El concurso anual Hack-A-Sat, patrocinado por la Fuerza Espacial y el Laboratorio de Investigaci\u00f3n de la Fuerza A\u00e9rea para ayudar a mejorar la seguridad cibern\u00e9tica de los sat\u00e9lites del Departamento de Defensa, literalmente se hizo realidad este a\u00f1o.\u00a0mHACKeroni<\/b>\u00a0de Italia venci\u00f3 a cinco equipos internacionales de investigadores cibern\u00e9ticos que compet\u00edan por tomar el control de un sat\u00e9lite vivo en \u00f3rbita.<\/p>\n
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WASHINGTON \u2014 The annual\u00a0Hack-A-Sat contest,<\/a>\u00a0sponsored by the Space Force and Air Force Research Laboratory to help improve the cybersecurity of Defense Department satellites, literally got real this year \u2014 with Italy\u2019s mHACKeroni beating out five international teams of cyber researchers vying to take control of a live, in orbit satellite.<\/p>\n \u201cWe are so proud of the entire Hack-A-Sat effort and particularly the development of Moonlighter as the first and only hacking sandbox in space,\u201d said Col. Neal Roach, director of Engineering and Integration for Space Domain Awareness and Combat Power at Space Force\u2019s\u00a0Space Systems Command (SSC)<\/a>, in a press release today announcing the prize winners.<\/p>\n Moonlighter is a 3U CubeSat (that is, made up of three 10X10X10 centimeter units)\u00a0built by The Aerospace Corporation<\/a>\u00a0in cooperation with SSC. It was launched on a SpaceX Falcon 9 to the International Space Station on June 5, and from there was deployed into low Earth orbit on July 6 for use not just in the Aug. 11-12 Hack-A-Sat 4 contest during this year\u2019s annual hacker spree DEF CON 31 in Las Vegas, but also to serve as a future DoD cybersecurity testbed.<\/p>\n In previous\u00a0Hack-A-Sats<\/a>, competitors utilized ground-based satellite simulations (called FlatSats) and then, on a laboratory digital twin of the Moonlighter satellite, performed\u00a0what is known in cybersecurity circles as a \u201ccapture the flag (CTF)\u201d contest to find text strings, called \u201cflags,\u201d that are hidden in purposefully-vulnerable programs or websites.<\/p>\n This year, the five hacking teams \u2014 selected from more than 700 initially competing in the April qualifying round \u2014 competed in \u201ctwo ground-based challenges and seven on-orbit challenges testing their space-relevant skills including spacecraft operations, radio frequency communications and reverse engineering,\u201d the SSC press release explained. These included including hacking into Moonlighter to force it to take a picture of a ground target of their choice and downloading it to a ground station, and bypassing the satellite\u2019s blocks on imaging of certain ground targets.<\/p>\n The three prize winners were:<\/p>\n First place, $50,000: mHACKeroni, a conglomeration of five Italian cyber research teams.<\/p>\n Second place, $30,000:\u00a0Poland Can Into Space,<\/a>\u00a0created by Polish cyber researchers joined by members from Ireland and Germany; and<\/p>\n Third place, $20,000:\u00a0jmp fs:[rcx]<\/a>, a combined team of Hack-A-Sat\u2019s first-year champions from the US and United Kingdom.<\/p>\n