Advanced Penetration Testing: Hacking Satellite Communication

Satellite operators have been lucky so far. The prevailing wisdom is that hacking this kit would be prohibitively expensive due to the high cost of ground stations that communicate with the orbital birds, and that such hardware benefited from security by obscurity that getting hold of the details of the firmware would be too difficult. Neither is true, the research indicates. For example, both AWS and Microsoft's Azure now offer Ground Station as a Service (GSaaS) to communicate with LEO satellites, so communication is simply a matter of plonking down a credit card. As for getting details on firmware, the commercial space industry has flourished in recent years and many of the components used on multiple platforms are easy to buy and study. This book gives insight into how satellite communication can be intercepted and how easy it is for someone to hack satellite terminals.