| ID | Name | Description | D3FEND | |
| CM0008 | Security Testing Results | As penetration testing and vulnerability scanning is a best practice, protecting the results from these tests and scans is equally important. These reports and results typically outline detailed vulnerabilities and how to exploit them. As with countermeasure CM0001, protecting sensitive information from disclosure to threat actors is imperative. | ||
| CM0020 | Threat modeling | Use threat modeling, attack surface analysis, and vulnerability analysis to inform the current development process using analysis from similar systems, components, or services where applicable. Reduce attack surface where possible based on threats. | ||
| CM0022 | Criticality Analysis | Conduct a criticality analysis to identify mission critical functions, critical components, and data flows and reduce the vulnerability of such functions and components through secure system design. Focus supply chain protection on the most critical components/functions. Leverage other countermeasures like segmentation and least privilege to protect the critical components. | ||
| CM0041 | User Training | Train users to be aware of access or manipulation attempts by a threat actor to reduce the risk of successful spear phishing, social engineering, and other techniques that involve user interaction. Ensure that role-based security-related training is provided to personnel with assigned security roles and responsibilities: (i) before authorizing access to the information system or performing assigned duties; (ii) when required by information system changes; and (iii) at least annually if not otherwise defined. | ||
| CM0052 | Insider Threat Protection | Establish policy and procedures to prevent individuals (i.e., insiders) from masquerading as individuals with valid access to areas where commanding of the spacecraft is possible. Establish an Insider Threat Program to aid in the prevention of people with authorized access performing malicious activities. | ||
| CM0054 | Two-Person Rule | Utilize a two-person system to achieve a high level of security for systems with command level access to the spacecraft. Under this rule all access and actions require the presence of two authorized people at all times. | ||
| CM0074 | Distributed Constellations | A distributed system uses a number of nodes, working together, to perform the same mission or functions as a single node. In a distributed constellation, the end user is not dependent on any single satellite but rather uses multiple satellites to derive a capability. A distributed constellation can complicate an adversary’s counterspace planning by presenting a larger number of targets that must be successfully attacked to achieve the same effects as targeting just one or two satellites in a less-distributed architecture. GPS is an example of a distributed constellation because the functioning of the system is not dependent on any single satellite or ground station; a user can use any four satellites within view to get a time and position fix.* *https://csis-website-prod.s3.amazonaws.com/s3fs-public/publication/210225_Harrison_Defense_Space.pdf?N2KWelzCz3hE3AaUUptSGMprDtBlBSQG | ||
| CM0075 | Proliferated Constellations | Proliferated satellite constellations deploy a larger number of the same types of satellites to similar orbits to perform the same missions. While distribution relies on placing more satellites or payloads on orbit that work together to provide a complete capability, proliferation is simply building more systems (or maintaining more on-orbit spares) to increase the constellation size and overall capacity. Proliferation can be an expensive option if the systems being proliferated are individually expensive, although highly proliferated systems may reduce unit costs in production from the learning curve effect and economies of scale.* *https://csis-website-prod.s3.amazonaws.com/s3fs-public/publication/210225_Harrison_Defense_Space.pdf?N2KWelzCz3hE3AaUUptSGMprDtBlBSQG | ||
| CM0076 | Diversified Architectures | In a diversified architecture, multiple systems contribute to the same mission using platforms and payloads that may be operating in different orbits or in different domains. For example, wideband communications to fixed and mobile users can be provided by the military’s WGS system, commercial SATCOM systems, airborne communication nodes, or terrestrial networks. The Chinese BeiDou system for positioning, navigation, and timing uses a diverse set of orbits, with satellites in geostationary orbit (GEO), highly inclined GEO, and medium Earth orbit (MEO). Diversification reduces the incentive for an adversary to attack any one of these systems because the impact on the overall mission will be muted since systems in other orbits or domains can be used to compensate for losses. Moreover, attacking space systems in diversified orbits may require different capabilities for each orbital regime, and the collateral damage from such attacks, such as orbital debris, could have a much broader impact politically and economically.* *https://csis-website-prod.s3.amazonaws.com/s3fs-public/publication/210225_Harrison_Defense_Space.pdf?N2KWelzCz3hE3AaUUptSGMprDtBlBSQG | ||
| CM0077 | Space Domain Awareness | The credibility and effectiveness of many other types of defenses are enabled or enhanced by the ability to quickly detect, characterize, and attribute attacks against space systems. Space domain awareness (SDA) includes identifying and tracking space objects, predicting where objects will be in the future, monitoring the space environment and space weather, and characterizing the capabilities of space objects and how they are being used. Exquisite SDA—information that is more timely, precise, and comprehensive than what is publicly available—can help distinguish between accidental and intentional actions in space. SDA systems include terrestrial-based optical, infrared, and radar systems as well as space-based sensors, such as the U.S. military’s Geosynchronous Space Situational Awareness Program (GSSAP) inspector satellites. Many nations have SDA systems with various levels of capability, and an increasing number of private companies (and amateur space trackers) are developing their own space surveillance systems, making the space environment more transparent to all users.* *https://csis-website-prod.s3.amazonaws.com/s3fs-public/publication/210225_Harrison_Defense_Space.pdf?N2KWelzCz3hE3AaUUptSGMprDtBlBSQG | ||
| CM0079 | Maneuverability | Satellite maneuver is an operational tactic that can be used by satellites fitted with chemical thrusters to avoid kinetic and some directed energy ASAT weapons. For unguided projectiles, a satellite can be commanded to move out of their trajectory to avoid impact. If the threat is a guided projectile, like most direct-ascent ASAT and co-orbital ASAT weapons, maneuver becomes more difficult and is only likely to be effective if the satellite can move beyond the view of the onboard sensors on the guided warhead.* *https://csis-website-prod.s3.amazonaws.com/s3fs-public/publication/210225_Harrison_Defense_Space.pdf?N2KWelzCz3hE3AaUUptSGMprDtBlBSQG | ||
| CM0080 | Stealth Technology | Space systems can be operated and designed in ways that make them difficult to detect and track. Similar to platforms in other domains, stealthy satellites can use a smaller size, radar-absorbing coatings, radar-deflecting shapes, radar jamming and spoofing, unexpected or optimized maneuvers, and careful control of reflected radar, optical, and infrared energy to make themselves more difficult to detect and track. For example, academic research has shown that routine spacecraft maneuvers can be optimized to avoid detection by known sensors.* *https://csis-website-prod.s3.amazonaws.com/s3fs-public/publication/210225_Harrison_Defense_Space.pdf?N2KWelzCz3hE3AaUUptSGMprDtBlBSQG | ||
| CM0081 | Defensive Jamming and Spoofing | A jammer or spoofer can be used to disrupt sensors on an incoming kinetic ASAT weapon so that it cannot steer itself effectively in the terminal phase of flight. When used in conjunction with maneuver, this could allow a satellite to effectively “dodge” a kinetic attack. Similar systems could also be used to deceive SDA sensors by altering the reflected radar signal to change the location, velocity, and number of satellites detected, much like digital radio frequency memory (DRFM) jammers used on many military aircraft today. A spacebased jammer can also be used to disrupt an adversary’s ability to communicate.* *https://csis-website-prod.s3.amazonaws.com/s3fs-public/publication/210225_Harrison_Defense_Space.pdf?N2KWelzCz3hE3AaUUptSGMprDtBlBSQGate with an ASAT weapon. | ||
| CM0084 | Physical Seizure | A space vehicle capable of docking with, manipulating, or maneuvering other satellites or pieces of debris can be used to thwart spacebased attacks or mitigate the effects after an attack has occurred. Such a system could be used to physically seize a threatening satellite that is being used to attack or endanger other satellites or to capture a satellite that has been disabled or hijacked for nefarious purposes. Such a system could also be used to collect and dispose of harmful orbital debris resulting from an attack. A key limitation of a physical seizure system is that each satellite would be time- and propellant-limited depending on the orbit in which it is stored. A system stored in GEO, for example, would not be well positioned to capture an object in LEO because of the amount of propellant required to maneuver into position. Physical seizure satellites may need to be stored on Earth and deployed once they are needed to a specific orbit to counter a specific threat.* *https://csis-website-prod.s3.amazonaws.com/s3fs-public/publication/210225_Harrison_Defense_Space.pdf?N2KWelzCz3hE3AaUUptSGMprDtBlBSQG | ||
| CM0085 | Electromagnetic Shielding | Satellite components can be vulnerable to the effects of background radiation in the space environment and deliberate attacks from HPM and electromagnetic pulse weapons. The effects can include data corruption on memory chips, processor resets, and short circuits that permanently damage components.* *https://csis-website-prod.s3.amazonaws.com/s3fs-public/publication/210225_Harrison_Defense_Space.pdf?N2KWelzCz3hE3AaUUptSGMprDtBlBSQG | ||
| CM0086 | Filtering and Shuttering | Filters and shutters can be used on remote sensing satellites to protect sensors from laser dazzling and blinding. Filters can protect sensors by only allowing light of certain wavelengths to reach the sensors. Filters are not very effective against lasers operating at the same wavelengths of light the sensors are designed to detect because a filter that blocks these wavelengths would also block the sensor from its intended mission. A shutter acts by quickly blocking or diverting all light to a sensor once an anomaly is detected or a threshold is reached, which can limit damage but also temporarily interrupts the collection of data.* *https://csis-website-prod.s3.amazonaws.com/s3fs-public/publication/210225_Harrison_Defense_Space.pdf?N2KWelzCz3hE3AaUUptSGMprDtBlBSQG | ||
| CM0087 | Defensive Dazzling/Blinding | Laser systems can be used to dazzle or blind the optical or infrared sensors on an incoming ASAT weapon in the terminal phase of flight. This is similar to the laser infrared countermeasures used on aircraft to defeat heat-seeking missiles. Blinding an ASAT weapon’s guidance system and then maneuvering to a new position (if necessary) could allow a satellite to effectively “dodge” a kinetic attack. It could also be used to dazzle or blind the optical sensors on inspector satellites to prevent them from imaging a satellite that wants to keep its capabilities concealed or to frustrate adversary SDA efforts.* *https://csis-website-prod.s3.amazonaws.com/s3fs-public/publication/210225_Harrison_Defense_Space.pdf?N2KWelzCz3hE3AaUUptSGMprDtBlBSQG | ||
| CM0005 | Ground-based Countermeasures | This countermeasure is focused on the protection of terrestrial assets like ground networks and development environments/contractor networks, etc. Traditional detection technologies and capabilities would be applicable here. Utilizing resources from NIST CSF to properly secure these environments using identify, protect, detect, recover, and respond is likely warranted. Additionally, NISTIR 8401 may provide resources as well since it was developed to focus on ground-based security for space systems (https://nvlpubs.nist.gov/nistpubs/ir/2022/NIST.IR.8401.ipd.pdf). Furthermore, the MITRE ATT&CK framework provides IT focused TTPs and their mitigations https://attack.mitre.org/mitigations/enterprise/. Several recommended NIST 800-53 Rev5 controls are provided for reference when designing ground systems/networks. | ||
| CM0056 | Data Backup | Implement disaster recovery plans that contain procedures for taking regular data backups that can be used to restore critical data. Ensure backups are stored off system and is protected from common methods adversaries may use to gain access and destroy the backups to prevent recovery. | ||
| CM0070 | Alternate Communications Paths | Establish alternate communications paths to reduce the risk of all communications paths being affected by the same incident. | ||
| CM0006 | Cloaking Safe-mode | Attempt to cloak when in safe-mode and ensure that when the system enters safe-mode it does not disable critical security features. Ensure basic protections like encryption are still being used on the uplink/downlink to prevent eavesdropping. | ||
| CM0032 | On-board Intrusion Detection & Prevention | Utilize on-board intrusion detection/prevention system that monitors the mission critical components or systems and audit/logs actions. The IDS/IPS should have the capability to respond to threats (initial access, execution, persistence, evasion, exfiltration, etc.) and it should address signature-based attacks along with dynamic never-before seen attacks using machine learning/adaptive technologies. The IDS/IPS must integrate with traditional fault management to provide a wholistic approach to faults on-board the spacecraft. Spacecraft should select and execute safe countermeasures against cyber-attacks. These countermeasures are a ready supply of options to triage against the specific types of attack and mission priorities. Minimally, the response should ensure vehicle safety and continued operations. Ideally, the goal is to trap the threat, convince the threat that it is successful, and trace and track the attacker — with or without ground support. This would support successful attribution and evolving countermeasures to mitigate the threat in the future. “Safe countermeasures” are those that are compatible with the system’s fault management system to avoid unintended effects or fratricide on the system. | ||
| CM0042 | Robust Fault Management | Ensure fault management system cannot be used against the spacecraft. Examples include: safe mode with crypto bypass, orbit correction maneuvers, affecting integrity of telemetry to cause action from ground, or some sort of proximity operation to cause spacecraft to go into safe mode. Understanding the safing procedures and ensuring they do not put the spacecraft in a more vulnerable state is key to building a resilient spacecraft. | ||
| CM0044 | Cyber-safe Mode | Provide the capability to enter the spacecraft into a configuration-controlled and integrity-protected state representing a known, operational cyber-safe state (e.g., cyber-safe mode). Spacecraft should enter a cyber-safe mode when conditions that threaten the platform are detected. Cyber-safe mode is an operating mode of a spacecraft during which all nonessential systems are shut down and the spacecraft is placed in a known good state using validated software and configuration settings. Within cyber-safe mode, authentication and encryption should still be enabled. The spacecraft should be capable of reconstituting firmware and software functions to pre-attack levels to allow for the recovery of functional capabilities. This can be performed by self-healing, or the healing can be aided from the ground. However, the spacecraft needs to have the capability to replan, based on equipment still available after a cyber-attack. The goal is for the spacecraft to resume full mission operations. If not possible, a reduced level of mission capability should be achieved. Cyber-safe mode software/configuration should be stored onboard the spacecraft in memory with hardware-based controls and should not be modifiable. | ||
| CM0043 | Backdoor Commands | Ensure that all viable commands are known to the mission/spacecraft owner. Perform analysis of critical (backdoor/hardware) commands that could adversely affect mission success if used maliciously. Only use or include critical commands for the purpose of providing emergency access where commanding authority is appropriately restricted. | ||
| CM0045 | Error Detection and Correcting Memory | Use Error Detection and Correcting (EDAC) memory and integrate EDAC scheme with fault management and cyber-protection mechanisms to respond to the detection of uncorrectable multi-bit errors, other than time-delayed monitoring of EDAC telemetry by the mission operators on the ground. The spacecraft should utilize the EDAC scheme to routinely check for bit errors in the stored data on board the spacecraft, correct the single-bit errors, and identify the memory addresses of data with uncorrectable multi-bit errors of at least order two, if not higher order in some cases. | ||
| CM0048 | Resilient Position, Navigation, and Timing | If available, use an authentication mechanism that allows GNSS receivers to verify the authenticity of the GNSS information and of the entity transmitting it, to ensure that it comes from a trusted source. Have fault-tolerant authoritative time sourcing for the spacecraft's clock. The spacecraft should synchronize the internal system clocks for each processor to the authoritative time source when the time difference is greater than the FSW-defined interval. If Spacewire is utilized, then the spacecraft should adhere to mission-defined time synchronization standard/protocol to synchronize time across a Spacewire network with an accuracy around 1 microsecond. | ||
| CM0072 | Protocol Update / Refactoring | A protocol is a set of rules (i.e., formats and procedures) to implement and control some type of association (e.g., communication) between systems. Protocols can have vulnerabilities within their specification and may require updating or refactoring based on vulnerabilities or emerging threats (i.e., quantum computing). | ||
| CM0029 | TRANSEC | Utilize TRANSEC in order to prevent interception, disruption of reception, communications deception, and/or derivation of intelligence by analysis of transmission characteristics such as signal parameters or message externals. For example, jam-resistant waveforms can be utilized to improve the resistance of radio frequency signals to jamming and spoofing. Note: TRANSEC is that field of COMSEC which deals with the security of communication transmissions, rather than that of the information being communicated. | ||
| ID | Name | Description | |
|---|---|---|---|
| REC-0001 | Gather Spacecraft Design Information | Threat actors may gather information about the victim spacecraft's design that can be used for future campaigns or to help perpetuate other techniques. Information about the spacecraft can include software, firmware, encryption type, purpose, as well as various makes and models of subsystems. | |
| REC-0001.01 | Software | Threat actors may gather information about the victim spacecraft's internal software that can be used for future campaigns or to help perpetuate other techniques. Information (e.g. source code, binaries, etc.) about commercial, open-source, or custom developed software may include a variety of details such as types, versions, and memory maps. Leveraging this information threat actors may target vendors of operating systems, flight software, or open-source communities to embed backdoors or for performing reverse engineering research to support offensive cyber operations. | |
| REC-0001.02 | Firmware | Threat actors may gather information about the victim spacecraft's firmware that can be used for future campaigns or to help perpetuate other techniques. Information about the firmware may include a variety of details such as type and versions on specific devices, which may be used to infer more information (ex. configuration, purpose, age/patch level, etc.). Leveraging this information threat actors may target firmware vendors to embed backdoors or for performing reverse engineering research to support offensive cyber operations. | |
| REC-0001.03 | Cryptographic Algorithms | Threat actors may gather information about any cryptographic algorithms used on the victim spacecraft's that can be used for future campaigns or to help perpetuate other techniques. Information about the algorithms can include type and private keys. Threat actors may also obtain the authentication scheme (i.e., key/password/counter values) and leverage it to establish communications for commanding the target spacecraft or any of its subsystems. Some spacecraft only require authentication vice authentication and encryption, therefore once obtained, threat actors may use any number of means to command the spacecraft without needing to go through a legitimate channel. The authentication information may be obtained through reconnaissance of the ground system or retrieved from the victim spacecraft. | |
| REC-0001.04 | Data Bus | Threat actors may gather information about the data bus used within the victim spacecraft that can be used for future campaigns or to help perpetuate other techniques. Information about the data bus can include the make and model which could lead to more information (ex. protocol, purpose, controller, etc.), as well as locations/addresses of major subsystems residing on the bus. Threat actors may also gather information about the bus voltages of the victim spacecraft. This information can include optimal power levels, connectors, range, and transfer rate. | |
| REC-0001.05 | Thermal Control System | Threat actors may gather information about the thermal control system used with the victim spacecraft that can be used for future campaigns or to help perpetuate other techniques. Information gathered can include type, make/model, and varies analysis programs that monitor it. | |
| REC-0001.06 | Maneuver & Control | Threat actors may gather information about the station-keeping control systems within the victim spacecraft that can be used for future campaigns or to help perpetuate other techniques. Information gathered can include thruster types, propulsion types, attitude sensors, and data flows associated with the relevant subsystems. | |
| REC-0001.07 | Payload | Threat actors may gather information about the type(s) of payloads hosted on the victim spacecraft. This information could include specific commands, make and model, and relevant software. Threat actors may also gather information about the location of the payload on the bus and internal routing as it pertains to commands within the payload itself. | |
| REC-0001.08 | Power | Threat actors may gather information about the power system used within the victim spacecraft. This information can include type, power intake, and internal algorithms. Threat actors may also gather information about the solar panel configurations such as positioning, automated tasks, and layout. Additionally, threat actors may gather information about the batteries used within the victim spacecraft. This information can include the type, quantity, storage capacity, make and model, and location. | |
| REC-0001.09 | Fault Management | Threat actors may gather information about any fault management that may be present on the victim spacecraft. This information can help threat actors construct specific attacks that may put the spacecraft into a fault condition and potentially a more vulnerable state depending on the fault response. | |
| REC-0002 | Gather Spacecraft Descriptors | Threat actors may gather information about the victim spacecraft's descriptors that can be used for future campaigns or to help perpetuate other techniques. Information about the descriptors may include a variety of details such as identity attributes, organizational structures, and mission operational parameters. | |
| REC-0002.01 | Identifiers | Threat actors may gather information about the victim spacecraft's identity attributes that can be used for future campaigns or to help perpetuate other techniques. Information may include a variety of details such as the satellite catalog number, international designator, mission name, and more. | |
| REC-0002.02 | Organization | Threat actors may gather information about the victim spacecraft's associated organization(s) that can be used for future campaigns or to help perpetuate other techniques. Collection efforts may target the mission owner/operator in order to conduct further attacks against the organization, individual, or other interested parties. Threat actors may also seek information regarding the spacecraft's designer/builder, including physical locations, key employees, and roles and responsibilities as they pertain to the spacecraft, as well as information pertaining to the mission's end users/customers. | |
| REC-0002.03 | Operations | Threat actors may gather information about the victim spacecraft's operations that can be used for future campaigns or to help perpetuate other techniques. Collection efforts may target mission objectives, orbital parameters such as orbit slot and inclination, user guides and schedules, etc. Additionally, threat actors may seek information about constellation deployments and configurations where applicable. | |
| REC-0003 | Gather Spacecraft Communications Information | Threat actors may obtain information on the victim spacecraft's communication channels in order to determine specific commands, protocols, and types. Information gathered can include commanding patterns, antenna shape and location, beacon frequency and polarization, and various transponder information. | |
| REC-0003.01 | Communications Equipment | Threat actors may gather information regarding the communications equipment and its configuration that will be used for communicating with the victim spacecraft. This includes: Antenna Shape: This information can help determine the range in which it can communicate, the power of it's transmission, and the receiving patterns. Antenna Configuration/Location: This information can include positioning, transmission frequency, wavelength, and timing. Telemetry Signal Type: Information can include timing, radio frequency wavelengths, and other information that can provide insight into the spacecraft's telemetry system. Beacon Frequency: This information can provide insight into where the spacecrafts located, what it's orbit is, and how long it can take to communicate with a ground station. Beacon Polarization: This information can help triangulate the spacecrafts it orbits the earth and determine how a satellite must be oriented in order to communicate with the victim spacecraft. Transponder: This could include the number of transponders per band, transponder translation factor, transponder mappings, power utilization, and/or saturation point. | |
| REC-0003.02 | Commanding Details | Threat actors may gather information regarding the commanding approach that will be used for communicating with the victim spacecraft. This includes: Commanding Signal Type: This can include timing, radio frequency wavelengths, and other information that can provide insight into the spacecraft's commanding system. Valid Commanding Patterns: Most commonly, this comes in the form of a command database, but can also include other means that provide information on valid commands and the communication protocols used by the victim spacecraft. Valid Commanding Periods: This information can provide insight into when a command will be accepted by the spacecraft and help the threat actor construct a viable attack campaign. | |
| REC-0003.03 | Mission-Specific Channel Scanning | Threat actors may seek knowledge about mission-specific communication channels dedicated to a payload. Such channels could be managed by a different organization than the owner of the spacecraft itself. | |
| REC-0003.04 | Valid Credentials | Threat actors may seek out valid credentials which can be utilized to facilitate several tactics throughout an attack. Credentials may include, but are not limited to: system service accounts, user accounts, maintenance accounts, cryptographic keys and other authentication mechanisms. | |
| REC-0004 | Gather Launch Information | Threat actors may gather the launch date and time, location of the launch (country & specific site), organizations involved, launch vehicle, etc. This information can provide insight into protocols, regulations, and provide further targets for the threat actor, including specific vulnerabilities with the launch vehicle itself. | |
| REC-0004.01 | Flight Termination | Threat actor may obtain information regarding the vehicle's flight termination system. Threat actors may use this information to perform later attacks and target the vehicle's termination system to have desired impact on mission. | |
| REC-0005 | Eavesdropping | Threat actors may seek to capture network communications throughout the ground station and radio frequency (RF) communication used for uplink and downlink communications. RF communication frequencies vary between 30MHz and 60 GHz. Threat actors may capture RF communications using specialized hardware, such as software defined radio (SDR), handheld radio, or a computer with radio demodulator turned to the communication frequency. Network communications may be captured using packet capture software while the threat actor is on the target network. | |
| REC-0005.01 | Uplink Intercept | Threat actors may capture the RF communications as it pertains to the uplink to the victim spacecraft. This information can contain commanding information that the threat actor can use to perform other attacks against the victim spacecraft. | |
| REC-0005.02 | Downlink Intercept | Threat actors may capture the RF communications as it pertains to the downlink of the victim spacecraft. This information can contain important telemetry such as onboard status and mission data. | |
| REC-0005.03 | Proximity Operations | Threat actors may capture signals and/or network communications as they travel on-board the vehicle (i.e., EMSEC/TEMPEST), via RF, or terrestrial networks. This information can be decoded to determine commanding and telemetry protocols, command times, and other information that could be used for future attacks. | |
| REC-0005.04 | Active Scanning (RF/Optical) | Threat actors may interfere with the link by actively transmitting packets to activate the transmitter and induce a reply. The scan can be similar to a brute force attack, aiming to guess the used frequencies and protocols to obtain a reply. | |
| REC-0006 | Gather FSW Development Information | Threat actors may obtain information regarding the flight software (FSW) development environment for the victim spacecraft. This information may include the development environment, source code, compiled binaries, testing tools, and fault management. | |
| REC-0006.01 | Development Environment | Threat actors may gather information regarding the development environment for the victim spacecraft's FSW. This information can include IDEs, configurations, source code, environment variables, source code repositories, code "secrets", and compiled binaries. | |
| REC-0006.02 | Security Testing Tools | Threat actors may gather information regarding how a victim spacecraft is tested in regards to the FSW. Understanding the testing approach including tools could identify gaps and vulnerabilities that could be discovered and exploited by a threat actor. | |
| REC-0007 | Monitor for Safe-Mode Indicators | Threat actors may gather information regarding safe-mode indicators on the victim spacecraft. Safe-mode is when all non-essential systems are shut down and only essential functions within the spacecraft are active. During this mode, several commands are available to be processed that are not normally processed. Further, many protections may be disabled at this time. | |
| REC-0008 | Gather Supply Chain Information | Threat actors may gather information about a mission's supply chain or product delivery mechanisms that can be used for future campaigns or to help perpetuate other techniques. | |
| REC-0008.01 | Hardware | Threat actors may gather information that can be used to facilitate a future attack where they manipulate hardware components in the victim spacecraft prior to the customer receiving them in order to achieve data or system compromise. The threat actor can insert backdoors and give them a high level of control over the system when they modify the hardware or firmware in the supply chain. This would include ASIC and FPGA devices as well. | |
| REC-0008.02 | Software | Threat actors may gather information relating to the mission's software supply chain in order to facilitate future attacks to achieve data or system compromise. This attack can take place in a number of ways, including manipulation of source code, manipulation of the update and/or distribution mechanism, or replacing compiled versions with a malicious one. | |
| REC-0008.03 | Known Vulnerabilities | Threat actors may gather information about vulnerabilities that can be used for future campaigns or to perpetuate other techniques. A vulnerability is a weakness in the victim spacecraft's hardware, subsystems, bus, or software that can, potentially, be exploited by a threat actor to cause unintended or unanticipated behavior to occur. During reconnaissance as threat actors identify the types/versions of software (i.e., COTS, open-source) being used, they will look for well-known vulnerabilities that could affect the space vehicle. Threat actors may find vulnerability information by searching leaked documents, vulnerability databases/scanners, compromising ground systems, and searching through online databases. | |
| REC-0008.04 | Business Relationships | Adversaries may gather information about the victim's business relationships that can be used during targeting. Information about an mission’s business relationships may include a variety of details, including second or third-party organizations/domains (ex: managed service providers, contractors/sub-contractors, etc.) that have connected (and potentially elevated) network access or sensitive information. This information may also reveal supply chains and shipment paths for the victim’s hardware and software resources. | |
| REC-0009 | Gather Mission Information | Threat actors may initially seek to gain an understanding of a target mission by gathering information commonly captured in a Concept of Operations (or similar) document and related artifacts. Information of interest includes, but is not limited to: - the needs, goals, and objectives of the system - system overview and key elements/instruments - modes of operations (including operational constraints) - proposed capabilities and the underlying science/technology used to provide capabilities (i.e., scientific papers, research studies, etc.) - physical and support environments | |
| RD-0001 | Acquire Infrastructure | Threat actors may buy, lease, or rent infrastructure that can be used for future campaigns or to perpetuate other techniques. A wide variety of infrastructure exists for threat actors to connect to and communicate with target spacecraft. Infrastructure can include: | |
| RD-0001.03 | Spacecraft | Threat actors may acquire their own spacecraft that has the capability to maneuver within close proximity to a target spacecraft. Since many of the commercial and military assets in space are tracked, and that information is publicly available, attackers can identify the location of space assets to infer the best positioning for intersecting orbits. Proximity operations support avoidance of the larger attenuation that would otherwise affect the signal when propagating long distances, or environmental circumstances that may present interference. | |
| RD-0002 | Compromise Infrastructure | Threat actors may compromise third-party infrastructure that can be used for future campaigns or to perpetuate other techniques. Infrastructure solutions include physical devices such as antenna, amplifiers, and convertors, as well as software used by satellite communicators. Instead of buying or renting infrastructure, a threat actor may compromise infrastructure and use it during other phases of the campaign's lifecycle. | |
| RD-0002.01 | Mission-Operated Ground System | Threat actors may compromise mission owned/operated ground systems that can be used for future campaigns or to perpetuate other techniques. These ground systems have already been configured for communications to the victim spacecraft. By compromising this infrastructure, threat actors can stage, launch, and execute an operation. Threat actors may utilize these systems for various tasks, including Execution and Exfiltration. | |
| RD-0002.02 | 3rd Party Ground System | Threat actors may compromise access to third-party ground systems that can be used for future campaigns or to perpetuate other techniques. These ground systems can be or may have already been configured for communications to the victim spacecraft. By compromising this infrastructure, threat actors can stage, launch, and execute an operation. | |
| RD-0002.03 | 3rd-Party Spacecraft | Threat actors may compromise a 3rd-party spacecraft that has the capability to maneuver within close proximity to a target spacecraft. This technique enables historically lower-tier attackers the same capability as top tier nation-state actors without the initial development cost. Additionally, this technique complicates attribution of an attack. Since many of the commercial and military assets in space are tracked, and that information is publicly available, attackers can identify the location of space assets to infer the best positioning for intersecting orbits. Proximity operations support avoidance of the larger attenuation that would otherwise affect the signal when propagating long distances, or environmental circumstances that may present interference. Further, the compromised spacecraft may posses the capability to grapple target spacecraft once it has established the appropriate space rendezvous. If from a proximity / rendezvous perspective a threat actor has the ability to connect via docking interface or expose testing (i.e., JTAG port) once it has grappled the target spacecraft, they could perform various attacks depending on the access enabled via the physical connection. | |
| RD-0003 | Obtain Cyber Capabilities | Threat actors may buy and/or steal cyber capabilities that can be used for future campaigns or to perpetuate other techniques. Rather than developing their own capabilities in-house, threat actors may purchase, download, or steal them. Activities may include the acquisition of malware, software, exploits, and information relating to vulnerabilities. Threat actors may obtain capabilities to support their operations throughout numerous phases of the campaign lifecycle. | |
| RD-0003.02 | Cryptographic Keys | Threat actors may obtain encryption keys as they are used for the main commanding of the target spacecraft or any of its subsystems/payloads. Once obtained, threat actors may use any number of means to command the spacecraft without needing to go through a legitimate channel. These keys may be obtained through reconnaissance of the ground system or retrieved from the victim spacecraft. | |
| RD-0005 | Obtain Non-Cyber Capabilities | Threat actors may obtain non-cyber capabilities, primarily physical counterspace weapons or systems. These counterspace capabilities vary significantly in the types of effects they create, the level of technological sophistication required, and the level of resources needed to develop and deploy them. These diverse capabilities also differ in how they are employed and how easy they are to detect and attribute and the permanence of the effects they have on their target.* *https://aerospace.csis.org/aerospace101/counterspace-weapons-101 | |
| RD-0005.01 | Launch Services | Threat actors may acquire launch capabilities through their own development or through space launch service providers (companies or organizations that specialize in launching payloads into space). Space launch service providers typically offer a range of services, including launch vehicle design, development, and manufacturing as well as payload integration and testing. These services are critical to the success of any space mission and require specialized expertise, advanced technology, and extensive infrastructure. | |
| RD-0005.02 | Non-Kinetic Physical ASAT | A non-kinetic physical ASAT attack is when a satellite is physically damaged without any direct contact. Non-kinetic physical attacks can be characterized into a few types: electromagnetic pulses, high-powered lasers, and high-powered microwaves. These attacks have medium possible attribution levels and often provide little evidence of success to the attacker.* *https://aerospace.csis.org/aerospace101/counterspace-weapons-101 | |
| RD-0005.03 | Kinetic Physical ASAT | Kinetic physical ASAT attacks attempt to damage or destroy space- or land-based space assets. They typically are organized into three categories: direct-ascent, co-orbital, and ground station attacks. The nature of these attacks makes them easier to attribute and allow for better confirmation of success on the part of the attacker. * *https://aerospace.csis.org/aerospace101/counterspace-weapons-101 | |
| RD-0005.04 | Electronic ASAT | Rather than attempting to damage the physical components of space systems, electronic ASAT attacks target the means by which space systems transmit and receive data. Both jamming and spoofing are forms of electronic attack that can be difficult to attribute and only have temporary effects.* *https://aerospace.csis.org/aerospace101/counterspace-weapons-101 | |
| RD-0004 | Stage Capabilities | Threat actors may upload, install, or otherwise set up capabilities that can be used for future campaigns or to perpetuate other techniques. To support their operations, a threat actor may need to develop their own capabilities or obtain them in some way in order to stage them on infrastructure under their control. These capabilities may be staged on infrastructure that was previously purchased or rented by the threat actor or was otherwise compromised by them. | |
| RD-0004.01 | Identify/Select Delivery Mechanism | Threat actors may identify, select, and prepare a delivery mechanism in which to attack the space system (i.e., communicate with the victim spacecraft, deny the ground, etc.) to achieve their desired impact. This mechanism may be located on infrastructure that was previously purchased or rented by the threat actor or was otherwise compromised by them. The mechanism must include all aspects needed to communicate with the victim spacecraft, including ground antenna, converters, and amplifiers. | |
| RD-0004.02 | Upload Exploit/Payload | Threat actors may upload exploits and payloads to a third-party infrastructure that they have purchased or rented or stage it on an otherwise compromised ground station. Exploits and payloads would include files and commands to be uploaded to the victim spacecraft in order to conduct the threat actor's attack. | |
| IA-0001 | Compromise Supply Chain | Threat actors may manipulate or compromise products or product delivery mechanisms before the customer receives them in order to achieve data or system compromise. | |
| IA-0001.02 | Software Supply Chain | Threat actors may manipulate software binaries and applications prior to the customer receiving them in order to achieve data or system compromise. This attack can take place in a number of ways, including manipulation of source code, manipulation of the update and/or distribution mechanism, or replacing compiled versions with a malicious one. | |
| IA-0001.03 | Hardware Supply Chain | Threat actors may manipulate hardware components in the victim spacecraft prior to the customer receiving them in order to achieve data or system compromise. The threat actor can insert backdoors and give them a high level of control over the system when they modify the hardware or firmware in the supply chain. This would include ASIC and FPGA devices as well. | |
| IA-0002 | Compromise Software Defined Radio | Threat actors may target software defined radios due to their software nature to establish C2 channels. Since SDRs are programmable, when combined with supply chain or development environment attacks, SDRs provide a pathway to setup covert C2 channels for a threat actor. | |
| IA-0003 | Crosslink via Compromised Neighbor | Threat actors may compromise a victim spacecraft via the crosslink communications of a neighboring spacecraft that has been compromised. spacecraft in close proximity are able to send commands back and forth. Threat actors may be able to leverage this access to compromise other spacecraft once they have access to another that is nearby. | |
| IA-0004 | Secondary/Backup Communication Channel | Threat actors may compromise alternative communication pathways which may not be as protected as the primary pathway. Depending on implementation the contingency communication pathways/solutions may lack the same level of security (i.e., physical security, encryption, authentication, etc.) which if forced to use could provide a threat actor an opportunity to launch attacks. Typically these would have to be coupled with other denial of service techniques on the primary pathway to force usage of secondary pathways. | |
| IA-0004.01 | Ground Station | Threat actors may establish a foothold within the backup ground/mission operations center (MOC) and then perform attacks to force primary communication traffic through the backup communication channel so that other TTPs can be executed (man-in-the-middle, malicious commanding, malicious code, etc.). While an attacker would not be required to force the communications through the backup channel vice waiting until the backup is used for various reasons. Threat actors can also utilize compromised ground stations to chain command execution and payload delivery across geo-separated ground stations to extend reach and maintain access on spacecraft. The backup ground/MOC should be considered a viable attack vector and the appropriate/equivalent security controls from the primary communication channel should be on the backup ground/MOC as well. | |
| IA-0005 | Rendezvous & Proximity Operations | Threat actors may perform a space rendezvous which is a set of orbital maneuvers during which a spacecraft arrives at the same orbit and approach to a very close distance (e.g. within visual contact or close proximity) to a target spacecraft. | |
| IA-0005.01 | Compromise Emanations | Threat actors in close proximity may intercept and analyze electromagnetic radiation emanating from cryptoequipment and/or the target spacecraft(i.e., main bus) to determine whether the emanations are information bearing. The data could be used to establish initial access. | |
| IA-0005.02 | Docked Vehicle / OSAM | Threat actors may leverage docking vehicles to laterally move into a target spacecraft. If information is known on docking plans, a threat actor may target vehicles on the ground or in space to deploy malware to laterally move or execute malware on the target spacecraft via the docking interface. | |
| IA-0005.03 | Proximity Grappling | Threat actors may posses the capability to grapple target spacecraft once it has established the appropriate space rendezvous. If from a proximity / rendezvous perspective a threat actor has the ability to connect via docking interface or expose testing (i.e., JTAG port) once it has grappled the target spacecraft, they could perform various attacks depending on the access enabled via the physical connection. | |
| IA-0006 | Compromise Hosted Payload | Threat actors may compromise the target spacecraft hosted payload to initially access and/or persist within the system. Hosted payloads can usually be accessed from the ground via a specific command set. The command pathways can leverage the same ground infrastructure or some host payloads have their own ground infrastructure which can provide an access vector as well. Threat actors may be able to leverage the ability to command hosted payloads to upload files or modify memory addresses in order to compromise the system. Depending on the implementation, hosted payloads may provide some sort of lateral movement potential. | |
| IA-0007 | Compromise Ground System | Threat actors may initially compromise the ground system in order to access the target spacecraft. Once compromised, the threat actor can perform a multitude of initial access techniques, including replay, compromising FSW deployment, compromising encryption keys, and compromising authentication schemes. Threat actors may also perform further reconnaissance within the system to enumerate mission networks and gather information related to ground station logical topology, missions ran out of said ground station, birds that are in-band of targeted ground stations, and other mission system capabilities. | |
| IA-0007.01 | Compromise On-Orbit Update | Threat actors may manipulate and modify on-orbit updates before they are sent to the target spacecraft. This attack can be done in a number of ways, including manipulation of source code, manipulating environment variables, on-board table/memory values, or replacing compiled versions with a malicious one. | |
| IA-0007.02 | Malicious Commanding via Valid GS | Threat actors may compromise target owned ground systems components (e.g., front end processors, command and control software, etc.) that can be used for future campaigns or to perpetuate other techniques. These ground systems components have already been configured for communications to the victim spacecraft. By compromising this infrastructure, threat actors can stage, launch, and execute an operation. Threat actors may utilize these systems for various tasks, including Execution and Exfiltration. | |
| IA-0008 | Rogue External Entity | Threat actors may gain access to a victim spacecraft through the use of a rogue external entity. With this technique, the threat actor does not need access to a legitimate ground station or communication site. | |
| IA-0008.01 | Rogue Ground Station | Threat actors may gain access to a victim spacecraft 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. | |
| IA-0008.02 | Rogue Spacecraft | Threat actors may gain access to a target spacecraft using their own spacecraft that has the capability to maneuver within close proximity to a target spacecraft to carry out a variety of TTPs (i.e., eavesdropping, side-channel, etc.). Since many of the commercial and military assets in space are tracked, and that information is publicly available, attackers can identify the location of space assets to infer the best positioning for intersecting orbits. Proximity operations support avoidance of the larger attenuation that would otherwise affect the signal when propagating long distances, or environmental circumstances that may present interference. | |
| IA-0008.03 | ASAT/Counterspace Weapon | Threat actors may utilize counterspace platforms to access/impact spacecraft. These counterspace capabilities vary significantly in the types of effects they create, the level of technological sophistication required, and the level of resources needed to develop and deploy them. These diverse capabilities also differ in how they are employed and how easy they are to detect and attribute and the permanence of the effects they have on their target.* *https://aerospace.csis.org/aerospace101/counterspace-weapons-101 | |
| IA-0009 | Trusted Relationship | Access through trusted third-party relationship exploits an existing connection that has been approved for interconnection. Leveraging third party / approved interconnections to pivot into the target systems is a common technique for threat actors as these interconnections typically lack stringent access control due to the trusted status. | |
| IA-0009.01 | Mission Collaborator (academia, international, etc.) | Threat actors may seek to exploit mission partners to gain an initial foothold for pivoting into the mission environment and eventually impacting the spacecraft. The complex nature of many space systems rely on contributions across organizations, including academic partners and even international collaborators. These organizations will undoubtedly vary in their system security posture and attack surface. | |
| IA-0009.02 | Vendor | Threat actors may target the trust between vendors and the target space vehicle. Missions often grant elevated access to vendors in order to allow them to manage internal systems as well as cloud-based environments. The vendor's access may be intended to be limited to the infrastructure being maintained but it may provide laterally movement into the target space vehicle. Attackers may leverage security weaknesses in the vendor environment to gain access to more critical mission resources or network locations. In the space vehicle context vendors may have direct commanding and updating capabilities outside of the primary communication channel. | |
| IA-0009.03 | User Segment | Threat actors can target the user segment in an effort to laterally move into other areas of the end-to-end mission architecture. When user segments are interconnected, threat actors can exploit lack of segmentation as the user segment's security undoubtedly varies in their system security posture and attack surface than the primary space mission. The user equipment and users themselves provide ample attack surface as the human element and their vulnerabilities (i.e., social engineering, phishing, iOT) are often the weakest security link and entry point into many systems. | |
| IA-0010 | Exploit Reduced Protections During Safe-Mode | Threat actors may take advantage of the victim spacecraft being in safe mode and send malicious commands that may not otherwise be processed. Safe-mode is when all non-essential systems are shut down and only essential functions within the spacecraft are active. During this mode, several commands are available to be processed that are not normally processed. Further, many protections may be disabled at this time. | |
| IA-0011 | Auxiliary Device Compromise | Threat actors may exploit the auxiliary/peripheral devices that get plugged into space vehicles. It is no longer atypical to see space vehicles, especially CubeSats, with Universal Serial Bus (USB) ports or other ports where auxiliary/peripheral devices can be plugged in. Threat actors can execute malicious code on the space vehicles by copying the malicious code to auxiliary/peripheral devices and taking advantage of logic on the space vehicle to execute code on these devices. This may occur through manual manipulation of the auxiliary/peripheral devices, modification of standard IT systems used to initially format/create the auxiliary/peripheral device, or modification to the auxiliary/peripheral devices' firmware itself. | |
| IA-0012 | Assembly, Test, and Launch Operation Compromise | Threat actors may target the spacecraft hardware and/or software while the spacecraft is at Assembly, Test, and Launch Operation (ATLO). ATLO is often the first time pieces of the spacecraft are fully integrated and exchanging data across interfaces. Malware could propagate from infected devices across the integrated spacecraft. For example, test equipment (i.e., transient cyber asset) is often brought in for testing elements of the spacecraft. Additionally, varying levels of physical security is in place which may be a reduction in physical security typically seen during development. The ATLO environment should be considered a viable attack vector and the appropriate/equivalent security controls from the primary development environment should be implemented during ATLO as well. | |
| EX-0001 | Replay | Replay attacks involve threat actors recording previously data streams and then resending them at a later time. This attack can be used to fingerprint systems, gain elevated privileges, or even cause a denial of service. | |
| EX-0001.01 | Command Packets | Threat actors may interact with the victim spacecraft by replaying captured commands to the spacecraft. While not necessarily malicious in nature, replayed commands can be used to overload the target spacecraft and cause it's onboard systems to crash, perform a DoS attack, or monitor various responses by the spacecraft. If critical commands are captured and replayed, thruster fires, then the impact could impact the spacecraft's attitude control/orbit. | |
| EX-0001.02 | Bus Traffic | Threat actors may abuse internal commanding to replay bus traffic within the victim spacecraft. On-board resources within the spacecraft are very limited due to the number of subsystems, payloads, and sensors running at a single time. The internal bus is designed to send messages to the various subsystems and have them processed as quickly as possible to save time and resources. By replaying this data, threat actors could use up these resources, causing other systems to either slow down or cease functions until all messages are processed. Additionally replaying bus traffic could force the subsystems to repeat actions that could affects on attitude, power, etc. | |
| EX-0002 | Position, Navigation, and Timing (PNT) Geofencing | Threat actors may leverage the fact that spacecraft orbit through space unlike typical enterprise systems which are stationary. Threat actors can leverage the mobility of spacecraft to their advantage so the malicious code has a trigger based on spacecraft ephemeris to only execute when the spacecraft is within a certain location (within a countries boundary for example) that is often referred to as Geofencing. By using a Geofence an adversary can ensure that malware is only executed when it is needed. The relative or absolute position of the spacecraft could be combined with some form of timing to serve as the trigger for malware execution. | |
| EX-0003 | Modify Authentication Process | Threat actors may modify the internal authentication process of the victim spacecraft to facilitate initial access, recurring execution, or prevent authorized entities from accessing the spacecraft. This can be done through the modification of the software binaries or memory manipulation techniques. | |
| EX-0005 | Exploit Hardware/Firmware Corruption | Threat actors can target the underlying hardware and/or firmware using various TTPs that will be dependent on the specific hardware/firmware. Typically, software tools (e.g., antivirus, antimalware, intrusion detection) can protect a system from threat actors attempting to take advantage of those vulnerabilities to inject malicious code. However, there exist security gaps that cannot be closed by the above-mentioned software tools since they are not stationed on software applications, drivers or the operating system but rather on the hardware itself. Hardware components, like memory modules and caches, can be exploited under specific circumstances thus enabling backdoor access to potential threat actors. In addition to hardware, the firmware itself which often is thought to be software in its own right also provides an attack surface for threat actors. Firmware is programming that's written to a hardware device's non-volatile memory where the content is saved when a hardware device is turned off or loses its external power source. Firmware is written directly onto a piece of hardware during manufacturing and it is used to run on the device and can be thought of as the software that enables hardware to run. In the space vehicle context, firmware and field programmable gate array (FPGA)/application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) logic/code is considered equivalent to firmware. | |
| EX-0005.01 | Design Flaws | Threat actors may target design features/flaws with the hardware design to their advantage to cause the desired impact. Threat actors may utilize the inherent design of the hardware (e.g. hardware timers, hardware interrupts, memory cells), which is intended to provide reliability, to their advantage to degrade other aspects like availability. Additionally, field programmable gate array (FPGA)/application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) logic can be exploited just like software code can be exploited. There could be logic/design flaws embedded in the hardware (i.e., FPGA/ASIC) which may be exploitable by a threat actor. | |
| EX-0005.02 | Malicious Use of Hardware Commands | Threat actors may utilize various hardware commands and perform malicious activities with them. Hardware commands typically differ from traditional command channels as they bypass many of the traditional protections and pathways and are more direct therefore they can be dangerous if not protected. Hardware commands are sometime a necessity to perform various actions such as configuring sensors, adjusting positions, and rotating internal motors. Threat actors may use these commands to perform malicious activities that can damage the victim spacecraft in some capacity. | |
| EX-0006 | Disable/Bypass Encryption | Threat actors may perform specific techniques in order to bypass or disable the encryption mechanism onboard the victim spacecraft. By bypassing or disabling this particular mechanism, further tactics can be performed, such as Exfiltration, that may have not been possible with the internal encryption process in place. | |
| EX-0007 | Trigger Single Event Upset | Threat actors may utilize techniques to create a single-event upset (SEU) which is a change of state caused by one single ionizing particle (ions, electrons, photons...) striking a sensitive node in a spacecraft(i.e., microprocessor, semiconductor memory, or power transistors). The state change is a result of the free charge created by ionization in or close to an important node of a logic element (e.g. memory "bit"). This can cause unstable conditions on the spacecraft depending on which component experiences the SEU. SEU is a known phenomenon for spacecraft due to high radiation in space, but threat actors may attempt to utilize items like microwaves to create a SEU. | |
| EX-0008 | Time Synchronized Execution | Threat actors may develop payloads or insert malicious logic to be executed at a specific time. | |
| EX-0008.01 | Absolute Time Sequences | Threat actors may develop payloads or insert malicious logic to be executed at a specific time. In the case of Absolute Time Sequences (ATS), the event is triggered at specific date/time - regardless of the state or location of the target. | |
| EX-0008.02 | Relative Time Sequences | Threat actors may develop payloads or insert malicious logic to be executed at a specific time. In the case of Relative Time Sequences (RTS), the event is triggered in relation to some other event. For example, a specific amount of time after boot. | |
| EX-0009 | Exploit Code Flaws | Threats actors may identify and exploit flaws or weaknesses within the software running on-board the target spacecraft. These attacks may be extremely targeted and tailored to specific coding errors introduced as a result of poor coding practices or they may target known issues in the commercial software components. | |
| EX-0009.01 | Flight Software | Threat actors may abuse known or unknown flight software code flaws in order to further the attack campaign. Some FSW suites contain API functionality for operator interaction. Threat actors may seek to exploit these or abuse a vulnerability/misconfiguration to maliciously execute code or commands. In some cases, these code flaws can perpetuate throughout the victim spacecraft, allowing access to otherwise segmented subsystems. | |
| EX-0009.02 | Operating System | Threat actors may exploit flaws in the operating system code, which controls the storage, memory management, provides resources to the FSW, and controls the bus. There has been a trend where some modern spacecraft are running Unix-based operating systems and establishing SSH connections for communications between the ground and spacecraft. Threat actors may seek to gain access to command line interfaces & shell environments in these instances. Additionally, most operating systems, including real-time operating systems, include API functionality for operator interaction. Threat actors may seek to exploit these or abuse a vulnerability/misconfiguration to maliciously execute code or commands. | |
| EX-0009.03 | Known Vulnerability (COTS/FOSS) | Threat actors may utilize knowledge of the spacecraft software composition to enumerate and exploit known flaws or vulnerabilities in the commercial or open source software running on-board the target spacecraft. | |
| EX-0010 | Malicious Code | Threat actors may rely on other tactics and techniques in order to execute malicious code on the victim spacecraft. This can be done via compromising the supply chain or development environment in some capacity or taking advantage of known commands. However, once malicious code has been uploaded to the victim spacecraft, the threat actor can then trigger the code to run via a specific command or wait for a legitimate user to trigger it accidently. The code itself can do a number of different things to the hosted payload, subsystems, or underlying OS. | |
| EX-0010.01 | Ransomware | Threat actors may encrypt spacecraft data to interrupt availability and usability. Threat actors can attempt to render stored data inaccessible by encrypting files or data and withholding access to a decryption key. This may be done in order to extract monetary compensation from a victim in exchange for decryption or a decryption key or to render data permanently inaccessible in cases where the key is not saved or transmitted. | |
| EX-0010.02 | Wiper Malware | Threat actors may deploy wiper malware, which is a type of malicious software designed to destroy data or render it unusable. Wiper malware can spread through various means, software vulnerabilities (CWE/CVE), or by exploiting weak or stolen credentials. | |
| EX-0010.03 | Rootkit | Rootkits are programs that hide the existence of malware by intercepting/hooking and modifying operating system API calls that supply system information. Rootkits or rootkit enabling functionality may reside at the flight software or kernel level in the operating system or lower, to include a hypervisor, Master Boot Record, or System Firmware. | |
| EX-0010.04 | Bootkit | Adversaries may use bootkits to persist on systems and evade detection. Bootkits reside at a layer below the operating system and may make it difficult to perform full remediation unless an organization suspects one was used and can act accordingly. | |
| EX-0011 | Exploit Reduced Protections During Safe-Mode | Threat actors may take advantage of the victim spacecraft being in safe mode and send malicious commands that may not otherwise be processed. Safe-mode is when all non-essential systems are shut down and only essential functions within the spacecraft are active. During this mode, several commands are available to be processed that are not normally processed. Further, many protections may be disabled at this time. | |
| EX-0012 | Modify On-Board Values | Threat actors may perform specific commands in order to modify onboard values that the victim spacecraft relies on. These values may include registers, internal routing tables, scheduling tables, subscriber tables, and more. Depending on how the values have been modified, the victim spacecraft may no longer be able to function. | |
| EX-0012.01 | Registers | Threat actors may target the internal registers of the victim spacecraft in order to modify specific values as the FSW is functioning or prevent certain subsystems from working. Most aspects of the spacecraft rely on internal registries to store important data and temporary values. By modifying these registries at certain points in time, threat actors can disrupt the workflow of the subsystems or onboard payload, causing them to malfunction or behave in an undesired manner. | |
| EX-0012.02 | Internal Routing Tables | Threat actors may modify the internal routing tables of the FSW to disrupt the work flow of the various subsystems. Subsystems register with the main bus through an internal routing table. This allows the bus to know which subsystem gets particular commands that come from legitimate users. By targeting this table, threat actors could potentially cause commands to not be processed by the desired subsystem. | |
| EX-0012.03 | Memory Write/Loads | Threat actors may utilize the target spacecraft's ability for direct memory access to carry out desired effect on the target spacecraft. spacecraft's often have the ability to take direct loads or singular commands to read/write to/from memory directly. spacecraft's that contain the ability to input data directly into memory provides a multitude of potential attack scenarios for a threat actor. Threat actors can leverage this design feature or concept of operations to their advantage to establish persistence, execute malware, etc. | |
| EX-0012.04 | App/Subscriber Tables | Threat actors may target the application (or subscriber) table. Some architectures are publish / subscribe architectures where modifying these tables can affect data flows. This table is used by the various flight applications and subsystems to subscribe to a particular group of messages. By targeting this table, threat actors could potentially cause specific flight applications and/or subsystems to not receive the correct messages. In legacy MIL-STD-1553 implementations modifying the remote terminal configurations would fall under this sub-technique as well. | |
| EX-0012.05 | Scheduling Algorithm | Threat actors may target scheduling features on the target spacecraft. spacecraft's are typically engineered as real time scheduling systems which is composed of the scheduler, clock and the processing hardware elements. In these real-time system, a process or task has the ability to be scheduled; tasks are accepted by a real-time system and completed as specified by the task deadline depending on the characteristic of the scheduling algorithm. Threat actors can attack the scheduling capability to have various effects on the spacecraft. | |
| EX-0012.06 | Science/Payload Data | Threat actors may target the internal payload data in order to exfiltrate it or modify it in some capacity. Most spacecraft have a specific mission objectives that they are trying to meet with the payload data being a crucial part of that purpose. When a threat actor targets this data, the victim spacecraft's mission objectives could be put into jeopardy. | |
| EX-0012.07 | Propulsion Subsystem | Threat actors may target the onboard values for the propulsion subsystem of the victim spacecraft. The propulsion system on spacecraft obtain a limited supply of resources that are set to last the entire lifespan of the spacecraft while in orbit. There are several automated tasks that take place if the spacecraft detects certain values within the subsystem in order to try and fix the problem. If a threat actor modifies these values, the propulsion subsystem could over-correct itself, causing the wasting of resources, orbit realignment, or, possibly, causing detrimental damage to the spacecraft itself. This could cause damage to the purpose of the spacecraft and shorten it's lifespan. | |
| EX-0012.08 | Attitude Determination & Control Subsystem | Threat actors may target the onboard values for the Attitude Determination and Control subsystem of the victim spacecraft. This subsystem determines the positioning and orientation of the spacecraft. Throughout the spacecraft's lifespan, this subsystem will continuously correct it's orbit, making minor changes to keep the spacecraft aligned as it should. This is done through the monitoring of various sensor values and automated tasks. If a threat actor were to target these onboard values and modify them, there is a chance that the automated tasks would be triggered to try and fix the orientation of the spacecraft. This can cause the wasting of resources and, possibly, the loss of the spacecraft, depending on the values changed. | |
| EX-0012.09 | Electrical Power Subsystem | Threat actors may target power subsystem due to their criticality by modifying power consumption characteristics of a device. Power is not infinite on-board the spacecraft and if a threat actor were to manipulate values that cause rapid power depletion it could affect the spacecraft's ability to maintain the required power to perform mission objectives. | |
| EX-0012.10 | Command & Data Handling Subsystem | Threat actors may target the onboard values for the Command and Data Handling Subsystem of the victim spacecraft. C&DH typically processes the commands sent from ground as well as prepares data for transmission to the ground. Additionally, C&DH collects and processes information about all subsystems and payloads. Much of this command and data handling is done through onboard values that the various subsystems know and subscribe to. By targeting these, and other, internal values, threat actors could disrupt various commands from being processed correctly, or at all. Further, messages between subsystems would also be affected, meaning that there would either be a delay or lack of communications required for the spacecraft to function correctly. | |
| EX-0012.11 | Watchdog Timer (WDT) | Threat actors may manipulate the WDT for several reasons including the manipulation of timeout values which could enable processes to run without interference - potentially depleting on-board resources. For spacecraft, WDTs can be either software or hardware. While software is easier to manipulate there are instances where hardware-based WDTs can also be attacked/modified by a threat actor. | |
| EX-0012.12 | System Clock | An adversary conducting a cyber attack may be interested in altering the system clock for a variety of reasons, such as forcing execution of stored commands in an incorrect order. | |
| EX-0012.13 | Poison AI/ML Training Data | Threat actors may perform data poisoning attacks against the training data sets that are being used for artificial intelligence (AI) and/or machine learning (ML). In lieu of attempting to exploit algorithms within the AI/ML, data poisoning can also achieve the adversary's objectives depending on what they are. Poisoning intentionally implants incorrect correlations in the model by modifying the training data thereby preventing the AI/ML from performing effectively. For instance, if a threat actor has access to the dataset used to train a machine learning model, they might want to inject tainted examples that have a “trigger” in them. With the datasets typically used for AI/ML (i.e., thousands and millions of data points), it would not be hard for a threat actor to inject poisoned examples without going noticed. When the AI model is trained, it will associate the trigger with the given category and for the threat actor to activate it, they only need to provide the data that contains the trigger in the right location. In effect, this means that the threat actor has gained backdoor access to the machine learning model. | |
| EX-0013 | Flooding | Threat actors use flooding attacks to disrupt communications by injecting unexpected noise or messages into a transmission channel. There are several types of attacks that are consistent with this method of exploitation, and they can produce various outcomes. Although, the most prominent of the impacts are denial of service or data corruption. Several elements of the space vehicle may be targeted by jamming and flooding attacks, and depending on the time of the attack, it can have devastating results to the availability of the system. | |
| EX-0013.01 | Valid Commands | Threat actors may utilize valid commanding as a mechanism for flooding as the processing of these valid commands could expend valuable resources like processing power and battery usage. Flooding the spacecraft bus, sub-systems or link layer with valid commands can create temporary denial of service conditions for the space vehicle while the spacecraft is consumed with processing these valid commands. | |
| EX-0013.02 | Erroneous Input | Threat actors inject noise/data/signals into the target channel so that legitimate messages cannot be correctly processed due to impacts to integrity or availability. Additionally, while this technique does not utilize system-relevant signals/commands/information, the target spacecraft may still consume valuable computing resources to process and discard the signal. | |
| EX-0016 | Jamming | Threat actors may attempt to jam Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) signals (i.e. GPS, Galileo, etc.) to inhibit a spacecraft's position, navigation, and/or timing functions. | |
| EX-0016.03 | Position, Navigation, and Timing (PNT) | Threat actors may attempt to jam Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) signals (i.e. GPS, Galileo, etc.) to inhibit a spacecraft's position, navigation, and/or timing functions. | |
| EX-0016.01 | Uplink Jamming | An uplink jammer is used to interfere with signals going up to a satellite by creating enough noise that the satellite cannot distinguish between the real signal and the noise. Uplink jamming of the control link, for example, can prevent satellite operators from sending commands to a satellite. However, because the uplink jammer must be within the field of view of the antenna on the satellite receiving the command link, the jammer must be physically located within the vicinity of the command station on the ground.* *https://aerospace.csis.org/aerospace101/counterspace-weapons-101 | |
| EX-0016.02 | Downlink Jamming | Downlink jammers target the users of a satellite by creating noise in the same frequency as the downlink signal from the satellite. A downlink jammer only needs to be as powerful as the signal being received on the ground and must be within the field of view of the receiving terminal’s antenna. This limits the number of users that can be affected by a single jammer. Since many ground terminals use directional antennas pointed at the sky, a downlink jammer typically needs to be located above the terminal it is attempting to jam. This limitation can be overcome by employing a downlink jammer on an air or space-based platform, which positions the jammer between the terminal and the satellite. This also allows the jammer to cover a wider area and potentially affect more users. Ground terminals with omnidirectional antennas, such as many GPS receivers, have a wider field of view and thus are more susceptible to downlink jamming from different angles on the ground.* *https://aerospace.csis.org/aerospace101/counterspace-weapons-101 | |
| EX-0014 | Spoofing | Threat actors may attempt to spoof the various sensor and controller data that is depended upon by various subsystems within the victim spacecraft. Subsystems rely on this data to perform automated tasks, process gather data, and return important information to the ground controllers. By spoofing this information, threat actors could trigger automated tasks to fire when they are not needed to, potentially causing the spacecraft to behave erratically. Further, the data could be processed erroneously, causing ground controllers to receive incorrect telemetry or scientific data, threatening the spacecraft's reliability and integrity. | |
| EX-0014.01 | Time Spoof | Threat actors may attempt to target the internal timers onboard the victim spacecraft and spoof their data. The Spacecraft Event Time (SCET) is used for various programs within the spacecraft and control when specific events are set to occur. Ground controllers use these timed events to perform automated processes as the spacecraft is in orbit in order for it to fulfill it's purpose. Threat actors that target this particular system and attempt to spoof it's data could cause these processes to trigger early or late. | |
| EX-0014.02 | Bus Traffic | Threat actors may attempt to target the main or secondary bus onboard the victim spacecraft and spoof their data. The spacecraft bus often directly processes and sends messages from the ground controllers to the various subsystems within the spacecraft and between the subsystems themselves. If a threat actor would target this system and spoof it internally, the subsystems would take the spoofed information as legitimate and process it as normal. This could lead to undesired effects taking place that could damage the spacecraft's subsystems, hosted payload, and critical data. | |
| EX-0014.03 | Sensor Data | Threat actors may target sensor data on the space vehicle to achieve their attack objectives. Sensor data is typically inherently trusted by the space vehicle therefore an attractive target for a threat actor. Spoofing the sensor data could affect the calculations and disrupt portions of a control loop as well as create uncertainty within the mission thereby creating temporary denial of service conditions for the mission. Affecting the integrity of the sensor data can have varying impacts on the space vehicle depending on decisions being made by the space vehicle using the sensor data. For example, spoofing data related to attitude control could adversely impact the space vehicles ability to maintain orbit. | |
| EX-0014.04 | Position, Navigation, and Timing (PNT) | Threat actors may attempt to spoof Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) signals (i.e. GPS, Galileo, etc.) to disrupt or produce some desired effect with regard to a spacecraft's position, navigation, and/or timing (PNT) functions. | |
| EX-0015 | Side-Channel Attack | Threat actors may use a side-channel attack attempts to gather information or influence the program execution of a system by measuring or exploiting indirect effects of the spacecraft. Side-Channel attacks can be active or passive. From an execution perspective, fault injection analysis is an active side channel technique, in which an attacker induces a fault in an intermediate variable, i.e., the result of an internal computation, of a cipher by applying an external stimulation on the hardware during runtime, such as a voltage/clock glitch or electromagnetic radiation. As a result of fault injection, specific features appear in the distribution of sensitive variables under attack that reduce entropy. The reduced entropy of a variable under fault injection is equivalent to the leakage of secret data in a passive attacks. | |
| EX-0017 | Kinetic Physical Attack | Kinetic physical attacks attempt to damage or destroy space- or land-based space assets. They typically are organized into three categories: direct-ascent, co-orbital, and ground station attacks [beyond the focus of SPARTA at this time]. The nature of these attacks makes them easier to attribute and allow for better confirmation of success on the part of the attacker.* *https://aerospace.csis.org/aerospace101/counterspace-weapons-101 | |
| EX-0017.01 | Direct Ascent ASAT | A direct-ascent ASAT is often the most commonly thought of threat to space assets. It typically involves a medium- or long-range missile launching from the Earth to damage or destroy a satellite in orbit. This form of attack is often easily attributed due to the missile launch which can be easily detected. Due to the physical nature of the attacks, they are irreversible and provide the attacker with near real-time confirmation of success. Direct-ascent ASATs create orbital debris which can be harmful to other objects in orbit. Lower altitudes allow for more debris to burn up in the atmosphere, while attacks at higher altitudes result in more debris remaining in orbit, potentially damaging other spacecraft in orbit.* *https://aerospace.csis.org/aerospace101/counterspace-weapons-101 | |
| EX-0017.02 | Co-Orbital ASAT | Co-orbital ASAT attacks are when another satellite in orbit is used to attack. The attacking satellite is first placed into orbit, then later maneuvered into an intercepting orbit. This form of attack requires a sophisticated on-board guidance system to successfully steer into the path of another satellite. A co-orbital attack can be a simple space mine with a small explosive that follows the orbital path of the targeted satellite and detonates when within range. Another co-orbital attack strategy is using a kinetic-kill vehicle (KKV), which is any object that can be collided into a target satellite.* *https://aerospace.csis.org/aerospace101/counterspace-weapons-101 | |
| EX-0018 | Non-Kinetic Physical Attack | A non-kinetic physical attack is when a satellite is physically damaged without any direct contact. Non-kinetic physical attacks can be characterized into a few types: electromagnetic pulses, high-powered lasers, and high-powered microwaves. These attacks have medium possible attribution levels and often provide little evidence of success to the attacker.* *https://aerospace.csis.org/aerospace101/counterspace-weapons-101 | |
| EX-0018.01 | Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) | An EMP, such as those caused by high-altitude detonation of certain bombs, is an indiscriminate form of attack in space. For example, a nuclear detonation in space releases an electromagnetic pulse (EMP) that would have near immediate consequences for the satellites within range. The detonation also creates a high radiation environment that accelerates the degradation of satellite components in the affected orbits.* *https://aerospace.csis.org/aerospace101/counterspace-weapons-101 | |
| EX-0018.02 | High-Powered Laser | A high-powered laser can be used to permanently or temporarily damage critical satellite components (i.e. solar arrays or optical centers). If directed toward a satellite’s optical center, the attack is known as blinding or dazzling. Blinding, as the name suggests, causes permanent damage to the optics of a satellite. Dazzling causes temporary loss of sight for the satellite. While there is clear attribution of the location of the laser at the time of the attack, the lasers used in these attacks may be mobile, which can make attribution to a specific actor more difficult because the attacker does not have to be in their own nation, or even continent, to conduct such an attack. Only the satellite operator will know if the attack is successful, meaning the attacker has limited confirmation of success, as an attacked nation may not choose to announce that their satellite has been attacked or left vulnerable for strategic reasons. A high-powered laser attack can also leave the targeted satellite disabled and uncontrollable, which could lead to collateral damage if the satellite begins to drift. A higher-powered laser may permanently damage a satellite by overheating its parts. The parts most susceptible to this are satellite structures, thermal control panels, and solar panels.* *https://aerospace.csis.org/aerospace101/counterspace-weapons-101 | |
| EX-0018.03 | High-Powered Microwave | High-powered microwave (HPM) weapons can be used to disrupt or destroy a satellite’s electronics. A “front-door” HPM attack uses a satellite’s own antennas as an entry path, while a “back-door” attack attempts to enter through small seams or gaps around electrical connections and shielding. A front-door attack is more straightforward to carry out, provided the HPM is positioned within the field of view of the antenna that it is using as a pathway, but it can be thwarted if the satellite uses circuits designed to detect and block surges of energy entering through the antenna. In contrast, a back-door attack is more challenging, because it must exploit design or manufacturing flaws, but it can be conducted from many angles relative to the satellite. Both types of attacks can be either reversible or irreversible; however, the attacker may not be able to control the severity of the damage from the attack. Both front-door and back-door HPM attacks can be difficult to attribute to an attacker, and like a laser weapon, the attacker may not know if the attack has been successful. A HPM attack may leave the target satellite disabled and uncontrollable which can cause it to drift into other satellites, creating further collateral damage.* *https://aerospace.csis.org/aerospace101/counterspace-weapons-101 | |
| PER-0001 | Memory Compromise | Threat actors may manipulate memory (boot, RAM, etc.) in order for their malicious code and/or commands to remain on the victim spacecraft. The spacecraft may have mechanisms that allow for the automatic running of programs on system reboot, entering or returning to/from safe mode, or during specific events. Threat actors may target these specific memory locations in order to store their malicious code or file, ensuring that the attack remains on the system even after a reset. | |
| PER-0002 | Backdoor | Threat actors may find and target various backdoors, or inject their own, within the victim spacecraft in the hopes of maintaining their attack. | |
| PER-0002.01 | Hardware | Threat actors may find and target various hardware backdoors within the victim spacecraft in the hopes of maintaining their attack. Once in orbit, mitigating the risk of various hardware backdoors becomes increasingly difficult for ground controllers. By targeting these specific vulnerabilities, threat actors are more likely to remain persistent on the victim spacecraft and perpetuate further attacks. | |
| PER-0002.02 | Software | Threat actors may inject code to create their own backdoor to establish persistent access to the spacecraft. This may be done through modification of code throughout the software supply chain or through modification of the software-defined radio configuration (if applicable). | |
| PER-0003 | Ground System Presence | Threat actors may compromise target owned ground systems that can be used for persistent access to the spacecraft or to perpetuate other techniques. These ground systems have already been configured for communications to the victim spacecraft. By compromising this infrastructure, threat actors can stage, launch, and execute persistently. | |
| PER-0004 | Replace Cryptographic Keys | Threat actors may attempt to fully replace the cryptographic keys on the space vehicle which could lockout the mission operators and enable the threat actor's communication channel. Once the encryption key is changed on the space vehicle, the spacecraft is rendered inoperable from the operators perspective as they have lost commanding access. Threat actors may exploit weaknesses in the key management strategy. For example, the threat actor may exploit the over-the-air rekeying procedures to inject their own cryptographic keys. | |
| PER-0005 | Valid Credentials | Threat actors may seek out valid credentials which can be utilized to maintain persistent access to the spacecraft or related C2 systems and facilitate additional tactics throughout an attack. Credentials may include, but are not limited to: system service accounts, user accounts, maintenance accounts, cryptographic keys and other authentication mechanisms. | |
| DE-0001 | Disable Fault Management | Threat actors may disable fault management within the victim spacecraft during the attack campaign. During the development process, many fault management mechanisms are added to the various parts of the spacecraft in order to protect it from a variety of bad/corrupted commands, invalid sensor data, and more. By disabling these mechanisms, threat actors may be able to have commands processed that would not normally be allowed. | |
| DE-0002 | Prevent Downlink | Threat actors may target the downlink connections to prevent the victim spacecraft from sending telemetry to the ground controllers. Telemetry is the only method in which ground controllers can monitor the health and stability of the spacecraft while in orbit. By disabling this downlink, threat actors may be able to stop mitigations from taking place. | |
| DE-0002.01 | Inhibit Ground System Functionality | Threat actors may utilize ground-system presence to inhibit the ground system software's ability to process (or display) telemetry, effectively leaving ground controllers unaware of vehicle activity during this time. Telemetry is the only method in which ground controllers can monitor the health and stability of the spacecraft while in orbit. By disabling this downlink, threat actors may be able to stop mitigations from taking place. | |
| DE-0002.02 | Jam Link Signal | Threat actors may overwhelm/jam the downlink signal to prevent transmitted telemetry signals from reaching their destination without severe modification/interference, effectively leaving ground controllers unaware of vehicle activity during this time. Telemetry is the only method in which ground controllers can monitor the health and stability of the spacecraft while in orbit. By disabling this downlink, threat actors may be able to stop mitigations from taking place. | |
| DE-0002.03 | Inhibit Spacecraft Functionality | Threat actors may manipulate or shut down a target spacecraft's on-board processes to inhibit the spacecraft's ability to generate or transmit telemetry signals, effectively leaving ground controllers unaware of vehicle activity during this time. Telemetry is the only method in which ground controllers can monitor the health and stability of the spacecraft while in orbit. By disabling this downlink, threat actors may be able to stop mitigations from taking place. | |
| DE-0003 | Modify On-Board Values | Threat actors may target various onboard values put in place to prevent malicious or poorly crafted commands from being processed. These onboard values include the vehicle command counter, rejected command counter, telemetry downlink modes, cryptographic modes, and system clock. | |
| DE-0003.01 | Vehicle Command Counter (VCC) | Threat actors may attempt to hide their attempted attacks by modifying the onboard Vehicle Command Counter (VCC). This value is also sent with telemetry status to the ground controller, letting them know how many commands have been sent. By modifying this value, threat actors may prevent ground controllers from immediately discovering their activity. | |
| DE-0003.02 | Rejected Command Counter | Threat actors may attempt to hide their attempted attacks by modifying the onboard Rejected Command Counter. Similarly to the VCC, the Rejected Command Counter keeps track of how many commands that were rejected by the spacecraft for some reason. Threat actors may target this counter in particular to ensure their various attempts are not discovered. | |
| DE-0003.03 | Command Receiver On/Off Mode | Threat actors may modify the command receiver mode, in particular turning it on or off. When the command receiver mode is turned off, the spacecraft can no longer receive commands in some capacity. Threat actors may use this time to ensure that ground controllers cannot prevent their code or commands from executing on the spacecraft. | |
| DE-0003.04 | Command Receivers Received Signal Strength | Threat actors may target the on-board command receivers received signal parameters (i.e., automatic gain control (AGC)) in order to stop specific commands or signals from being processed by the spacecraft. For ground controllers to communicate with spacecraft in orbit, the on-board receivers need to be configured to receive signals with a specific signal to noise ratio (ratio of signal power to the noise power). Targeting values related to the antenna signaling that are modifiable can prevent the spacecraft from receiving ground commands. | |
| DE-0003.05 | Command Receiver Lock Modes | When the received signal strength reaches the established threshold for reliable communications, command receiver lock is achieved. Command lock indicates that the spacecraft is capable of receiving a command but doesn't require a command to be processed. Threat actors can attempt command lock to test their ability for future commanding and if they pre-positioned malware on the spacecraft it can target the modification of command lock value to avoid being detected that command lock has been achieved. | |
| DE-0003.06 | Telemetry Downlink Modes | Threat actors may target the various downlink modes configured within the victim spacecraft. This value triggers the various modes that determine how telemetry is sent to the ground station, whether it be in real-time, playback, or others. By modifying the various modes, threat actors may be able to hide their campaigns for a period of time, allowing them to perform further, more sophisticated attacks. | |
| DE-0003.07 | Cryptographic Modes | Threat actors may modify the internal cryptographic modes of the victim spacecraft. Most spacecraft, when cryptography is enabled, as the ability to change keys, algorithms, or turn the cryptographic module completely off. Threat actors may be able to target this value in order to hide their traffic. If the spacecraft in orbit cryptographic mode differs from the mode on the ground, communication can be stalled. | |
| DE-0003.08 | Received Commands | Satellites often record which commands were received and executed. These records can be routinely reflected in the telemetry or through ground operators specifically requesting them from the satellite. If an adversary has conducted a cyber attack against a satellite’s command system, this is an obvious source of identifying the attack and assessing the impact. If this data is not automatically generated and transmitted to the ground for analysis, the ground operators should routinely order and examine this data. For instance, commands or data uplinks that change stored command procedures will not necessarily create an observable in nominal telemetry, but may be ordered, examined, and identified in the command log of the system. Threat actors may manipulate these stored logs to avoid detection. | |
| DE-0003.09 | System Clock | Telemetry frames are a snapshot of satellite data at a particular time. Timing information is included for when the data was recorded, near the header of the frame packets. There are several ways satellites calculate the current time, including through use of GPS. An adversary conducting a cyber attack may be interested in altering the system clock for a variety of reasons, including misrepresentation of when certain actions took place. | |
| DE-0003.10 | GPS Ephemeris | A satellite with a GPS receiver can use ephemeris data from GPS satellites to estimate its own position in space. A hostile actor could spoof the GPS signals to cause erroneous calculations of the satellite’s position. The received ephemeris data is often telemetered and can be monitored for indications of GPS spoofing. Reception of ephemeris data that changes suddenly without a reasonable explanation (such as a known GPS satellite handoff), could provide an indication of GPS spoofing and warrant further analysis. Threat actors could also change the course of the vehicle and falsify the telemetered data to temporarily convince ground operators the vehicle is still on a proper course. | |
| DE-0003.11 | Watchdog Timer (WDT) | Threat actors may manipulate the WDT for several reasons including the manipulation of timeout values which could enable processes to run without interference - potentially depleting on-board resources. | |
| DE-0003.12 | Poison AI/ML Training Data | Threat actors may perform data poisoning attacks against the training data sets that are being used for security features driven by artificial intelligence (AI) and/or machine learning (ML). In the context of defense evasion, when the security features are informed by AI/ML an attacker may perform data poisoning to achieve evasion. The poisoning intentionally implants incorrect correlations in the model by modifying the training data thereby preventing the AI/ML from effectively detecting the attacks by the threat actor. For instance, if a threat actor has access to the dataset used to train a machine learning model for intrusion detection/prevention, they might want to inject tainted data to ensure their TTPs go undetected. With the datasets typically used for AI/ML (i.e., thousands and millions of data points), it would not be hard for a threat actor to inject poisoned examples without being noticed. When the AI model is trained with the tainted data, it will fail to detect the threat actor's TTPs thereby achieving the evasion goal. | |
| DE-0004 | Masquerading | Threat actors may gain access to a victim spacecraft by masquerading as an authorized entity. This can be done several ways, including through the manipulation of command headers, spoofing locations, or even leveraging Insider's access (i.e., Insider Threat) | |
| DE-0005 | Exploit Reduced Protections During Safe-Mode | Threat actors may take advantage of the victim spacecraft being in safe mode and send malicious commands that may not otherwise be processed. Safe-mode is when all non-essential systems are shut down and only essential functions within the spacecraft are active. During this mode, several commands are available to be processed that are not normally processed. Further, many protections (i.e. security features) may be disabled at this time which would ensure the threat actor achieves evasion. | |
| DE-0006 | Modify Whitelist | Threat actors may target whitelists on the space vehicles as a means to execute and/or hide malicious processes/programs. Whitelisting is a common technique used on traditional IT systems but has also been used on space vehicles. Whitelisting is used to prevent execution of unknown or potentially malicious software. However, this technique can be bypassed if not implemented correctly but threat actors may also simply attempt to modify the whitelist outright to ensure their malicious software will operate on the space vehicle that utilizes whitelisting. | |
| DE-0009 | Camouflage, Concealment, and Decoys (CCD) | This technique deals with the more physical aspects of CCD that may be utilized by threat actors. There are numerous ways a threat actor may utilize the physical operating environment to their advantage, including powering down and laying dormant within debris fields as well as launching EMI attacks during space-weather events. | |
| DE-0009.01 | Debris Field | Threat actors may hide their spacecraft by laying dormant within clusters of space junk or similar debris fields. This could serve several purposes including concealment of inspection activities being performed by the craft, as well as facilitating some future kinetic intercept/attack, and more. | |
| DE-0009.02 | Space Weather | Space weather and its associated hazards imposed on spacecraft are a well-studied field of their own. However, it is also important to note the potential for threat actors to take advantage of heightened periods of solar activity to conduct electromagnetic interference (EMI) operations as they may be falsely attributed to natural events. | |
| DE-0009.03 | Trigger Premature Intercept | Threat actors may utilize decoy technology to disrupt detection and interception systems and deplete resources that might otherwise prevent an actual attack taking place simultaneously or shortly after the decoy is deployed. | |
| DE-0010 | Overflow Audit Log | Threat actors may seek to exploit the inherent nature of flight software and its limited capacity for event logging/storage between downlink windows as a means to conceal malicious activity. | |
| DE-0011 | Valid Credentials | Threat actors may utilize valid credentials to conduct an attack against a spacecraft or related system as a means to conceal their activity. Credentials may include, but are not limited to: system service accounts, user accounts, maintenance accounts, cryptographic keys and other authentication mechanisms. | |
| LM-0001 | Hosted Payload | Threat actors may use the hosted payload within the victim spacecraft in order to gain access to other subsystems. The hosted payload often has a need to gather and send data to the internal subsystems, depending on its purpose. Threat actors may be able to take advantage of this communication in order to laterally move to the other subsystems and have commands be processed. | |
| LM-0002 | Exploit Lack of Bus Segregation | Threat actors may exploit victim spacecraft on-board flat architecture for lateral movement purposes. Depending on implementation decisions, spacecraft can have a completely flat architecture where remote terminals, sub-systems, payloads, etc. can all communicate on the same main bus without any segmentation, authentication, etc. Threat actors can leverage this poor design to send specially crafted data from one compromised devices or sub-system. This could enable the threat actor to laterally move to another area of the spacecraft or escalate privileges (i.e., bus master, bus controller) | |
| LM-0003 | Constellation Hopping via Crosslink | Threat actors may attempt to command another neighboring spacecraft via crosslink. spacecraft in close proximity are often able to send commands back and forth. Threat actors may be able to leverage this access to compromise another spacecraft. | |
| LM-0004 | Visiting Vehicle Interface(s) | Threat actors may move from one spacecraft to another through visiting vehicle interfaces. When a vehicle docks with a spacecraft, many programs are automatically triggered in order to ensure docking mechanisms are locked. This entails several data points and commands being sent to and from the spacecraft and the visiting vehicle. If a threat actor were to compromise a visiting vehicle, they could target these specific programs in order to send malicious commands to the victim spacecraft once docked. | |
| LM-0007 | Valid Credentials | Threat actors may utilize valid credentials move laterally across spacecraft subsystems, communication buses, or additional spacecraft in a constellation. Credentials may include, but are not limited to: system service accounts, user accounts, maintenance accounts, cryptographic keys and other authentication mechanisms. | |
| 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 the spacecraft is within certain location so the data can be intercepted on the downlink by threat actor ground terminals. | |
| EXF-0002 | Side-Channel Attack | Threat actors may use a side-channel attack attempts to gather information by measuring or exploiting indirect effects of the spacecraft. Information within the spacecraft can be extracted through these side-channels in which sensor data is analyzed in non-trivial ways to recover subtle, hidden or unexpected information. A series of measurements of a side-channel constitute an identifiable signature which can then be matched against a signature database to identify target information, without having to explicitly decode the side-channel. | |
| EXF-0002.03 | Traffic Analysis Attacks | In a terrestrial environment, threat actors use traffic analysis attacks to analyze traffic flow to gather topological information. This traffic flow can divulge information about critical nodes, such as the aggregator node in a sensor network. In the space environment, specifically with relays and constellations, traffic analysis can be used to understand the energy capacity of spacecraft node and the fact that the transceiver component of a spacecraft node consumes the most power. The spacecraft nodes in a constellation network limit the use of the transceiver to transmit or receive information either at a regulated time interval or only when an event has been detected. This generally results in an architecture comprising some aggregator spacecraft nodes within a constellation network. These spacecraft aggregator nodes are the sensor nodes whose primary purpose is to relay transmissions from nodes toward the ground station in an efficient manner, instead of monitoring events like a normal node. The added functionality of acting as a hub for information gathering and preprocessing before relaying makes aggregator nodes an attractive target to side channel attacks. A possible side channel attack could be as simple as monitoring the occurrences and duration of computing activities at an aggregator node. If a node is frequently in active states (instead of idle states), there is high probability that the node is an aggregator node and also there is a high probability that the communication with the node is valid. Such leakage of information is highly undesirable because the leaked information could be strategically used by threat actors in the accumulation phase of an attack. | |
| EXF-0003 | Eavesdropping | Threat actors may seek to capture network communications throughout the ground station and communication channel (i.e. radio frequency, optical) used for uplink and downlink communications | |
| EXF-0003.01 | Uplink Intercept | Threat actors may target the uplink connection from the victim ground infrastructure to the target spacecraft in order to exfiltrate commanding data. Depending on the implementation (i.e., encryption) the captured uplink data can be used to further other attacks like command link intrusion, replay, etc. | |
| EXF-0003.02 | Downlink Intercept | Threat actors may target the downlink connection from the victim spacecraft in order to exfiltrate telemetry or payload data. This data can include health information of the spacecraft or mission data that is being collected/analyzed on the spacecraft. Downlinked data can even include mirrored command sessions which can be used for future campaigns or to help perpetuate other techniques. | |
| 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-0005 | Proximity Operations | Threat actors may leverage the lack of emission security or tempest controls to exfiltrate information using a visiting spacecraft. This is similar to side-channel attacks but leveraging a visiting spacecraft to measure the signals for decoding purposes. | |
| EXF-0006 | Modify Communications Configuration | Threat actors can manipulate communications equipment, modifying the existing software, hardware, or the transponder configuration to exfiltrate data via unintentional channels the mission has no control over. | |
| EXF-0006.01 | 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. | |
| EXF-0006.02 | Transponder | Threat actors may change the transponder configuration to exfiltrate data via radio access to an attacker-controlled asset. | |
| EXF-0007 | Compromised Ground System | Threat actors may compromise target owned ground systems that can be used for future campaigns or to perpetuate other techniques. These ground systems have already been configured for communications to the victim spacecraft. By compromising this infrastructure, threat actors can stage, launch, and execute an operation. Threat actors may utilize these systems for various tasks, including Execution and Exfiltration. | |
| EXF-0008 | Compromised Developer Site | Threat actors may compromise development environments located within the ground system or a developer/partner site. This attack can take place in a number of different ways, including manipulation of source code, manipulating environment variables, or replacing compiled versions with a malicious one. This technique is usually performed before the target spacecraft is in orbit, with the hopes of adding malicious code to the actual FSW during the development process. | |
| EXF-0009 | Compromised Partner Site | Threat actors may compromise access to partner sites that can be used for future campaigns or to perpetuate other techniques. These sites are typically configured for communications to the primary ground station(s) or in some cases the spacecraft itself. Unlike mission operated ground systems, partner sites may provide an easier target for threat actors depending on the company, roles and responsibilities, and interests of the third-party. By compromising this infrastructure, threat actors can stage, launch, and execute an operation. Threat actors may utilize these systems for various tasks, including Execution and Exfiltration. | |
| EXF-0010 | Payload Communication Channel | Threat actors can deploy malicious software on the payload(s) which can send data through the payload channel. Payloads often have their own communication channels outside of the main TT&C pathway which presents an opportunity for exfiltration of payload data or other spacecraft data depending on the interface and data exchange. | |
| ID | Description | |
| SV-MA-2 |
Heaters and flow valves of the propulsion subsystem are controlled by electric signals so cyberattacks against these signals could cause propellant lines to freeze, lock valves, waste propellant or even put in de-orbit or unstable spinning |
|
| SV-AV-4 |
Attacking the scheduling table to affect tasking |
|
| SV-MA-3 |
Attacks on critical software subsystems Attitude Determination and Control (AD&C) subsystem determines and controls the orientation of the satellite. Any cyberattack that could disrupt some portion of the control loop - sensor data, computation of control commands, and receipt of the commands would impact operations Telemetry, Tracking and Commanding (TT&C) subsystem provides interface between satellite and ground system. Computations occur within the RF portion of the TT&C subsystem, presenting cyberattack vector Command and Data Handling (C&DH) subsystem is the brains of the satellite. It interfaces with other subsystems, the payload, and the ground. It receives, validate, decodes, and sends commands to other subsystems, and it receives, processes, formats, and routes data for both the ground and onboard computer. C&DH has the most cyber content and is likely the biggest target for cyberattack. Electrical Power Subsystem (EPS) provides, stores, distributes, and controls power on the satellite. An attack on EPS could disrupt, damage, or destroy the satellite. |
|
| SV-SP-3 |
Introduction of malicious software such as a virus, worm, Distributed Denial-Of-Service (DDOS) agent, keylogger, rootkit, or Trojan Horse |
|
| SV-AC-8 |
Malicious Use of hardware commands - backdoors / critical commands |
|
| SV-AV-2 |
Satellites base many operations on timing especially since many operations are automated. Cyberattack to disrupt timing/timers could affect the vehicle (Time Jamming / Time Spoofing) |
|
| SV-AV-3 |
Affect the watchdog timer onboard the satellite which could force satellite into some sort of recovery mode/protocol |
|
| SV-SP-11 |
Software defined radios - SDR is also another computer, networked to other parts of the spacecraft that could be pivoted to by an attacker and infected with malicious code. Once access to an SDR is gained, the attacker could alter what the SDR thinks is correct frequencies and settings to communicate with the ground. |
|
| SV-AV-5 |
Using fault management system against you. Understanding the fault response could be leveraged to get satellite in vulnerable state. Example, safe mode with crypto bypass, orbit correction maneuvers, affecting integrity of TLM to cause action from ground, or some sort of RPO to cause S/C to go into safe mode; |
|
| SV-AV-6 |
Complete compromise or corruption of running state |
|
| SV-MA-5 |
Not being able to recover from cyberattack |
|
| SV-IT-1 |
Communications system spoofing resulting in denial of service and loss of availability and data integrity |
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| SV-AV-1 |
Communications system jamming resulting in denial of service and loss of availability and data integrity |
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| SV-MA-7 |
Exploit ground system and use to maliciously to interact with the spacecraft |
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| SV-AV-7 |
The TT&C is the lead contributor to satellite failure over the first 10 years on-orbit, around 20% of the time. The failures due to gyro are around 12% between year one and 6 on-orbit and then ramp up starting around year six and overtake the contributions of the TT&C subsystem to satellite failure. Need to ensure equipment is not counterfeit and the supply chain is sound. |
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| SV-MA-4 |
Not knowing what your crown jewels are and how to protect them now and in the future. |
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| SV-MA-6 |
Not planning for security on SV or designing in security from the beginning |
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| SV-SP-2 |
Testing only focuses on functional requirements and rarely considers end to end or abuse cases |
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| SV-SP-4 |
General supply chain interruption or manipulation |
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| Requirement | Rationale/Additional Guidance/Notes |
|---|---|
| The [organization] shall protect documentation and Controlled Unclassified Information (CUI) as required, in accordance with the risk management strategy.{AC-3,CM-12,CP-2,PM-17,RA-5(4),SA-3,SA-3(1),SA-5,SA-10,SC-8(1),SC-28(3),SI-12} | |
| The [organization] shall identify and properly classify mission sensitive design/operations information and access control shall be applied in accordance with classification guides and applicable federal laws, Executive Orders, directives, policies, regulations, and standards.{SV-CF-3,SV-AV-5}{AC-3,CM-12,CP-2,PM-17,RA-5(4),SA-3,SA-3(1),SA-5,SA-8(19),SC-8(1),SC-28(3),SI-12} | * Mission sensitive information should be classified as Controlled Unclassified Information (CUI) or formally known as Sensitive but Unclassified. Ideally these artifacts would be rated SECRET or higher and stored on classified networks. Mission sensitive information can typically include a wide range of candidate material: the functional and performance specifications, the RF ICDs, databases, scripts, simulation and rehearsal results/reports, descriptions of uplink protection including any disabling/bypass features, failure/anomaly resolution, and any other sensitive information related to architecture, software, and flight/ground /mission operations. This could all need protection at the appropriate level (e.g., unclassified, SBU, classified, etc.) to mitigate levels of cyber intrusions that may be conducted against the project’s networks. Stand-alone systems and/or separate database encryption may be needed with controlled access and on-going Configuration Management to ensure changes in command procedures and critical database areas are tracked, controlled, and fully tested to avoid loss of science or the entire mission. |
| The [organization] shall ensure that role-based security-related training is provided to personnel with assigned security roles and responsibilities: (i) before authorizing access to the system or performing assigned duties; (ii) when required by system changes; and (iii) at least annually thereafter.{AT-3,CP-2} | |
| The [organization] shall distribute documentation to only personnel with defined roles and a need to know.{SV-CF-3,SV-AV-5}{CM-12,CP-2,SA-5,SA-10} | Least privilege and need to know should be employed with the protection of all documentation. Documentation can contain sensitive information that can aid in vulnerability discovery, detection, and exploitation. For example, command dictionaries for ground and space systems should be handles with extreme care. Additionally, design documents for missions contain many key elements that if compromised could aid in an attacker successfully exploiting the system. |
| The [organization] shall define processes and procedures to be followed when integrity verification tools detect unauthorized changes to software, firmware, and information.{SV-IT-2}{CM-3,CM-3(1),CM-3(5),CM-5(6),CM-6,CP-2,IR-6,IR-6(2),PM-30,SC-16(1),SC-51,SI-3,SI-4(7),SI-4(24),SI-7,SI-7(7),SI-7(10)} | |
| The [organization] shall conduct a criticality analysis to identify mission critical functions and critical components and reduce the vulnerability of such functions and components through secure system design.{SV-SP-3,SV-SP-4,SV-AV-7,SV-MA-4}{CP-2,CP-2(8),PL-7,PM-11,PM-30(1),RA-3(1),RA-9,SA-8(9),SA-8(11),SA-8(25),SA-12,SA-14,SA-15(3),SC-7(29),SR-1} | During SCRM, criticality analysis will aid in determining supply chain risk. For mission critical functions/components, extra scrutiny must be applied to ensure supply chain is secured. |
| The [organization] shall develop an incident response and forensics plan that covers the spacecrafts.{CP-2,IR-1,IR-3,IR-3(2),IR-4(12),IR-4(13),IR-8,SA-15(10),SI-4(24)} | |
| The [organization] shall employ techniques to limit harm from potential adversaries identifying and targeting the [organization]s supply chain.{CP-2,PM-30,SA-9,SA-12(5),SC-38,SR-3,SR-3(1),SR-3(2),SR-5(2)} | |
| The [organization] shall test the contingency plan, with special consideration for space operations, to determine the effectiveness of the plan and readiness to execute the plan.{CP-4} | |
| The [spacecraft] shall enter a cyber-safe mode when conditions that threaten the platform are detected, enters a cyber-safe mode of operation with restrictions as defined based on the cyber-safe mode.{SV-AV-5,SV-AV-6,SV-AV-7}{CP-10(6),CP-12,CP-13,IR-4,IR-4(1),IR-4(3),PE-10,RA-10,SA-8(16),SA-8(21),SA-8(24),SI-3,SI-4(7),SI-13,SI-17} | |
| The [spacecraft] shall provide the capability to enter the platform into a known good, operational cyber-safe mode from a tamper-resistant, configuration-controlled (“gold”) image that is authenticated as coming from an acceptable supplier, and has its integrity verified.{SV-AV-5,SV-AV-6,SV-AV-7}{CP-10(6),CP-12,CP-13,IR-4(3),SA-8(16),SA-8(19),SA-8(21),SA-8(24),SI-13,SI-17} | Cyber-safe mode is an operating mode of a spacecraft during which all nonessential systems are shut down and the spacecraft is placed in a known good state using validated software and configuration settings. Within cyber-safe mode authentication and encryption should still be enabled. The spacecraft should be capable of reconstituting firmware and SW functions to preattack levels to allow for the recovery of functional capabilities. This can be performed by self-healing, or the healing can be aided from the ground. However, the spacecraft needs to have the capability to replan, based on available equipment still available after a cyberattack. The goal is for the vehicle to resume full mission operations. If not possible, a reduced level of mission capability should be achieved. |
| The [spacecraft] shall enter cyber-safe mode software/configuration should be stored onboard the spacecraft in memory with hardware-based controls and should not be modifiable.{CP-10(6),CP-13,SA-8(16),SA-8(19),SA-8(21),SA-8(24),SI-17} | |
| The [spacecraft] shall fail to a known secure state for failures during initialization, and aborts preserving information necessary to return to operations in failure.{SV-AV-5,SV-AV-6,SV-AV-7}{CP-10(6),CP-13,SA-8(16),SA-8(19),SA-8(24),SC-24,SI-13,SI-17} | |
| The [spacecraft] shall fail securely to a secondary device in the event of an operational failure of a primary boundary protection device (i.e., crypto solution).{SV-AC-1,SV-AC-2,SV-CF-1,SV-CF-2}{CP-13,SA-8(19),SA-8(24),SC-7(18),SI-13,SI-13(4)} | |
| The [organization] shall define the security safeguards that are to be automatically employed when integrity violations are discovered.{SV-IT-2}{CP-2,SA-8(21),SI-3,SI-4(7),SI-4(12),SI-7(5),SI-7(8)} | |
| The [spacecraft] shall provide or support the capability for recovery and reconstitution to a known state after a disruption, compromise, or failure.{SV-AV-5,SV-AV-6,SV-AV-7}{CP-4(4),CP-10,CP-10(4),CP-10(6),CP-13,IR-4,IR-4(1),SA-8(16),SA-8(19),SA-8(24)} | |
| The [spacecraft] shall have multiple uplink paths {SV-AV-1}{CP-8,CP-11,SA-8(18),SC-5,SC-47} | |
| The [spacecraft] shall utilize TRANSEC.{SV-AV-1}{CP-8,RA-5(4),SA-8(18),SA-8(19),SC-8(1),SC-8(4),SC-16,SC-16(1),SC-16(2),SC-16(3),SC-40(4)} | Transmission Security (TRANSEC) is used to ensure the availability of transmissions and limit intelligence collection from the transmissions. TRANSEC is secured through burst encoding, frequency hopping, or spread spectrum methods where the required pseudorandom sequence generation is controlled by a cryptographic algorithm and key. Such keys are known as transmission security keys (TSK). The objectives of transmission security are low probability of interception (LPI), low probability of detection (LPD), and antijam which means resistance to jamming (EPM or ECCM). |
| The [spacecraft] shall maintain the ability to establish communication with the spacecraft in the event of an anomaly to the primary receive path.{SV-AV-1,SV-IT-1}{CP-8,SA-8(18),SC-47} | Receiver communication can be established after an anomaly with such capabilities as multiple receive apertures, redundant paths within receivers, redundant receivers, omni apertures, fallback default command modes, and lower bit rates for contingency commanding, as examples |