Dylan Smyth | Searcharxiv

arXiv2026

An experimental evaluation of satellite constellation emulators

Satellite emulation software is essential for research due to the lack of access to physical testbeds. To be useful, emulators must generate observations that are well-aligned with real-world ones, and they must have acceptable resource overheads for setting up and running experiments. This study provides an in-depth evaluation of three open-source emulators: StarryNet, OpenSN, and Celestial. Running them side-by-side and comparing them with real-world measurements from the WetLinks study identifies shortcomings of current satellite emulation techniques as well as promising avenues for research and development.

cs.DC↗

arXiv2024

Evaluating an Effective Ransomware Infection Vector in Low Earth Orbit Satellites

Non-Terrestrial Networks (NTNs) and satellite systems have become an important component of modern data communication systems in recent years. Despite their importance, the security of these systems is often limited, leaving them vulnerable to determined attackers. In this paper, we outline a scenario in which an attacker can infect an in-orbit NASA Core Flight System (cFS) based satellite with ransomware and communicate the infection back to a satellite operator. This paper is the first to demonstrate an end-to-end exploit path that results in a ransomware infection without the need for a supply chain attack or compromised credentials. Novel ransomware is delivered to an emulated satellite system using custom shellcode that exploits a weakness in the considered scenario. The scenario considered by this initial piece of work achieves a success rate of 33.3\% for a complete successful infection.

cs.CR↗