This August, in the famous congress hacker DEFCON, the US Army will hold a competition in which 8 teams of white-hat hackers, for the first time, will attempt to penetrate and take over computer systems on an orbiting satellite.
It took four years, but "this year, we're really in space," said Steve Colenzo, Chief of Transportation Technology for the Aviation Research Laboratory's Information Directorate in Rome, New York, and one of the contest's organizers.
Ο Hack-A-Sat contest 4 capture-the-flag comes in the wake of the infamous cyber attack on the Viasat KA-SAT European satellite network last year. Russian hackers tried to cut off the Ukrainian command and control of its armed forces by shutting down the network just as the Russian army was crossing the border.
Although there are conflicting reports on the impact of this particular hack on combat, the attack was completely effective from technique point of view. Every KA-SAT ground terminal that was active at the time shut down by itself and could not be activated.
That, plus the collateral damage caused by the attack, such as the wind farms in Germany that went out except connection, showed us the integral role of satellite networks in the global economy, as well as their vulnerability to hackers who know what they are doing.
It also demonstrated the value of the annual Hack-A-Sat competition, which aims to highlight the cyber threat facing space agencies.
