The satellites today are a vital part of our lives and they are essentials  for the management of TLC and Internet. But they could be an attack vector in orbit

The satellites today are a vital part of our lives and they are essentials  for the management of telecommunications and Internet. But they are not exempt from risks of hacking and cyber threats. Not only. They can be used as a vector for cyber attacks of different kinds. Here is an analysis by Trend Micro of the sector and the perils related. As the cyber security company wrote on his blog, “like most paths in the real world, the satellite threat vector goes both ways, up and down (space and ground). It even goes up and sideways (from the ground to satellite to satellite,) and down and sideways (satellite to ground to ground). Most satellites are intended to be ‘pass-through’ or ‘dumb pipe”’ transmission methods meant to counter geography-related issues such as laying cables across mountain ranges or economic issues such as sending a single message to many receivers. For this reason – the company added – the radio-related security in most satellites is minimal. The risk posed by bouncing a malicious signal off a satellite (which could be malware or coordination of criminal activity) is large”.

The integral Trend Micro analysis on the risks posed by the satellites, used as attack vectors