NATIONAL HARBOR, Maryland–Deloitte is using its first internally funded satellite to game out on-orbit cyber attacks with a new system that could bolster the resiliency of current and future spacecraft.
For more than a decade, Deloitte has provided cyber protection for ground systems. But about five years ago, the technology company began to ponder defense tools for on-orbit assets.
Enter Silent Shield: a cyber intrusion detection payload deployed aboard Deloitte-1, a 10-kg (22 lb.) cubesat that was launched on SpaceX’s Transporter-13 mission on March 14 into a Sun-synchronous orbit. Deloitte internally developed the satellite and tapped Spire Global to build the bus.
Since it launched, Deloitte’s space team is using the satellite to test out 20 vignettes, or scenarios of varying levels of cyber threat or attack, Ryan Roberts, a principal in the company’s space portfolio, said Sept. 22 at the Air and Space Forces Association’s Air, Space and Cyber Conference here. During the tests, Silent Shield is ingesting radio frequency (RF) data and then analyzing it for cyber anomalies.
The company has successfully run through six of those scenarios to date, with the goal of adding more challenging elements to future attack scenarios “until we get to the point where Silent Shield can’t detect it, because that’s where the real learning is going to occur,” Roberts said. The company is using an analysis framework developed by The Aerospace Corp. as an external validation for the payload’s performance, and hopes to complete the testing over the next two months.
Deloitte eventually wants to field eight more satellites for a planned constellation in low Earth Orbit (LEO), to be deployed over the next 18 months. Eventually, the Silent Shield could demonstrate not only detection of cyber intrusions, but also an automated or preapproved response, Roberts said.
While Deloitte-1 focuses on RF data collection and geolocation, future satellites could also incorporate optical intersatellite links, both to detect intrasatellite anomalies and to share that detection with the rest of the constellation, he added. The spacecraft is carrying a software-defined radio capable of VHF, UHF, S-band and L-band transmission, a star tracker and other navigation effects, along with Silent Shield’s cyber intrusion detection system and its cyber effects payload, data provided by the company said.
The company sees opportunities in providing Silent Shield to customers for on-orbit testing of offensive and defensive cyber operations, whether as a mass or massless payload, Roberts said.
“While we’re very interested in stress-testing Silent Shield to make sure that it works, we also see a real benefit in offering this to our clients as a real, on-orbit environment where they can test their own offensive and defensive tactics,” he said.