Thales Takes Over ESA Demo Satellite in Groundbreaking Cybersecurity Exercise

The European Space Agency (ESA) recently challenged cybersecurity experts in the space industry to disrupt the operation of its OPS-SAT demonstration nanosatellite. The exercise was designed to test the need for a high level of cyber resilience in the specific operating environment of space. Thales’s offensive cybersecurity team worked with the Group’s Information Technology Security Evaluation Facility (ITSEF) for this unique exercise. The team of four cybersecurity researchers accessed the satellite’s onboard system, used standard access rights to gain control of its application environment, and then exploited several vulnerabilities to introduce malicious code into the satellite’s systems. This made it possible to compromise the data sent back to Earth, in particular by modifying the images captured by the satellite’s camera. Thales’s cybersecurity capabilities for the space industry are based on more than 40 years of experience in cybersecurity and space activities. The Group’s cybersecurity solutions for the space industry encompass everything from risk and threat evaluation to data protection and network security, incident detection and response, and security maintenance throughout the system life cycle.