Cal Poly Releases First “Imagineering” Report to Anticipate Novel Scenarios for Outer Space Cyberattacks
June 17 2024 - 12:01AM
Business Wire
The Ethics + Emerging Sciences Group today released its 95-page
report on the increasing threat of cyberattacks on space systems.
Funded by a $300,000 grant from the National Science Foundation,
the report is the first to provide a framework for imagining novel
scenarios, which helps to more effectively plan and avoid being
taken by surprise.
The report comes after the wake-up call for outer space
cybersecurity in 2022 when, as a prelude to invading Ukraine,
Russia hacked the satellite-internet equipment of Viasat to disrupt
communications, create confusion, and prevent a coordinated
response to its attacks. This marked the first true “space war” in
which both sides relied on space systems in its military
operations.
The project fills in key gaps in space cybersecurity discussions
which typically consider only a couple of generic scenarios, namely
something vague about satellite hacking and signals spoofing or
jamming. With the project’s ICARUS matrix—an acronym for “Imagining
Cyberattacks to Anticipate Risks Unique to Space”—more than 4
million unique scenarios can be generated in considering a much
wider range of threats.
“Hackers are already thinking very creatively, and our project
applies structure to the dark art of anticipating those cyber
threats—a method to the madness. This helps defenders to avoid
tunnel-vision and stay ahead of would-be attackers,” explained
Patrick Lin, the project’s principal investigator and director of
the Ethics + Emerging Sciences Group. He also serves on the
National Space Council’s Users’ Advisory Group.
Unlike other taxonomies of cyber vulnerabilities, the ICARUS
matrix also captures the diversity of threat actors, their
motivations, their victims, and the space capabilities affected.
These help to establish the core elements of a full
scenario—answering the who, what, where, when, why, and how
questions.
The report offers a starting list of 42 novel but plausible
scenarios to start priming the “imagination pumps” of researchers.
They range from the near-term to the distant future, including
scenarios about:
- Insider threats
- AI vulnerabilities
- False-flag attacks
- Eco-terrorism
- Ransomware during a launch
- Faked evidence of ET life
- Hacked 3D printers that create built-to-fail parts
- Asteroid mining
- Martian settlements
- Space pirates
Because it’s important to understand a problem in order to solve
it, the report also explores the drivers of space cyberattacks.
Those seven contributing factors are related to:
- The new space race
- Remoteness of outer space
- Space debris and sustainability
- Complexity of space systems
- Lack of clarity in both cyber and space law
- Economic and political advantages of cyberattacks
- Outsized stakes involved in space security.
For instance, the threat of space debris is shared because all
space assets are equally vulnerable to catastrophic damage from a
collision. This common interest to reduce space debris should push
rational states and actors to avoid kinetic conflicts in orbit,
which suggests that cyberattacks would be the dominant form of
space conflicts, not physical battles.
The full report can be accessed at
https://spacecybersecurity.org. The other Cal Poly co-authors are
Keith Abney, Bruce DeBruhl, Kira Abercromby, Henry Danielson, and
Ryan Jenkins, who have expertise in technology ethics, military
ethics, aerospace engineering, and cybersecurity.
ABOUT ETHICS + EMERGING SCIENCES GROUP
Based at Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo, the Ethics + Emerging
Sciences Group is a non-partisan think tank focused on risk,
ethics, and social concerns related to new sciences and
technologies, especially in frontiers and in security and defense
applications.
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Prof. Patrick Lin Director, Ethics + Emerging Sciences Group
palin@calpoly.edu