At the CYSAT cybersecurity conference, the European Space Agency (ESA) invited hackers to hack the OPS-SAT nanosatellite used for demonstration purposes. The team of experts of the international international industrial group Thales was able to successfully do this.
They were able to access the satellite's operating system using standard permissions. After that, they took advantage of several vulnerabilities in order to run malicious code in it.
Thanks to this, the experts were able to force the satellite to send back to Earth distorted images taken with its camera, in which certain geographical areas were masked. At the same time, the activities of the hackers themselves went unnoticed by ESA specialists.
Earlier it was reported that in the "leaks" of classified US intelligence documents, evidence was found that China is developing cyber weapons that allow hacking into enemy satellites during the war.
Thus, the PRC plans to limit the potential enemy of satellite communications and surveying the territory. It is planned to broadcast a fake signal to the satellite, similar to what it receives from the operator, and using it to disrupt the normal operation of the device.