Saturation/Exhaustion of Spacecraft Resources: Drain satellite's power

The attacker can target satellites with energy or resource constraints to lead them prioritizing power saving efforts and disabling security controls. The satellite becomes then more vulnerable to other attacks such as gaining unauthorized access or eavesdropping on cleartext communications. This goal can be reached with a regenerative payload "flooding", sending to the satellite more packets than expected to rapidly consume its energy. The exploitation of a payload application can achieve a similar result.[1]

ID: T2053.004
Sub-technique of:  T2053
Tactic: Impact
Platforms: Space Segment
Version: 2.0
Created: 20 April 2023
Last Modified: 21 April 2023

Mitigations

This type of attack technique cannot be easily mitigated with preventive controls since it is based on the abuse of system features.

References