Lt. Gen. Saltzman said one lesson from the cyber attacks in Ukraine is that the main targets are not the satellites but the ground systems
WASHINGTON — Almost three months into the war in Ukraine, it’s still too early to draw conclusions about Russia’s capabilities to disrupt satellite-based communications but one clear takeaway is the importance of protecting the ground systems and network user equipment that provide many entry points for cyber attackers, a senior U.S. Space Force official said May 19.
Space Force Lt. Gen. B. Chance Saltzman, deputy chief of space operations for nuclear and cyber, said he has been briefed on the details of Russian cyber attacks aimed at Ukrainian users of satellite internet services. “One of the observations that I would offer on that is that, if you think the only way to dismantle space capabilities is by shooting down satellites, you’re missing the bigger picture … as these cyber attacks are on ground networks,” Saltzman told reporters at a Defense Writers Group breakfast meeting.
The U.S. State Department last week formally blamed Russia for a late February cyberattack on Viasat’s KA-SAT satellite internet network. The attack disabled user terminals in Ukraine and across Europe that provide internet services to private citizens. Viasat said the satellite itself was not targeted and the attack affected 40,000 user terminals, a small fraction of the hundreds of thousands of customers of the network. Viasat said services have since been restored.
Separately, Elon Musk tweeted this month that Russian hackers have been trying to take down SpaceX’s Starlink broadband service the company is providing in Ukraine.
If the ground infrastructu ..
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