Hacking space: Europe ramps up security of satellites

In the desolate Arctic desert of Kangerlussuaq, Greenland, Europeans are building defenses against a new, up-and-coming security threat: space hacks.

A Lithuanian company called Astrolight is constructing a ground station, with support from the European Space Agency, that will use laser beams to download voluminous data from satellites in a fast and secure manner, it announced last month. 

It’s just one example of how Europe is moving to harden the security of its satellites, as rising geopolitical tensions and an expanding spectrum of hybrid threats are pushing space communications to the heart of the bloc’s security plans.

For years, satellite infrastructure was treated by policymakers as a technical utility rather than a strategic asset. That changed in 2022, when a cyberattack on the Viasat satellite network coincided with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.  

Satellites have since become popular targets for interference, espionage and disruption. The European Commission in June warned that space was becoming “more contested,” flagging increasing cyberattacks and attempts at electronic interference targeting satellites and ground stations. Germany and the United Kingdom warned earlier this year of the growing threat posed by Russian and Chinese space satellites, which are regularly spotted spying on their satellites. 

EU governments are now racing to boost their resilience and reduce reliance on foreign technology, both through regulations like the new Space Act and investments in critical infrastructure.

The threat is crystal clear in Greenland, Laurynas Mačiulis, the chief executive officer of Astrolight, said. “The problem today is that around 80 percent of all the [space data] traffic is downlinked to a single location in Svalbard, which is an island shared between different countries, including Russia,” he said in an interview.

Europe’s main Arctic ground station sits in Svalbard and supports both the navigation systems of Galileo and Copernicus. While the location is strategic, it is also extremely sensitive due to nearby Russian and Chinese activities. Crucially, the station relies on a single undersea cable to connect to the internet, which has been damaged several times.

“In case of intentional or unintentional damage of this cable, you lose access to most of the geo-intelligence satellites, which is, of course, very critical. So our aim is to deploy a complementary satellite ground station up in Greenland,” Mačiulis said.

The Musk of it all

A centerpiece of Europe’s ambitions to have secure, European satellite communication is IRIS², a multibillion-euro secure connectivity constellation pitched in 2022 and designed to rival Elon Musk’s Starlink system.

“Today, communications — for instance in Ukraine — are far too dependent on Starlink,” said Anders Fogh Rasmussen, the founding chairman of political consultancy Rasmussen Global, speaking at an event in Brussels in November. “That dependence rests on the shifting ideas of an American billionaire. That’s too risky. We have to build a secure communications system that is independent of the United States.”

The European system, which will consist of 18 satellites operating in low and medium Earth orbit, aims to provide Europe with fast and encrypted communication.

“Even if someone intercepts the signal [of IRIS² ], they will not be able to decrypt it,” Piero Angeletti, head of the Secure Connectivity Space Segment Office at the European Space Agency, told POLITICO. “This will allow us to have a secure system that is also certified and accredited by the national security entities.”

The challenge is that IRIS² is still at least four years away from becoming operational.

Who’s in charge?

While Europe beefs up its secure satellite systems, governments are still streamlining how they can coordinate cyber defenses and space security. In many cases, that falls to both space or cyber commands, which, unlike traditional military units, are relatively new and often still being built out.

Clémence Poirier, a cyberdefense researcher at the Center for Security Studies at ETH Zurich, said that EU countries must now focus on maturing them.

“European states need to keep developing those commands,” she told POLITICO. “Making sure that they coordinate their action, that there are clear mandates and responsibilities when it comes to cyber security, cyber defensive operations, cyber offensive operations, and also when it comes to monitoring the threat.”

Industry, too, is struggling to fill the gaps. Most cybersecurity firms do not treat space as a sector in its own right, leaving satellite operators in a blind spot. Instead, space systems are folded into other categories: Earth-observation satellites often fall under environmental services, satellite TV under media, and broadband constellations like Starlink under internet services.

That fragmentation makes it harder for space companies to assess risk, update threat models or understand who they need to defend against. It also complicates incident response: while advanced tools exist for defending against cyberattacks on terrestrial networks, those tools often do not translate well to space systems.

“Cybersecurity in space is a bit different,” Poirier added. “You cannot just implement whatever solution you have for your computers on Earth and just deploy that to your satellite.”