Teams of Hackers Will Compete To Breach U.S. Satellite

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https://www.newsweek.com/eight-teams-hackers-will-compete-breach-us-satellite-space-1808270

This August, at the famed DEFCON hacker convention, the U.S. military will stage a contest in which competing teams of white-hat hackers will, for the first time ever, try to penetrate and take over computer systems on a satellite actually in orbit. It took four years, but "this year, we are in space for real," said Steve Colenzo, Technology Transfer Lead for the Air Force Research Laboratory's Information Directorate in Rome, New York, and one of the contest organizers.

The Hack-A-Sat 4 capture-the-flag contest comes in the wake of the notorious cyberattack on the Viasat KA-SAT European satellite network last year. Russian military hackers sought to decapitate Ukrainian command and control of its armed forces by shutting down the network, just as Russian invaders rolled across the border.

Although there are conflicting reports about its impact on the fighting, the attack was completely effective from a technical perspective. Every one of the KA-SAT's ground user terminals that was turned on at the time shut itself down and could not be powered up. That, plus the collateral damage the attack caused, such as the wind farms in Germany knocked offline, underlined both the integral role in the world economy of space-based global communications networks, and their vulnerability to hackers.

Moonlighter is the world’s first and only hacking sandbox in space. Currently orbiting the earth near the International Space Station, the satellite is the playground for this year’s Hack-A-Sat competition at DEF CON 31.

 

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This year’s Hack-A-Sat competition challenged teams to hack into an actual satellite in orbit. The US Air Force Moonlighter, which was launched especially for the event, was the first real satellite the hackers were permitted to target. The Aerospace Corporation and the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory developed the small cubesat known as Moonlighter, launched on June 5, 2023, on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket alongside a cargo payload for the International Space Station.

Five teams participated in the challenge, with “mHACKeroni,” a team of five Italian cyber research firms members, taking first place this year. $50,000 was awarded for first place. Poland Can Into Space, a cyber research team, took second place and received $30,000. In addition, the combined British-American team “jmp fs:[rcx]” took third place and received $20,000.

Teams were given the goal of breaking into Moonlighter to bypass the satellite’s limitations on the types of targets it may view on the ground, command it to snap a photograph of that target, and then download the picture to a ground station. According to information shared with Cyber Security News, one significant obstacle was that the Moonlighter wasn’t always accessible.

Hacking Crew Breached the US Air Force Satellite In Orbit And Won $50,000

Hack-A-Sat competition challenged teams to hack into an actual satellite in orbit. The US Air Force Moonlighter, which was launched especially for the event, was the first real satellite the hackers were permitted to target.

cybersecuritynews.com