Active scanning moves beyond passive collection: an adversary transmits or injects probes intended to elicit identifiable responses that reveal frequencies, protocols, or device behavior. Examples include stimulating auto-track or auto-reply beacons, provoking ranging responses, tickling access schemes (TDMA/FDMA bursts), or sending benign-looking frames to observe AGC, saturation, or error counters. Optical/lasercom analogs include alignment pings or modulation patterns that solicit acquisition messages. The objective is RF “banner grabbing”, learning enough to build compatible demod/decoder chains or to map control surfaces, without necessarily breaching authentication. Because scans can resemble normal acquisition attempts, they may blend into the noise floor of operations.
| ID | Name | Tiering | Description | NIST Rev5 | ISO 27001 | Onboard SV | Ground | |
| CM0002 | COMSEC | Communications security (COMSEC) denies unauthorized parties access to information derived from telecommunications while ensuring the authenticity of those communications. COMSEC is commonly defined as a broad discipline that may encompass cryptographic security, transmission security, emissions security, cryptographic key management, traffic-flow security, and physical security of COMSEC material. Within SPARTA, these areas are further broken down through separate countermeasures, including CM0029 | TRANSEC, CM0030 | Crypto Key Management, CM0003 | TEMPEST/EMSEC, and CM0073 | Traffic Flow Analysis Defense. CM0002 provides the overarching communications-security context and supports the coordinated application of these specialized countermeasures. All mission links, particularly telemetry, tracking, and commanding (TT&C) links, should employ communications-security protections appropriate to the sensitivity, criticality, operational environment, and threat exposure of the information being exchanged. These protections may include cryptographic protection, transmission security, emissions security, traffic-flow protection, secure key management, and physical protection of COMSEC material, as addressed by the applicable specialized countermeasures. Spacecraft should not provide an operational mode that permits required cryptographic protection or command authentication on TT&C links to be bypassed or disabled. Operational, maintenance, test, recovery, and contingency modes should be considered when evaluating whether communications-security protections can be unintentionally or improperly circumvented. Communication receivers and associated signal-processing or TRANSEC mechanisms should detect and, when mission-defined criteria are met, reject or otherwise safely handle transmissions exhibiting anomalous signal characteristics consistent with communications deception. Cryptographic mechanisms should authenticate and integrity-check received content but should not be treated as RF-deception detectors. | AC-17 AC-17(1) AC-17(10) AC-17(2) AC-18 AC-18(1) AC-2(11) AC-3(10) CA-3 IA-4(9) IA-5 IA-5(7) IA-7 PL-8 PL-8(1) SA-8(18) SA-8(19) SA-9(6) SC-10 SC-12 SC-12(1) SC-12(2) SC-12(3) SC-12(6) SC-13 SC-16(3) SC-28(1) SC-28(3) SC-7 SC-7(10) SC-7(11) SC-7(18) SC-7(5) SC-8(1) SC-8(3) SI-10 SI-10(3) SI-10(5) SI-10(6) SI-19(4) SI-3(8) | A.5.14 A.6.7 A.8.1 A.8.16 A.5.14 A.8.1 A.8.20 A.5.14 A.8.21 A.5.16 A.5.17 A.5.8 A.5.14 A.8.16 A.8.20 A.8.22 A.8.23 A.8.26 A.8.12 A.5.33 A.8.20 A.8.24 A.8.24 A.8.26 A.5.31 A.5.33 A.8.11 | ||||
| CM0029 | TRANSEC | Transmission security (TRANSEC) is the component of communications security (COMSEC) concerned with protecting the characteristics of the transmission itself, as distinct from protecting the content of the information being communicated. TRANSEC controls reduce the likelihood, effectiveness, or operational impact of transmission interception, signal disruption, communications deception, and exploitation of transmission characteristics within the defined threat model. Applicable TRANSEC techniques include jam-resistant waveforms that increase resistance to jamming and communications deception, spread spectrum and frequency hopping techniques that reduce signal predictability and improve resistance to interception and disruption, low probability of intercept and low probability of detection (LPI/LPD) signal designs that reduce transmission observability, and transmission scheduling or pattern discipline that limits the intelligence value of traffic analysis. TRANSEC requirements should be applied to mission communication links according to link criticality (e.g., TT&C, crosslinks), threat exposure, and operational consequence. TRANSEC must be treated as a distinct layer of protection complementary to, but not a substitute for, cryptographic protection of information content. | AC-17 AC-18 AC-18(5) CA-3 CP-8 PL-8 PL-8(1) SA-8(19) SC-16 SC-16(1) SC-40 SC-40(1) SC-40(3) SC-40(4) SC-5 SC-8(1) SC-8(3) SC-8(4) | A.5.14 A.6.7 A.8.1 A.5.14 A.8.1 A.8.20 A.5.14 A.8.21 A.5.29 A.7.11 A.5.8 A.5.33 | ||||