Speaker 1: I was able to see the sort of traffic people
Speaker 1: were sending over their satellite Internet connections, so stuff like
Speaker 1: text messages from people who are using in flight Wi
Speaker 1: Fi services, or things like passengers on cruise ships when
Speaker 1: they were making payments at point of sales systems. Also
Speaker 1: a lot of like passport numbers, really concerning data to
Speaker 1: be getting in clear text from Bloomberg News and iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1: It's the big take, I'm West Kasova today. The latest
Speaker 1: target for hackers satellites. Thousands of satellites circling high above
Speaker 1: our heads make it possible to do many of the
Speaker 1: things we take for granted every day. When you send
Speaker 1: it texts, find your way with Google Maps, use your
Speaker 1: credit card, even check the time on your phone, chances
Speaker 1: are some bit of your info was beamed up to
Speaker 1: a satellite from one place and beamed back down instantly
Speaker 1: to where it needed to go. The downside to this
Speaker 1: invisible miracle of technology, satellite systems aren't always as secure
Speaker 1: as they should be, and this means they can be
Speaker 1: easy targets for hackers looking to steal information for profit,
Speaker 1: or governments looking to steal secrets or cripple the communications
Speaker 1: systems of their rivals. What's extraordinary is it seems that
Speaker 1: the Russians, if it were them, were prepared to take
Speaker 1: extraordinary risks because they were aiming for the Ukrainian military.
Speaker 1: That's my Bloomberg colleague Katrina Manson. She investigated a real
Speaker 1: life example of this, a mysterious satellite hack on the
Speaker 1: day Russia invaded Ukraine, and she joins me now to
Speaker 1: tell us what she found. Katrina, can you start by
Speaker 1: describing the satellite hack that happened in February of twenty
Speaker 1: twenty two, just a little over a year ago, as
Speaker 1: Vladimir Putin was saying he was launching a special military
Speaker 1: operation on Ukraine. Ukrainian military communication connections that rely on
Speaker 1: modems that link up to a satellite, we're going dead.
Speaker 1: And it turned out that satellite communications were going dead
Speaker 1: across Europe. These are all broadband internet connections that rely
Speaker 1: on one single satellite, and it provides satellite connections to
Speaker 1: more than one hundred thousand users across Europe. But specifically,
Speaker 1: the thing that mattered so much to the Ukrainian military.
Speaker 1: So imagine military are often in frontline positions in remote
Speaker 1: locations where they can't get Internet the usual way you
Speaker 1: would through a static connection. This allows you to dial
Speaker 1: up essentially to connect to a satellite more than twenty
Speaker 1: thousand miles up in space, and that's how you get
Speaker 1: your Internet connection. And that's what went dead across Ukraine
Speaker 1: and Europe. Now, this satellite is owned by a company
Speaker 1: named Viasat. That's a US company based in California, so
Speaker 1: a continent away. Users who rely on that satellite, their
Speaker 1: connections started going dead. So when that happened, what actually
Speaker 1: was happening? Why were these connections going dead? After a
Speaker 1: lot of research and forensic analysis and all the things
Speaker 1: that people have to do to what's called reverse engineer
Speaker 1: a hack like this, and it turns out to have
Speaker 1: been a very complicated hack. Attackers breached what's called a VPN,
Speaker 1: a virtual private network that's an entry point into a
Speaker 1: network that is meant to be secured. It wasn't. There
Speaker 1: was what's called a misconfiguration. We don't have much more
Speaker 1: information about that. They got into the network and then
Speaker 1: they moved across the network again, another thing they shouldn't
Speaker 1: be able to do. There should be doors, as it were,
Speaker 1: fire doors preventing you from making the next move. They
Speaker 1: get to a network management server that's essentially something that
Speaker 1: controls the flow of information. They put in a malicious
Speaker 1: software toolkit that's basically the bad instruction, and then that
Speaker 1: bad instruction is sent to modems across Ukraine and Europe
Speaker 1: and it wipes the modems. It overrides a part of
Speaker 1: the modem which is used for memory, and the modems
Speaker 1: are no longer operable, they can no longer make that
Speaker 1: connection to the satellite. The rest of the system get online.
Speaker 1: So essentially a piece of malware was distributed throughout the
Speaker 1: network and it fried the modems. It's a really extraordinary
Speaker 1: attack because people connect to the Internet through the satellite
Speaker 1: just via your home moodem. That's the same thing that
Speaker 1: gets the Internet signal into your house, and then it's
Speaker 1: often distributed through a router so you can connect via
Speaker 1: Wi Fi. That was the ultimate target of the attack.
Speaker 1: So more than forty five thousand modems that connect to
Speaker 1: the satellite system effectively were wiped. And when they were wiped,
Speaker 1: they couldn't make the connection. So they determine that this
Speaker 1: was a hack. Do they know who did the hacking? Well, interestingly,
Speaker 1: vias at the company that owned the satellite and its partner,
Speaker 1: Utel Sat that's a French company that ran the network
Speaker 1: in partnership with Viasat, have never said They have only
Speaker 1: ever said attackers. When I press them, they explain that
Speaker 1: they are quite cage in order to preserve the network.
Speaker 1: What did happen is it fell to countries. It fell
Speaker 1: to the European Union, to the US, to the UK,
Speaker 1: Australia and Canada to blame Russia And what basis did
Speaker 1: they blame Russia for being responsible for this attack? US
Speaker 1: intelligence spent something like four weeks looking into this attack.
Speaker 1: At the moment that the attack happened, via SAT told
Speaker 1: defense contractors and the US government through a specific way
Speaker 1: that they share information because that same satellite that provides
Speaker 1: your average Internet for users at home who just want
Speaker 1: to stream movies or go on the Internet, the same
Speaker 1: satellite also provides sensitive government services. It's a different part
Speaker 1: of the satellite, but bias that immediately informed its government partners,
Speaker 1: and the US launched an intelligence investigation into what had happened.
Speaker 1: So did intelligence services in France and the UK, and
Speaker 1: after four weeks, US intelligence determined that the GRU were
Speaker 1: the attackers. The GRU is a Russian military intelligence unit
Speaker 1: that has acquired quite a reputation for hacking. Do they
Speaker 1: say with certainty that it was the Russians so they
Speaker 1: just suspected? How were they able to determine that it
Speaker 1: was actually the GRU. They haven't said much about that,
Speaker 1: and in fact, in the public attribution, I think it's
Speaker 1: only one country, Estonia, that has ever publicly labeled it
Speaker 1: as the GRU. So all of these assessments have stayed private.
Speaker 1: But the EU blamed clearly Russia. Others blamed Russian military hackers.
Speaker 1: So there's a range of public contribution, but their private
Speaker 1: work of the intelligence community is not something that anyone's
Speaker 1: made public. And I imagine that the Russians take exception
Speaker 1: to this conclusion. I did speak to the Russian embassy
Speaker 1: in Washington, DC, and the statement they sent me, I think, said,
Speaker 1: this is total nonsense. Internet users who were customers of
Speaker 1: this satellite had their Internet and knacked out, but they
Speaker 1: weren't really the target of this hack, is there? Right? Yeah?
Speaker 1: What so extraordinary is it seems that the Russians, if
Speaker 1: it were them, were prepared to take extraordinary risks because
Speaker 1: they were aiming for the Ukrainian military communications and that's
Speaker 1: what was knocked out. But there was what's called overspill.
Speaker 1: So I'm told that they knew that the attack that
Speaker 1: they pursued would affect other countries. And not only did
Speaker 1: it affect other countries, they were NATO countries, and it
Speaker 1: wasn't just people sitting at home, it was critical infrastructure.
Speaker 1: So five thousand, eight hundred systems that monitor wind turbines
Speaker 1: in Germany and across Europe, those monitoring systems were knocked out.
Speaker 1: That counts as critical infrastructure, which is protected, and the
Speaker 1: other is just sitting at home being on internet. Internet
Speaker 1: communications are considered critical infrastructure. All of that is significant
Speaker 1: because it raises the question of whether NATO had any
Speaker 1: responsibility or potential to respond. Article five, which is that
Speaker 1: mutual defense clause, the idea that if one is attacked,
Speaker 1: everyone is attacked and you can respond, has been very
Speaker 1: clearly expanded to include cyber No one's ever acted on
Speaker 1: that yet, but there, of course there was potential for
Speaker 1: NATO to say we two have been attacked. What was
Speaker 1: the file out would eventually happen? How did they or
Speaker 1: did they fix the problem. They ended up having to
Speaker 1: send out more than forty five thousand modems and this
Speaker 1: took weeks. They say that they prioritized getting modems to
Speaker 1: Ukrainian distributors, so that was their main effort. And then
Speaker 1: I think the other thing that's really interesting is the
Speaker 1: US led a quiet diplomatic campaign over the course of
Speaker 1: six weeks. Once they got that internal decision or assessment
Speaker 1: that it was the gru the Russians military hackers who
Speaker 1: were responsible for this, they tried to commence the European
Speaker 1: Union that this was the case as well. They shared
Speaker 1: technical information and then they went above and beyond and
Speaker 1: shared additional intelligence information with two key members of the
Speaker 1: European Union who were also the biggest victims of this
Speaker 1: attack outside of Ukraine, France and Germany. And that is
Speaker 1: so important because they are also the most influential members
Speaker 1: of the European Union. And they have also historically been
Speaker 1: very reluctant to blame anyone for attacks in public, even
Speaker 1: if they reached that same assessment in private. They don't
Speaker 1: tend to attribute attacks because of two main reasons. Really. One,
Speaker 1: you can make things worse, you can incite attacks against
Speaker 1: yourself and you could be wrong. It's quite difficult to
Speaker 1: do attribution. And a ladder third. Germany in particular, was
Speaker 1: navigating very complex relations with Russia right at the start
Speaker 1: of that invasion because it took them so much by surprise,
Speaker 1: and figuring out what their response would be of course
Speaker 1: changes the rest of European history. In the end, did
Speaker 1: the alleged target of this attack, the Ukrainian military, suffer
Speaker 1: big setbacks in the early days of the war because
Speaker 1: of this. Was it successful in carrying out what it
Speaker 1: was trying to do? One Ukrainian cyber official said they
Speaker 1: suffered a really huge loss in communications at the start
Speaker 1: of the war. That's pretty much the most they've ever
Speaker 1: put on record about this. My understanding is that two
Speaker 1: main things were affected. Military communications. Command and control. Your
Speaker 1: ability to reach your frontline troops and say move your
Speaker 1: troops here really really matters at the start of any invasion,
Speaker 1: and particularly this invasion, which, as we know now, the
Speaker 1: Russians were intending to take the capital within three days.
Speaker 1: This was intended to be a blitz quig, so disabling
Speaker 1: satellite communication and the ability for the military to move
Speaker 1: around and respond was an attempt to stave off any
Speaker 1: counterattacked by the Ukrainians. Ultimately it did not work, but
Speaker 1: that was what I'm told is the intention. The other
Speaker 1: thing is that drones for espionage for tracking where the
Speaker 1: Russians are rely on satellite internet, and I'm told that
Speaker 1: it affected that as well. I think what's interesting about
Speaker 1: this is the Ukrainians were able to come back very
Speaker 1: very quickly, essentially because of a tweet to Elon Musk
Speaker 1: and saying can we please have starlink. Starlink is the
Speaker 1: satellite system owned by SpaceX's Elon Musk SpaceX that provides
Speaker 1: an equivalent satellite Internet. It works in low Earth orbits,
Speaker 1: so it has multiple thousands in fact, of satellites circulating
Speaker 1: the Earth, so it's harder to take out a single satellite,
Speaker 1: whereas the vias system relied on a geostationary satellite much
Speaker 1: higher up and just that one single satellite. Vias AT
Speaker 1: continues to face threats against this network. They told me
Speaker 1: they face on and dynamic threats even up to today.
Speaker 1: So although nothing has been successful at all in the
Speaker 1: way that that February attack was last year, it certainly
Speaker 1: could conceptually happen again. Our conversation continues after the break, Katrina,
Speaker 1: what are our governments and companies doing to try to
Speaker 1: harden their systems to wark future attacks. I think the
Speaker 1: answer there is not enough. That's certainly what the researchers
Speaker 1: I speak to are saying. But there is a push
Speaker 1: to develop standards. These are minimum cybersecurity standards that affect
Speaker 1: all parts of code in the satellite, encrypting data in
Speaker 1: that link, raising standards across the board. But this is
Speaker 1: a process that is really just beginning today. Something like
Speaker 1: five thousand active satellites are in orbit around the Earth.
Speaker 1: That's already a huge amount to try and protect, given
Speaker 1: you also have all the associated systems that make them work.
Speaker 1: This is growing so fast that I think that's why
Speaker 1: it's been such a wake up call to the industry.
Speaker 1: By twenty thirty, some high end estimates suggest that there
Speaker 1: could be one hundred thousand active satellites in orbits, So
Speaker 1: from five thousand to day to one hundred thousand in
Speaker 1: the space of seven years. This problem is so set
Speaker 1: to rise, and there are so many different ways to
Speaker 1: attack satellites. Way back at the beginning of the space age,
Speaker 1: no one even conceived anyone would be hitting And it
Speaker 1: turns out that I've spoken to hackers, individual hackers, security researchers,
Speaker 1: who've proved, who've shown that each of these is vulnerable.
Speaker 1: What are some of the things that all these satellites
Speaker 1: are doing. Well, there's Internet, that's one. There's satellite TV,
Speaker 1: there's earth observation, earthquake monitoring, spying. The US has its
Speaker 1: own spy satellites. But it was explained to me that
Speaker 1: every single element of the US economy that matters, whether
Speaker 1: it's chemical, industrial processes, looking for oil, even atomic clocks.
Speaker 1: So the way we get our time, the way cash
Speaker 1: machines function, the way you get gas at the pump,
Speaker 1: everything now depends on satellites. What are the things that
Speaker 1: you're paying a specially close attention to Given everything that
Speaker 1: you're describing here, I think I'm really interested in any
Speaker 1: time China puts up a system that could potentially be
Speaker 1: independent of the US, anytime China has a relationship with
Speaker 1: a US satellite company. All of those things are areas
Speaker 1: that I think you'll see the US government look at
Speaker 1: more and more, and really a push from the US
Speaker 1: government to see how far they're going to squeeze industry
Speaker 1: to actually do anything about this. A White House official
Speaker 1: told me that companies need to radically improve the security
Speaker 1: of satellite ground systems, and that they even go to
Speaker 1: companies on occasion and tell them, hey, we've discovered a vulnerability.
Speaker 1: You need to patch this. And they don't want to
Speaker 1: say it a public because that would raise awareness of
Speaker 1: a vulnerability that could be exploited by attackers. They tell
Speaker 1: companies in private, and they say sometimes companies do not
Speaker 1: take that advice and do not patch. And I think
Speaker 1: companies would have just as many criticisms back if they
Speaker 1: were speaking freely of the US government too. And so
Speaker 1: that relationship between government and commercial satellite players has got
Speaker 1: to get if it's to be solved a lot closer.
Speaker 1: They haven't quite got the level of trust that I
Speaker 1: think everyone would want. And there's a problem with classified briefings.
Speaker 1: A lot of this information is classified, and yet a
Speaker 1: lot of the hacks are happening on a commercial sector.
Speaker 1: So really breaching that gap needs a lot more work.
Speaker 1: Kultri in a man saying thanks so much for talking
Speaker 1: with me today, thank you for having me. Let's hear
Speaker 1: now from someone who knows how easy it can be
Speaker 1: to hack a satellite, because he's done it himself. James
Speaker 1: Pervoor tapped into commercial satellites as part of his PhD
Speaker 1: program at Axford Universe. He now works on satellite security
Speaker 1: for the Pentagon. James, let me just start by asking
Speaker 1: you first, how did you become a hacker. I've been
Speaker 1: doing computer security stuff basically since I was a child.
Speaker 1: So when I was like in middle school, I was
Speaker 1: playing around with like shutting down people's computers while they're
Speaker 1: sitting next to me in the lab, that kind of
Speaker 1: like little windows hacking type thing. And I've just always
Speaker 1: been really interested in seeing how things work under the hood.
Speaker 1: And as a hacker, like exploiting things is all about
Speaker 1: like understanding technology behind the scenes, and so that's really
Speaker 1: been super interesting for me. It's just always been like
Speaker 1: figure out how something works and then figure out how
Speaker 1: he can break it. And then you took that kind
Speaker 1: of plane around as a kid much more seriously a
Speaker 1: PhD now from Oxford, and as part of that dissertation,
Speaker 1: you actually were hacking satellites for real to show vulnerabilities.
Speaker 1: Is that right? Yeah, exactly. So. Over the course of
Speaker 1: my PhD at Oxford, I focused on satellite system security,
Speaker 1: and in particularly like radio signals that come to satellites
Speaker 1: from Internet users and like satellite broadband services. When I
Speaker 1: say satellite broadband services, what I really mean is basically
Speaker 1: when you're using a satellite to get Internet access, and
Speaker 1: typically that means that you send a message up to
Speaker 1: the satellite, which is like get me this website, and
Speaker 1: the satellites basically a bent pipe. You can think of
Speaker 1: the satellites as fairly dumb objects. They receive data on
Speaker 1: one antenna and then they take the data they receive
Speaker 1: and send it out on a different antenna, basically, and
Speaker 1: they do no thinking, no processing, at least for Internet satellites.
Speaker 1: So they're just a pipe. You put information in one
Speaker 1: side and it comes out another side, and the only
Speaker 1: difference is when it comes out it covers a huge area.
Speaker 1: And so when you send Internet requests up to a satellite,
Speaker 1: you're just pumping information into this pipe and then it's
Speaker 1: coming out the other side to your internet service provider.
Speaker 1: And when you get a response like a web page
Speaker 1: you've downloaded or a document you've received, it's the same thing.
Speaker 1: The service wrider is putting it into one end of
Speaker 1: the pipe and then it's coming out at the broad
Speaker 1: end to your dish. The interesting thing about satellite services
Speaker 1: is that beam that comes back down to you can
Speaker 1: cover like a third of the Earth's surface, so an
Speaker 1: attacker can be thousands of miles away and getting that information.
Speaker 1: So I bought some gear and pointed at satellites and
Speaker 1: tried to interpret what was going on. And it turns
Speaker 1: out that there's like lots of really interesting and really
Speaker 1: sensitive information in these signals that an attacker with like
Speaker 1: relatively inexpensive equipment can get access to. So you said
Speaker 1: you bought equipment, would you buy I mean, is it like,
Speaker 1: you know, going on Amazon just getting common stuff? Basically, yeah,
Speaker 1: So about four hundred dollars in home television equipment, the
Speaker 1: kind of satellite dish that you'd see on someone's house
Speaker 1: if they had satellite internet service, and then a special
Speaker 1: card that is designed to let you watch satellite TV
Speaker 1: on your computer. But I basically repurposed it to take
Speaker 1: these Internet signals and get them in a format I
Speaker 1: could mess around with. I pointed my dish at satellites
Speaker 1: in geostationary orbit, so that means they're thirty thousand kilometers
Speaker 1: above the Earth's surface and they basically don't move. They're
Speaker 1: always in the same spot in the sky, which makes
Speaker 1: them pretty easy to find and intercept signals from. And
Speaker 1: these were primarily like broadband Internet services, and I was
Speaker 1: able to see the sort of traffic people were sending
Speaker 1: over their satellite Internet connections, So stuff like text messages
Speaker 1: from people who were using in flight Wi Fi services
Speaker 1: when they're on like Transatlantic flights, or things like passengers
Speaker 1: on cruise ships when they were making payments at point
Speaker 1: of sales systems. So also a lot of like passport numbers.
Speaker 1: So when like crews, especially like cargo vessels pull into ports,
Speaker 1: they'll send information about everyone on the ship to the
Speaker 1: port authorities. That's typically over a satellite feed, and so
Speaker 1: it's pretty easy to identify those messages when you're like
Speaker 1: listening to the satellite traffic and just get like a
Speaker 1: list of everyone on the crew and when they were
Speaker 1: born and what their passport number is. Like really concerning
Speaker 1: data to be getting in clear text. Did it surprise
Speaker 1: you how much you were able to get? Yeah, I
Speaker 1: was stunned. I think that a lot of it comes
Speaker 1: from an assumption that you would need much more expensive equipment.
Speaker 1: The gear I used was very unreliable if I wanted
Speaker 1: to use it to actually be a satellite Internet customer
Speaker 1: when it worked, because I was missing a lot of packets,
Speaker 1: there was a lot of corruption. But what I was
Speaker 1: able to do is basically reconstruct enough of the transactions,
Speaker 1: like enough of the data that I could start to
Speaker 1: get interesting information. Because a hacker doesn't need one hundred
Speaker 1: percent reliability to succeed. So the change in the model
Speaker 1: was this idea that you could get away with a
Speaker 1: lot less if you're just trying to be disruptive. So
Speaker 1: here you are hacking these satellite signals and you're doing
Speaker 1: it for academic purposes to show how vulnerable they are.
Speaker 1: But if you were doing it for nefarious reasons to
Speaker 1: try and steal this information, you would have had a
Speaker 1: lot of stuff that could have caused people a lot
Speaker 1: of trouble. Definitely the data that was in there. I'm
Speaker 1: glad that as a security researcher, I was able to
Speaker 1: kind of get to it first and share it with
Speaker 1: the satellite Internet service providers and kind of raise awareness
Speaker 1: about this vulnerability so that they could work towards fixing it.
Speaker 1: Because I think adversaries, when they get access to data
Speaker 1: like this, could cause a lot of harm. So when
Speaker 1: you went to companies like that, what did they say
Speaker 1: they alarmed, did they immediately patch it? It was a
Speaker 1: mix of reactions. There are some companies that were fantastic.
Speaker 1: They were immediately like, thank you for sharing this information,
Speaker 1: We'll get right on fixing it. And I think they
Speaker 1: did end up making improvements to their security. They ended
Speaker 1: up checking what kind of data they were sending. There
Speaker 1: are other companies that either ignored the research, like never responded,
Speaker 1: or there were even some who like threatened to sue us.
Speaker 1: So whole gamut of different things. But I think that's
Speaker 1: just the nature of like offensive security research and vulnerability research,
Speaker 1: is that you kind of play a game where people
Speaker 1: may get very defensive or very hostile to your findings,
Speaker 1: but it's still important to get it out there so
Speaker 1: people can kind of if they want to choose to
Speaker 1: fix things, at least they know what they should be fixing.
Speaker 1: We'll be right back. Now that you've completed your research,
Speaker 1: you have your PhD, you've gone to work with the pentagain,
Speaker 1: what exactly are you doing for them? I work at
Speaker 1: the Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Office, which is a
Speaker 1: new office within the Office of the the Secretary of Defense,
Speaker 1: and my agency within that as called the Directorate for
Speaker 1: digital services, And it's a pretty generic name because the
Speaker 1: job is incredibly broad. It's a lot of emergency engineering,
Speaker 1: so like something pops up in the world that needs
Speaker 1: something built, coded, or developed within like forty eight hours,
Speaker 1: and so instead of like going to defense contractors, we
Speaker 1: have like in house engineering expertise who can build that
Speaker 1: kind of emergency tech. So obviously I can't go into
Speaker 1: a ton of detail about all the projects I work,
Speaker 1: but it's a lot of just like really rapid organic
Speaker 1: software development and security work and advisory work for like
Speaker 1: very impactful topics. What attracted you to the penan, I
Speaker 1: think for me, the opportunity to work as a civil
Speaker 1: servant in government is really compelling because you're close to
Speaker 1: the decision makers who are kind of deciding what the future,
Speaker 1: in this case the military will look like. And having
Speaker 1: a seat at that table and having a voice in
Speaker 1: those conversations can be a much bigger impact than simply
Speaker 1: like finding vulnerabilities at a big contractor and then selling
Speaker 1: them off. So for me, that's what really matters, is
Speaker 1: this idea that I could shape a safer future by
Speaker 1: being in the room when those conversations are happening. So
Speaker 1: walk us through how satellites actually work, what are the
Speaker 1: different components, and where are the places that are vulnerable
Speaker 1: to hacking you can break satellite security into. I guess
Speaker 1: there are four domains that I like to think about.
Speaker 1: One is the ground systems, So those are the devices
Speaker 1: that users use to connect to the systems, think like
Speaker 1: a starlink modem or a ground station that's run by
Speaker 1: a satellite service provider to collect data from their satellites.
Speaker 1: And when you're hacking ground systems, typically it's going to
Speaker 1: look a lot like bread and butther hacking, you're going
Speaker 1: to be targeting like the Windows computer that's plugged into
Speaker 1: the satellite antenna and using your Windows malware to exploit it.
Speaker 1: Then there's the communications link, so that's the radio signals
Speaker 1: that go from a ground station to a satellite, and
Speaker 1: that's what I was looking at in my PhD thesis.
Speaker 1: For the most part, that's often like radio signals engineering
Speaker 1: type work and kind of looking at communications security. Then
Speaker 1: there's the bird. So there's the satellite in orbit, and
Speaker 1: there's kind of a zone of trust once you're on
Speaker 1: the satellite. Everything on the satellite trusts everything else in
Speaker 1: the satellite. So if you were like compromise a camera
Speaker 1: on a satellite, you could send instructions to a flight
Speaker 1: controller because they're all plugged into the same like bus,
Speaker 1: which is basically like a wire that sends messages from
Speaker 1: devices to other devices. And so when you're thinking about
Speaker 1: like satellite security, it's often about compromising these embedded systems
Speaker 1: in orbit. And then the last topic area is kind
Speaker 1: of this broader like policy domain in terms of how
Speaker 1: people interact with and regulate satellites. I did some research
Speaker 1: on my PhD on space situational awareness data, for example,
Speaker 1: which is how countries tell each other what space debris
Speaker 1: is out there so we don't like crash into debris
Speaker 1: and cause damage to the space environment. And so I
Speaker 1: looked a lot at like what happens if countries lie
Speaker 1: to each other, How could those lies be detected? And
Speaker 1: that's kind of more ephemeral. There's not like a part
Speaker 1: of the satellite you can touch that is that, but
Speaker 1: it's still an important component of space security. James, which
Speaker 1: of those four areas of vulnerability you're describing out the
Speaker 1: easiest for hackers to pry their way in. I think
Speaker 1: the vast majority of historical attacks on satellites have been
Speaker 1: against either the radio domain primarily jamming attacks, So a
Speaker 1: lot of countries as a mechanism of censorship or protest,
Speaker 1: will jam other people's satellites, and that's been going on
Speaker 1: for decades. And then there's also the ground systems. Because
Speaker 1: there's so much like traditional IT systems with just like
Speaker 1: Windows computers plugged into a satellite antenna. It's easy to
Speaker 1: either accidentally hack them if you're just doing like a
Speaker 1: broad attack, or to find and hire the expertise you
Speaker 1: would need for a more targeted attack against those. So
Speaker 1: what can companies, governments due to satellites actually enhanced the
Speaker 1: security so this sort of thing doesn't happen. I think
Speaker 1: that opening up a little bit to security research is
Speaker 1: a big step in that direction. The industry has gotten
Speaker 1: by for a long time on this assumption that satellites
Speaker 1: are so expensive and so complicated that no one will
Speaker 1: ever be able to hack them, and that has sort
Speaker 1: of been true. But as technology has advanced and satellites
Speaker 1: have become more and more like other Internet of Things devices,
Speaker 1: basically that's getting less true. And there are transferable skills
Speaker 1: hackers might develop that can be applied to satellites, and
Speaker 1: so I don't think the space industry can continue to
Speaker 1: kind of hide in the shadows and get by with
Speaker 1: their easier targets. So no one's going to bother with us,
Speaker 1: And so relying in like open source protocols that can
Speaker 1: be validated at like source code level for their communications,
Speaker 1: and relying on open firmware and operating systems that people
Speaker 1: can test and prove or secure will go a lot
Speaker 1: further than hoping that you're at a proprietary software will
Speaker 1: just never be figured out by an adversary. I think that, like,
Speaker 1: there are tons and tons of people out there who
Speaker 1: would love to hack satellites, who would love to do
Speaker 1: research for free as basically a donation to the world
Speaker 1: to make it more secure because they think hacking satellites
Speaker 1: is cool. Don't think I'm the only person like that
Speaker 1: out there. I've met other people like it. And if
Speaker 1: the space industry gives people the opportunity to contribute within
Speaker 1: the security research community, I think they'll be able to
Speaker 1: make really big progress in securing these platforms. What concerns
Speaker 1: you the most, like, what is the thing? As someone
Speaker 1: who knows how vulnerable these systems can be, makes you
Speaker 1: think this is the thing that makes me worry. For me,
Speaker 1: it's the environment. So most of the repercussions of a
Speaker 1: satellite compromise are like bad. They could be very bad,
Speaker 1: like you could compromise GPS and it could lead to
Speaker 1: like a terrestrial catastrophe. But however bad it is, eventually
Speaker 1: we'll get over it. So I guess one of my
Speaker 1: biggest concerns is less about the virtual effects of hacking satellites,
Speaker 1: stealing data or disabling them, and more about the kinetic
Speaker 1: and physical effects, because those can have a lasting effect
Speaker 1: on the environment. So if a satellite is destroyed an
Speaker 1: orbit in some way, that can have huge environmental repercussions.
Speaker 1: If someone hacks a rocket and causes it to break
Speaker 1: during a launch sequence, for example, then you end up
Speaker 1: with pieces of space debris that are stuck in orbit
Speaker 1: for centuries. They move at literally bullet like speeds, and
Speaker 1: if they crash into other pieces of space debris or
Speaker 1: into each other, they can generate basically to bre cascade
Speaker 1: and block orbit for a long period of time and
Speaker 1: have a lasting detrimental impact on our abilities a species
Speaker 1: to make use of outer space. So when you look ahead,
Speaker 1: do you think satellites become more secure or do you
Speaker 1: think we go through a period of kind of chaos
Speaker 1: and uncertainty before something gets done. I am cautiously optimistic
Speaker 1: that satellites will become more secure. There is a really
Speaker 1: great momentum around satellite security that's formed in the last
Speaker 1: four or five years. We have Defcon, which is a
Speaker 1: big hacker conference in Las Vegas every summer, and they
Speaker 1: have a dedicated track within what they call the Aerospace
Speaker 1: Village to just talk about space security. We have industry
Speaker 1: advisory groups. There's a Space Information Sharing an Advisory Council
Speaker 1: which is formed between like different space industry people to
Speaker 1: talk about cyber threats. And we just have a lot
Speaker 1: of momentum building around space security. And my hope is
Speaker 1: that that momentum is coming at the right time because
Speaker 1: the decisions we make in the next three or four years,
Speaker 1: I think we'll have a big impact in what space
Speaker 1: looks like for the next decade or so. James, is
Speaker 1: there anything that we can do, just as you know,
Speaker 1: people consumers of technology to protect ourselves. Definitely, So when
Speaker 1: you're trying to protect your like satellite, internet signals or
Speaker 1: really any traffic you send over the Internet. I think
Speaker 1: it's important to recognize that once that message you're sending
Speaker 1: leaves your house, you have basically no control over who
Speaker 1: gets to touch it as the gets handed off. I think,
Speaker 1: like you send a letter in the mail, you don't
Speaker 1: know who the postal workers grabbing your letter at each stage.
Speaker 1: Will be same thing with Internet traffic, and so using
Speaker 1: end end encrypted protocols, whether that's using like an encrypted
Speaker 1: chat application or using websites that use t TLS is
Speaker 1: transport layer security. It's a protocol that's used to encrypt
Speaker 1: general like Internet traffic that you would have when you
Speaker 1: visit a website. You'll see it like little lock icon
Speaker 1: in your browser when you're connected to a TLS website,
Speaker 1: and it's like proven with math to be very secure
Speaker 1: against adversaries who are trying to read the content you're sending.
Speaker 1: That's a really great way to stop people like me,
Speaker 1: because even if I got your packets off of a satellite,
Speaker 1: because it happened to get sent that way, I wouldn't
Speaker 1: be able to read the contents of them. I could
Speaker 1: see the outside of the envelope, but if I opened
Speaker 1: it up, it would just be garbage, nonsense, and so
Speaker 1: whenever you can. Using an encrypted communications protocol defends you
Speaker 1: against just a whole mix of attacks, whether it's satellite
Speaker 1: attacks or any other kind of eavesdropping threat. James Pavoor,
Speaker 1: thanks for speaking with me, No problem, great meeting you.
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening to us here at The Big Take.
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