Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) are vulnerable to several attack vectors such as jamming, spoofing, physical attack, cyber attack, and more.
Cybersecurity firm Cyble analyzed the attack surface against satellite receivers from five major vendors, and found that, as of March 2023, thousands of these receivers were exposed online.
In 2023, both SiegedSec and GhostSec groups conducted several attacks against GNSS receivers and illegally accessed numerous devices belonging to various entities in several countries.
A recent study found that as of July 2024, over 10,000 GNSS receiver instances had been exposed online globally, and over 3,000 of them were still vulnerable to exploitation.
Most vulnerable receivers by a specific vendor were largely found in the United States, Germany, Australia, Russia and Japan. Cloud computing, telecommunications and energy industries were among the worst hit.
Out of numerous types of vulnerabilities in GNSS receivers, denial of service, exposure of information and privilege escalation were the most frequent ones.
To protect the GNSS receivers, organizations should keep them unreachable from outside and use stern authentication mechanisms if the internet connection is essential.
Specialized tools such as Space Attack Research and Tactic Analysis (SPARTA) matrix can be employed to formalize TTPs of space-related threat actors and provide effective countermeasures to protect space systems.