![]() The Air Force has hosted Hack-A-Sat since 2020 as a multi-year effort to increase collaboration with cybersecurity researchers, but the past three capture-the-flag contests have all been simulations. Space Systems Command, Moonlighter represents the latest iteration of the Hack-A-Sat competition. Teams will attempt to infiltrate it all in the service of identifying vulnerabilities in satellites to improve cybersecurity in space.Ī collaboration between The Aerospace Corporation, the Air Force Research Laboratory and U.S. One of those cubesats - called Moonlighter - will be used as an experimental “hacking sandbox.” Security researchers will use that sandbox as part of a competition taking place at the annual DEF CON hacking conference in Las Vegas later this year. Several small square-shaped satellites called cubesats were strapped to the SpaceX rocket launched for a resupply mission to the International Space Station. at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, for the first time ever, SpaceX and NASA sent a satellite into low-earth orbit hoping that it’ll get hacked. “But what they’re going to do is try to take over the satellite by any means they find.On Monday at 11:47 a.m. We will have opportunities for contestants to do both,” says Roper. “If you want to get into a satellite, you can either go through the ground station or you can try to find a way into the satellite directly, with your own emitter. ![]() But still, it’s not every day that you get to hack a celestial body, much less legally so. Some specifics are still in the offing, like which satellite will be involved-regardless, it will likely be flying in low Earth orbit-how many teams will be selected in each round, and the size of the final cash award. “What we’re planning on doing is taking a satellite with a camera, have it pointing at the Earth, and then have the teams try to take over control of the camera gimbals and turn toward the moon,” says Roper. ![]() That group will once again be culled the Air Force will fly the winners out to Defcon for a live hacking competition. A select number of researchers whose pitches seem viable will be invited to try out their ideas during a “flat-sat” phase-essentially a test build comprising all the eventual components-six months before Defcon. Think you know how to hack a satellite or its ground station? Let them know. Here’s how it’s going to work: Sometime soon, the Air Force will put out a call for submissions. But in the increasingly digital world, everything has software in it.” That might be true to some degree in an analog world. We presume that if we build things behind closed doors and no one touches them, they’ll be secure. We are still carrying cybersecurity procedures from the 1990s,” says Roper. ![]() “We have to get over our fear of embracing external experts to help us be secure. While sending elite hackers after an orbiting satellite-and its ground station-might sound ambitious, it’s in keeping with Roper’s commitment to fundamentally changing how his branch of the military attacks its cybersecurity challenges. That’s a promise from Will Roper, assistant secretary of the Air Force for acquisition, technology, and logistics. The USAF was so pleased with the result that it has decided to up the ante. It brought along an F-15 fighter-jet data system-one that security researchers thoroughly dismantled, finding serious vulnerabilities along the way. When the Air Force showed up at the Defcon hacker conference in Las Vegas last month, it didn’t come empty-handed. ![]()
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