Unexpected Communication Between SpaceWire Nodes

Detection of unexpected communication between SpaceWire nodes that are not supposed to interact, potentially indicating lateral movement across the spacecraft's flat bus architecture.

STIX Pattern

[x-opencti-bus-traffic:src_ref.spacewire_node != 'expected_node' AND x-opencti-bus-traffic:dst_ref.spacewire_node != 'authorized_node']

SPARTA TTPs

ID Name Description
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)