Space Wars Will Be Fought With Hacks, Not Missiles
On Monday morning, a number of professionals in the aerospace industry received a rather mundane email containing a PDF ostensibly about the future of Russian aerospace programs, but which actually contained a ‘Komplex’ trojan.
The Komplex trojan works by connecting the user’s computer to a remote command and control server, a centralized computer that issues commands to a botnet. Although nothing malicious has happened in connection with the Komplex virus yet, this could change should the hackers responsible for the virus (believed to be the Sofacy Group, an infamous cyberespionage collective) choose to send commands through this server to be executed on the infected computers.
The Sofacy Group’s chosen target—the aerospace industry—is instructive, insofar as it speaks to the growing vulnerability of space systems in the information age. To address this issue, a panel of security experts convened at the International Astronautical Congress on Friday morning to discuss cyber-vulnerabilities particular to the space sector and how to protect it against hacking.
