The satellites that power your GPS, weather forecasts, and internet connection may be one AI-driven cyberattack away from chaos.
Cybersecurity researchers are now warning that artificial intelligence could allow hackers to seize control of orbiting spacecraft and cause deliberate collisions, and the threat could become real within the next two years.
ARE SATELLITES A THREAT?
Researchers at the CR14 cybersecurity centre in Estonia told Space.com that advances in AI could make it possible for an AI-led attack to cause serious damage in orbit in as little as two years.
The concern centres on so-called “agentic AI”; systems that can independently plan and carry out tasks without human input.
“AI is developing quite quickly right now,” Kristjan Keskkula, CR14 Head of Space Cyber Range, told Space.com. “The real problem now is that AI can act, take decisions, analyse things and come up with new exploits.”
Making the situation worse, many older satellites still in orbit have no cybersecurity protections at all, making them easy targets.
Hackers could potentially hijack satellites and force them to collide with other spacecraft.
“In the last about three years, we have sent up 8,000 satellites,” Keskkula said. “You only need to affect one satellite’s actions to cause problems.”
HOW IS AI MAKING SATELLITES DANGEROUS?
Experts say AI is making it dramatically easier for bad actors to understand and exploit space systems, even without specialist knowledge.
Andrzej Olchawa, a space cybersecurity engineer at VisionSpace, said that large language models have slashed the learning curve for would-be attackers.
“Interpreting telemetry and telecommand structures once required extensive study of thousands of technical pages,” Olchawa said. “Today, one can simply instruct an LLM to generate parsers and provide mission-specific context with minimal expertise.”
Clemence Poirier, a cybersecurity researcher at ETH Zurich, agreed, saying that in 2024, Microsoft and OpenAI revealed that a Russian hacking group used AI language models to research satellite communications and radar systems ahead of potential attacks.
“The time to exploit known vulnerabilities has been immensely reduced because of AI,” Poirier said.
Martin Hanson, CR14’s head of communication, warned that attacks are becoming more frequent and more sophisticated globally, with phishing attempts in Europe alone rising 500% in recent years.
“AI will make these attacks more targeted,” Hanson said. “It’s getting more sophisticated.”
