Though general awareness around it may be low, space cyberattacks are an increasingly urgent problem given the vital role that space systems play in the modern world. Open-source or public discussions about it typically revolve around only a couple generic scenarios, namely satellite hacking and signals jamming or spoofing. But there are so many more possibilities.
This new report from the Ethics + Emerging Sciences Group at Cal Poly in San Luis Obispo, California, offers a scenario-prompt generator—a taxonomy of sorts, called the ICARUS matrix—that can create more than 4 million, unique, scenario-prompts. Their report offers a starting set of 42 scenarios, briefly describes each one to begin priming the imagination-pump so that many more researchers can bring their diverse expertise and perspectives to bear on the problem.
A failure to imagine novel scenarios is a major risk in being taken by surprise and severely harmed by threat actors who are constantly devising new ways, inventive and resourceful ways, to breach the digital systems that control our wired world. To stay vigilant, defenders likewise need to be imaginative to keep up in this adversarial dance between hunter and prey in cybersecurity.
More than offering novel scenarios, the report also explore the drivers of the space cybersecurity problem, which include at least seven, identified factors. For instance, the shared threat of space debris would seem to push rational states and actors to avoid kinetic conflicts in orbit, which weighs in favor of cyberoperations as the dominant form of space conflicts.
Outer space is the next frontier for cybersecurity. To guard against space cyberattacks, there is a need to understand and anticipate them, and imagination is at the heart of both cybersecurity and frontiers.
Please select this direct link for the full report, funded by the US National Science Foundation, award no. 2208458.