While many envision swashbuckling spacefarers have been portrayed by Harrison Ford or Vin Diesel, space piracy will likely start with a person sitting on the Earth’s surface with a computer. Industry experts are now sounding the alarm that preventative measures should be explored to prevent space piracy before it becomes a crisis. With the increasing volume and value of satellites, it’s only a matter of time until a pirate pioneer attempts a hijacking.
Commercial space financier Marc Feldman and cybersecurity expert Hugh Taylor founded the Center for Study of Space Crime, Piracy, and Governance while conducting research for their book “Space Piracy: Preparing for a Criminal Crisis in Orbit,” released earlier this year. The think tank ties the potential threat to the rise of commercial activity in orbit. In an interview with Space.com, Feldman speculated that pirates could hold satellite networks for ransom and threaten to derail globally transmitted live television broadcasts, like the FIFA World Cup or the Olympic Games. However, beyond satellite hijackings, Taylor believes there could even be physical attacks at launch sites and ground control stations.
This should be a job for Space Force, right?
Feldman and Taylor aren’t alone. Since 2020, the Department of the Air Force has organized Hack-A-Sat, a space-focused hacking competition. By the event’s 4th edition in 2023, a team of Italian hackers successfully broke into the US Air Force Moonlighter to win a $50,000 prize. It was the first time competitors were tasked with hacking into an actual satellite. Despite the nation’s long history of combating global piracy, the Pentagon has no real-world experience to reference. The competition is meant to find gaps in the military’s cybersecurity, and low Earth orbit is a far cry from the shores of Tripoli during the early 18th century.
While the American military does act to protect the country’s commercial interest, national security is at stake in orbit. The Russian invasion of Ukraine has shown how valuable satellite communications can be. Russian forces launched a cyberattack against Viasat, an American satellite company, on the same day it began the war in 2022. Elon Musk also played a pivotal role in the conflict when he locked Ukraine’s military out of Starlink just months later. With the ongoing protest against Tesla being called domestic terrorism by the Trump administration, activists could escalate in turn and target SpaceX.
