Data Manipulation: Transmitted Data Manipulation

an attacker can modify transmitted data, jamming or overpowering the original signal and retransmitting a modified copy to the receiver, to command a spacecraft or to lead the system owner to erroneous decision. An attacker can target the telecommands sent from a GS, to change the spacecraft behavior, or he can tamper the telemetry sent from a spacecraft to change the GS received data. Intercepted and modified range measurement sent to the control center could lead to erroneous range measurements, which could cause incorrect trajectory determination. Mitigations are redundancy/diversity to protect the source and authentication to protect the message. To protect the data source, a star sensor offers ah high level of reliability. An attacker can also target the payload data sent from or to a spacecraft. To mitigate this, Navigation Message Authentication (NMA) uses symmetric/asymmetric key encryption to provide authenticity and integrity of the navigation data to the receiver.

ID: T2054.002
Sub-technique of:  T2054
Tactic: Impact
Platforms: Ground Segment, Space Segment, Space-link communication
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.