Defending KA-SAT
Viasat engineers share the inside story of responding to the 2022 AcidRain wiper attack against the KA-SAT satellite network during the invasion of Ukraine.
Summary
The Historic Cyberattack on the KA-SAT Satellite Network
In February 2022, coinciding with the Russian military invasion of Ukraine, an adversary launched a devastating destructive cyberattack against Viasat's European KA-SAT network.
Rapid Forensic Analysis of Impacted Satellite Terminals
Mark Colaluca and Nick Saunders describe how Viasat engineers conducted emergency hardware forensics, discovering within 36 hours that terminal flash memory had been overwritten by a wiper.
Reverse Engineering the AcidRain Wiper
Reverse engineering the malicious toolkit revealed a targeted wiper designed to overwrite MTD storage partitions and brick tens of thousands of satellite ground modems.
Mitigating Ongoing Electronic and Network Assaults
The authors detail how operational teams defended against sustained over-the-air network attacks for weeks following the initial incident to restore critical European communications.
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