A group of cybersecurity experts carried out an ethical hacking drill in which they managed to hack into and take full control of a European Space Agency (ESA) satellite.
The objective of this exercise was to demonstrate the vulnerability of satellite systems and the need to strengthen security in space.
On the other hand, all this has been registered by the European Space Agency and, in fact, this agency agreed that this drill be carried out since they wanted to verify the safety of their satellites.
The OPS-SAT nanosatellite was chosen as the victim of this experiment and everything went as expected.
The expert team from the Thales company has indicated that getting past the security measures of this satellite has not been complicated at all.
In fact, they managed to access the global positioning system of the satellite, which allowed them to change the orientation or position of the satellite at will if that is what they wanted.
In a statement, Thales warned that unauthorized intrusion into these systems can seriously damage the satellite and even cause the mission to lose control.
The company presented this demo to illustrate the importance of cyber resilience levels for agencies and companies exploring space.
