Thales Seizes Control of ESA Satellite

Not an aggressive industrial powergrab – but a demonstration of potential national asset vulnerability. Responding to a challenge from the European Space Agency (ESA) to show how to achieve disruption of its OPS-SAT demonstration nanosatellite, Thales (among others) has made successful attempts to seize control of OPS-SAT in advance of CYSAT, the European event entirely dedicated to cybersecurity for the space industry, 26-27 April in Paris.

In ethical hacking events to date – the first of their kind – Thales’ offensive cybersecurity team used a variety of techniques to take control of the system that controls the satellite’s global positioning, attitude control and camera systems. The results demonstrate the need for high levels of cyber resilience in the exacting environment of space, since the hackers managed to introduce malicious code into the satellite’s systems. The potential effect of compromised data, from a security perspective, could include, for example, the masking of selected geographic areas from satellite surveillance, or even the alteration of images transmitted to the operators.

“With the growing number of military as well as civil applications that are reliant on satellite systems today, the space industry needs to take cybersecurity into account at every stage in the satellite’s life cycle, from initial design to systems development and maintenance. This unprecedented exercise was a chance to raise awareness of potential flaws and vulnerabilities, so that they can be remediated more effectively, and to adapt current and future solutions to improve the cyber resilience of satellites and space programmes in general, including both ground segments and orbital systems,” commented Pierre-Yves Jolivet, VP Cyber Solutions at Thales. The company, together with ESA, will provide a briefing at CYSAT on 27 April on this first demonstration of offensive cybersecurity techniques, tactics and procedures.