Abstract
Revelations surfaced publicly in November 2011 that unknown hackers had over 2007-8 breached the command links to both Landsat 7, and NASA's Terra EOS AM-1, and, on June 20, 2008 “achieved all steps required to command” Terra. In February 2012, NASA reported to U.S. Congress a list of pervasive and deep-seated cybersecurity problems, confirming that hackers had gained access to and downloaded sensitive data from several of the agency's major centers. While attention on satellite security currently and rightly focuses more traditional threats to space systems, the issue of cyber security is now a major concern. Following a summary of some of the main suspected cases of known significant cyber attacks on several space agencies, highlighting the findings of the NASA report, this paper shows that sophisticated APTs are presenting a new and major threat to data assurance and space systems and analyses the response of NASA, ESA and JAXA to the issue, concluding that cyber security concerns are presenting new challenges and forcing new policy initiatives by space asset holders.
