Clémence Poirier
On Friday June 13, the Israeli Defense Forces launched a series of preemptive kinetic and drone strikes against Iranian military assets and nuclear facilities. Shortly after Israeli kinetic strikes, cyber activities started to skyrocket. Dozens of pro-Iranian and pro-Israeli hacktivist groups, some of which are believed to be state-directed or state supported actors — took to social media claiming to have conducted numerous cyber operations to weaken the two belligerents. Hacktivist groups have also taken sides in this war. Notably, even pro-Palestinian, pro-Russian and pro-Pakistani groups have sided with pro-Iranian groups online, blurring the lines between different geopolitical conflicts.
Among the numerous targets, the space sector is a privileged one for hacktivists. Based on open-source analysis across hundreds of Telegram channels, 67 cyber operations targeting space companies and space systems, including military ones, were claimed by threat actors in less than 15 days.At least 22 different space entities were allegedly targeted, with most attacks affecting Israeli satellite operators including Elbit Systems and Rafael. Most attacks were distributed denial of service (DDoS) against company websites, which did not disrupt the functioning of any actual space systems.
As of this writing, the most active hacktivist group is a pro-Palestinian (and pro-Iranian) group called “Mr.Hamza.”, which had already been targeting the Israeli space sector in the context of the war in Gaza. Mr.Hamza conducted 23 DDoS attacks against websites of Israeli, British, and American space companies, including Israel Aerospace Industries, Kratos Defense and Security, and Orbit Communications Systems. Information from check-host, which is a tool for checking the availability of websites, corroborates these claims.
Hacktivist group “GhostSec” has claimed to have hacked into ten very small aperture terminals (VSATs) belonging to the Israeli Defense Forces. It is unknown whether the attack actually occurred as GhostSec did not explain how it supposedly hacked these two-way satellite ground systems. It is unclear whether the attack happened but GhostSec is not new to targeting the space sector as it previously claimed to have targeted GNSS receivers in Russia in the context of the Russo-Ukrainian war, and in Israel in the context of the Israel/Palestinian conflict.
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