Proceedings for the Second Symposium on Space Economy, Space Law and Space Sciences

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DOI :10.26650/PB/SS46PS01.2023.004.011   IUP :10.26650/PB/SS46PS01.2023.004.011    Full Text (PDF)

The Legal and Policy Dimensions of Cyber-Conflict in Outer Space

Larry F. Martınez

On February 24, 2022, the ViaSat network suffered a widespread outage as “AcidRain” malware invaded the company’s infrastructure of modems and routers designed to inter-connect ViaSat’s fleet of four satellites and thousands of customers using ViaSat for Internet connectivity (Pearson, 2022). On the same day as the Russian invasion of Ukraine, thousands of modems were rendered permanently inoperative. The malware was labelled by the perpetrator “ukrop” possibly identifying a linkage to the “Ukraine Operation.” While details are being investigated and ViaSat is declining to reveal more about the cyber-attack due to security concerns, the incident illustrates the cyber vulnerability of satellites and their networks to Internet-related attacks (Kan, 2022).

The emerging legal and policy topology of outer space governance is compelling policymakers and legal scholars to re-map the long-standing analog outer space regime as it adapts to a digital world system increasingly penetrated by eruptions of cyber-conflicT (Erwin, 2022). At the dawn of the space age, satellites interfaced with terrestrial analog telecommunications networks which operated as giant mechanical switching machines relaying long-distance messages distributed by copper cables under the oceans and across the landscape. Satellites made possible instantaneous high-bandwidth programming across and between continents, subject only to the few entities capable of disrupting radio frequency links between highly secure ground stations connected via satellites orbiting more than 35.000 km above the earth’s equator in the geostationary orbit. The foundations of the outer space governance regime reflected these early technological realities in two policy areas of outer space management: (1) outer space as a “place” as defined by the five outer space treaties; and, (2) outer space as “electromagnetic spectrum” - an extension of terrestrial telecommunications infrastructures already regulated by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) (UNOOSA, 2022).




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