, The Error Code podcast featured this episode on Hack-a-Sat 4: “Moonlighter is the world’s first and only hacking sandbox in space. Currently orbiting the earth near the International Space Station, the satellite is the playground for this year’s Hack-A-Sat 4 competition at DEF CON 31. Mike Walker, from Cromulence, discusses the difference between hacking a live satellite in orbit vs the previous Hack-A-Sat CTFs which only simulated the experience. We discuss limited contact windows, latency, and other aspects of orbital mechanics which will surely influence how Hack-a-Sat 4 will be played.”
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