The surprising threat is lurking even in your ‘secure’ work environment

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US issues threat warning after hackers break into a satellite

source: defenseone.com  |  image: pexels.com

Three teams at the DEF CON 23 convention met a government challenge to hack satellite in orbit.

It seems like nothing is off limits for threat actors to target these days. Hospitals, schools, charity organizations and even municipalities have all been successfully targeted by malicious cyberattacks in recent years. And now, it seems like attackers are even looking into space for new systems to try and compromise.

Last week, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, in coordination with the FBI, the National Counterintelligence and Security Center, and the Air Force Office of Special Investigations, issued a warning about increased attempts to attack both satellites in orbit and the intellectual property of companies developing space technologies.

The warning comes just about a month after three teams at the DEF CON 23 convention in Las Vegas managed to hack a government satellite in orbit. Those attacks were conducted with the full permission of the government as part of the U.S. Space Force’s Hack-A-Sat competition. Three of the teams that successfully breached the security of the orbiting satellite were awarded up to $50,000 in prize money for demonstrating how such an attack could be conducted. This was the first time that hacker groups were able to prove that it was now possible to circumvent the cybersecurity protections of satellites in orbit.

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Array Labs is scanning Earth from space to equip autonomous vehicles with 3D maps

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It’s an oft-told story: The boom of space startups today can be traced to dramatically lowered cost in launch and satellite manufacturing over the past 10 years. But Array Labs, a two-year-old startup based in Silicon Valley, is also taking advantage of other technological developments in its quest to build a 3D map of Earth.

Those include computation gains, like in advanced graphics processors (GPUs), and radar software development, Array CEO Andrew Peterson explained. Peterson, an aerospace engineer who had previously worked for General Atomics Aeronautical Systems and Moog’s space and defense division, said the revolution in scientific computing has opened up new possibilities.

“If could take all of this superpower that we were seeing in radar and scientific computing, and you could couple that with really low-cost satellites . . . there’s probably a really, really interesting way to do a new type of Earth observation,” he said. “This was the best idea that I’ve ever had.”