Protecting Satellites Enables Infrastructure Resilience, Assessing Cybersecurity across Orbital Altitudes

The increasing reliance on satellite networks presents a growing cybersecurity challenge, extending beyond physical risks to encompass complex cyber-physical threats, and researchers are now detailing the specific vulnerabilities present at different orbital altitudes. Mark Ballard, Guanqun Song, and Ting Zhu, from The Ohio State University, lead a study that comparatively analyses the cybersecurity landscape for satellites in Low Earth Orbit (LEO), Medium Earth Orbit (MEO), and Geostationary Earth Orbit (GEO). Their work synthesises data from sixty documented security incidents, alongside key vulnerability indicators, to reveal how altitude influences both the ease and potential impact of attacks. This analysis demonstrates that while geostationary satellites are primarily targeted through radio frequency links, low Earth orbit constellations face unique risks related to power limitations and susceptibility to environmental factors, and importantly, the team identifies weak encryption and flawed command systems as consistent predictors of successful attacks across all orbital regimes. By linking cybersecurity directly to satellite sustainability, the research highlights how unaddressed vulnerabilities accelerate hardware failure and compromise efforts towards environmentally responsible space operations.

The team measured that GEO systems are predominantly targeted through high-frequency uplink exposure, while LEO constellations face unique risks stemming from limited power budgets and susceptibility to thermal and radiation-induced faults.

Data shows that these LEO systems, characterized by rapid iteration and frequent ground contact, present a different attack surface than their higher-orbit counterparts. Specifically, the study highlights how optimizing energy efficiency in LEO communication protocols is critical for operational longevity, and managing thermal loads in on-board computing units is essential to prevent hardware failure.

Furthermore, the work demonstrates a critical link between cybersecurity and space sustainability, establishing that unmitigated cyber vulnerabilities accelerate hardware obsolescence and contribute to the accumulation of space debris. Measurements confirm that this debris accumulation undermines efforts toward carbon-neutral space operations, creating a feedback loop where security breaches exacerbate environmental concerns.

The breakthrough delivers a nuanced understanding of how orbital dynamics influence both attack feasibility and effectiveness, paving the way for tailored defensive strategies aligned with each orbit’s unique characteristics and constraints. Irregularities in command and control systems, specifically anomalies in telemetry data, also strongly correlate with attack events and warrant careful monitoring as potential indicators of compromise.

These findings underscore the importance of modernizing cryptographic practices and ensuring robust command path security as fundamental requirements for resilient space infrastructure, extending to both payload and control channels.

The authors acknowledge that the scope of publicly available incident reports and the aggregated nature of the vulnerability metrics limit the ability to predict risks for individual satellites. Future work should focus on improving anomaly detection systems, potentially through machine learning models trained on telemetry data, to better distinguish between normal operational fluctuations and malicious activity. Such systems would be particularly valuable in all orbital regimes, given the observed correlation between telemetry anomalies and encryption weaknesses with successful attacks.