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Satellite Security: Hard Trade-offs & Wrong Decisions #shorts

BSides Frankfurt0:43852 viewsPublished 2026-04Watch on YouTube ↗
About this talk
Launching satellites is expensive, making repairs impossible. This leads to built-in backdoors and commands to override encryption, a critical trade-off for spacecraft control. Often, the wrong decision is made. #SatelliteSecurity #SpaceTech #CyberSecurity #Encryption #BsideFrankfurt
Show transcript [en]

In addition, we have a lot like in insecurity by design. So, satellite systems are pretty difficult to reach. So, once you have launched a satellite, it's very difficult to go there and fix something. So, we'll often have like some backdoors, some high priority commands you can send, some something something to do in case something goes wrong. Even if there is like a even if the communication is encrypted, there will likely be a way to turn off the encryption. Just because otherwise you cannot control the spacecraft. It cost you 2 billion. So, what what do you want to do? Um So, these are like hard trade-offs, but often in my opinion the the wrong decision is taken.