An AI-assisted platform has been used to test whether Viasat’s satellite communications links can meet operational thresholds under interference and adversarial jamming.
Announced this month, the work with Atalanta has renewed scrutiny of the vulnerabilities exposed by Russia’s 2022 attack on Viasat’s KA-SAT network, which disrupted communications across Ukraine and several European countries.
Gil Baram, PhD, is a cybersecurity strategy and policy researcher specialising in cyber warfare, intelligence and space security. She is a Senior Lecturer and Associate Professor at Bar-Ilan University and formerly led the Cyber and Space Research Group at Tel Aviv University.
In this exclusive interview for the IT Security Guru conducted by the Cyber Security Speakers Agency, Gil explains how states use cyber operations to compete below the threshold of open war, why long-life satellites present a distinct security challenge, and how an attack on space-based communications could disrupt everyday life on Earth.
How have state cyber capabilities blurred the threshold between strategic competition and armed conflict?
Gil Baram: “I think the greatest change that cyber warfare and cyber capabilities have created is that states can compete without crossing this imaginary red line: if you cross it, then it’s a war.
“They don’t do that, but they still compete on and on, causing damage to one another, disrupting civilians’ lives and interfering in elections. But still, that doesn’t lead to an open war. That’s something very unique to this type of technology.”
Why does securing space-based infrastructure present a different cyber challenge from defending terrestrial systems?
Gil Baram: “When we talk about that, the first thing we have to have in mind is the distance. For many years, security contractors were the ones building big satellites for states and launching them. Have it in mind that these satellites should be in space for 20 or 25 years, and that’s a lot.
“If you have a cyber risk, it’s very hard to patch a system that is flying far away from you and that was launched a decade ago. It created a lot of questions: how do you deal with cyber security in space?
“In the past, we started seeing what we call the new space: startups and technology companies that started building satellites and building space capabilities. These are not the big security contractors.
“We started seeing that these companies do have security by design, or cyber security by design, when they design their products and before they’re launching them to space. That’s a big shift we’ve seen today.”
How exposed is civilian life to a successful cyberattack on satellite communications infrastructure?
Gil Baram: “My feeling is that sometimes we don’t realise how much we depend on space capabilities, even for chatting today, using our internet or our cell phones, and navigating with GPS. Many things that we take for granted couldn’t happen without satellites and space satellite communication.
“I’ll give just one example. In the first day of the Russian invasion to Ukraine, the Russian conducted a cyberattack against Ukraine satellite communication capabilities.
“The reports coming out from Ukraine: they didn’t have the needed communication at the very critical moments or hours of the beginning of the war. You can damage satellite communication and then hurt an entire country.
“The main thing I hope audiences will take, and that’s my passion and goal, is to understand or realise that cyber, AI and cyber threats are relevant to our everyday lives. It’s not something that is out there, and not just something that we read in the news, but it’s relevant for everyday lives.
“We don’t have to be technical people in order to understand that and in order to protect ourselves.”
