Workshop on the Security of Space and Satellite Systems (SpaceSec) 2024

Novel mega-constellations in Low Earth Orbit (LEO), including those of Starlink, OneWeb and others, will see over 100,000 satellites in space over the next several years. They will increasingly fulfill communication functions in both consumer settings and critical infrastructures. These critical functions, ranging from global navigation and positioning systems to providing phone connections, imaging data and general-purpose data links, play an ever more crucial role in modern society. The precarious place of satellite systems in the communication and navigation infrastructure naturally makes them attractive targets for cyber attacks. This was evidenced in a major attack on the ViaSat network during the initial days of the war in Ukraine and ongoing disruptions of Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) around the world.

The principal vulnerability of satellite systems has been known publicly since the mid-2000s due to multiple discussions at academic and hacker conferences. Despite these early warnings, recent evidence shows that the security of both legacy and novel deployments is still severely lacking. Recent publications at several major security venues generated much-renewed interest and illustrated that the same problems remain — now on a much larger scale. Clearly, many insights from the computer and network security communities have never been applied to space systems, urgently requiring action informed by research. Following other successful workshops on critical (transportation) infrastructures, we hold SpaceSec, the first academic workshop dedicated exclusively to security in the space and satellite ecosystems.