Monitors all downlink channels for traffic directed towards unauthorized ground stations, potentially indicating unauthorized data exfiltration attempts. This approach remains agnostic to the specific hardware used for transmission, ensuring broad applicability across communication systems.
| ID | Name | Description | |
| IA-0008.01 | Rogue Ground Station | Threat actors may gain access to a victim SV through the use of a rogue ground system. With this technique, the threat actor does not need access to a legitimate ground station or communication site. | |
| EXF-0001 | Replay | Threat actors may exfiltrate data by replaying commands and capturing the telemetry or payload data as it is sent down. One scenario would be the threat actor replays commands to downlink payload data once SV is within certain location so the data can be intercepted on the downlink by threat actor ground terminals. | |
| EXF-0004 | Out-of-Band Communications Link | Threat actors may attempt to exfiltrate data via the out-of-band communication channels. While performing eavesdropping on the primary/second uplinks and downlinks is a method for exfiltration, some space vehicles leverage out-of-band communication links to perform actions on the space vehicle (i.e., re-keying). These out-of-band links would occur on completely different channels/frequencies and often operate on separate hardware on the space vehicle. Typically these out-of-band links have limited built-for-purpose functionality and likely do not present an initial access vector but they do provide ample exfiltration opportunity. | |
| EXF-0006 | Modify Software Defined Radio | Threat actors may target software defined radios due to their software nature to setup exfiltration channels. Since SDRs are programmable, when combined with supply chain or development environment attacks, SDRs provide a pathway to setup covert exfiltration channels for a threat actor. | |
| PER-0003 | Ground System Presence | Threat actors may compromise target owned ground systems that can be used for persistent access to the SV or to perpetuate other techniques. These ground systems have already been configured for communications to the victim SV. By compromising this infrastructure, threat actors can stage, launch, and execute persistently. | |