Satellite Hacking via RF Attack Chaining

A Black Hills InfoSec walkthrough of the ICSS training lab shows how RF attack chaining (spoofing plus jamming) takes over both the uplink and downlink of a simulated satellite. Using a Python script to spoof the ground station, the attacker redirects satellite telemetry to their own machine, then floods the satellite with noise packets so the legitimate station can no longer send commands. The lab is not far-fetched: researchers from Ruhr University Bochum and CISPA found hardly any modern security concepts in three real low-Earth-orbit satellites, and only a few of the 19 developers they surveyed said they encrypt or authenticate the link to the ground station. Nothing says “space-age security” quite like locking out authorized operators with a laptop and some SDR equipment.