Ground Station Cyber Threats and Product Design Techniques for Defense

Modern SATCOM ground stations were not designed for today’s threat environment. As systems evolved to IP-based, high-throughput architectures, adversaries gained new ways to capture traffic, reverse engineer firmware, and exploit weak management interfaces. This whitepaper examines real-world vulnerabilities and explains why legacy assumptions such as physical isolation no longer provide adequate protection.

Drawing on practical product experience, the paper outlines how attackers use techniques like firmware extraction and fuzz testing to uncover flaws. It then defines a defense framework centered on encryption by default, secure boot, rigorous audit logging, CVE management, and supply chain transparency—providing a clear path to modernizing ground station cybersecurity.

Key takeaways:

• The most common vulnerabilities in legacy SATCOM deployments
• How attackers exploit management and traffic planes
• Core design principles for Zero Trust and encrypted communications
• A practical cybersecurity checklist aligned to NIST, ISO, and CMMC frameworks